The Challenge
If a vertical pizza box has never been cracked, there’s a reason. It shouldn’t exist.
The question was: how do you launch something that isn’t real without it feeling like a joke or a stunt?
How do you get people talking – discussing it, debating it, arguing over it before Pizza Hut says anything at all? The challenge was to make the impossible feel believable just long enough to spark conversation.
The Approach
The Vertical Pizza Box appeared on the streets of London with no explanation. Stills and videos captured passersby as they stopped, stared, and reacted in real life.
Influencers such as The Archbishop of Banterbury and TikTok creator Food with ASB joined the conversation by sharing their reactions and encouraging their audiences to speculate.
A few videos were also planted online so that when people searched for answers, more content could be discovered, keeping the mystery alive.
The campaign focused on curiosity, conversation, and shareable moments. People debated, discussed, and questioned the box online, all before Pizza Hut revealed they were in fact, sticking with horizontal pizzas for now.
Roy Torres, Global Brand Creative Director, Pizza Hut
Pizza Hut has always had a history of doing things differently, and in the UK, we wanted to create something that felt genuinely surprising in culture. The ‘Vertical Pizza Box’ is a fun, playful way to spark conversation and get people talking, while celebrating the innovation and imagination that sits at the heart of the brand. Working with Iris, we’ve created a campaign that’s made for social, made to travel, and made to get everyone asking the same question: how does that even work?