Pizza Hut has a new commercial promoting their line of Tuscani pastas. Taking a cue from Burger King’s Whopper Freakout campaign, Pizza Hut is utilizing a variation of the “real person” hidden camera style that made the Whopper Freakout campaign such a huge success.

The premise: 50 diners are invited to a pasta tasting at Provence restaurant on Bleeker Street in New York City. According to the description on YouTube, “there were 30+ Hidden cameras and the patrons had no clue what was going on until the reveal at the end.” Check out the 30-second ad Pizza Hut made from the footage:

I’m curious if they can get more out of this incident than just one 30-second commercial. Burger King put a 7-minute Whopper Freakout video online, and managed to cut a half-dozen 15 & 30-second commercials from their footage. They managed produce multiple versions of a “final product” from just 1 or 2 days of filming.

The most successful aspect of these types of ads is the use of raw, uncut consumer reactions. Does Pizza Hut have additional footage of surprised consumer reaction that they can use for a different version of the ad? Are they planning to replicate this stunt with Pizza Hut pasta at another restaurant in the near future?

I think the concept behind the ad is great. By serving patrons pasta from Pizza Hut when they think it is from the restaurant’s kitchen, the ad succeeds in capturing everyday people, who normally might be skeptics of Pizza Hut, inadvertently evangelizing on the chains behalf. I’m intrigued to see what kind of reaction this ad and any similar ads in the future receive.

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