The initiative, spearheaded by managing director of Havas Sports & Entertainment South Africa, Andrew Ross, seeks to find consumer brands and pit them against each other with real time, real world consumer feedback. These findings are then compared against how the brand is perceived by consumers.
The first of these comparisons was aimed at the ever-growing pizza market and so the #PizzaWars began.
"Over the last few months, we've seen overseas-based pizza businesses open in South Africa and so we decided to compare these new product offerings against the stalwarts of the local market to see who came out on top," says Ross.
For the challenge, standard pizza menu items were ordered from Debonairs, Romans, Pizza Hut and Domino's. All orders were made within minutes of each other and then a blind tasting was held within the company to determine the final results.
"We specifically decided on these four as they all offer oven-baked pizza as opposed to wood-fired, that we felt was a slightly different product offering," says Ross.
All four companies were judged on tastiest pizza through a blind taste testing, value per slice, delivery time and overall brand experience.
For delivery time, Debonairs came out on top with Roman's Pizza having the best value per slice. Domino's came out tops for the tastiest slice, but the overall brand experience belonged to Debonairs.
"We are overwhelmed by the amount of interest and support from both the industry and the public alike," concludes Ross. "So, based on this, we'll continue the initiative with another brand war starting next month."
All results, and downloadable infographics can be found on the
Brand Wars website.