DiGiorno Pizza Wins As Other Pizza Chains Drop The Social Media Ball With Nate Burleson

There was a huge opportunity for the big pizza chains yesterday and they were beat to the punch in dramatic fashion.

What were the social media teams of the “other” pizza chains doing? They got beat out by a pizza maker that doesn’t even deliver. A pizza chain that prides itself on being better than delivery. Perhaps their claim extends to social media as well.

The Detroit Lions wide receiver, Nate Burleson, has been sidelined with a broken arm for about a month since he totaled his car trying to stop a pizza from sliding away. We all know how the cheese gets all messed up when a pizza falls. (missed opportunity #1 )

He’s been joking ever since about parlaying the incident into a side gig pitching pizza. (missed opportunity # 2) But none of the big boys seemed to pay any attention to these opportunities.

But it seems one pizza chain was actually seeing what was going on on Instagram and Twitter and thought to themselves… “Hmm, here’s a real inexpensive, real time marketing opportunity to do something with an NFL player who has 100,000+ followers”.

Hats off to the quick thinking social team over at DiGiorno Pizza!

During yesterday’s games, probably as his Lions were beating up on the Cowboys, Burleson tweeted out and posted on Instagram, that he was sent a year’s supply of coupons for DiGiorno Pizza.

His tweet garnered 244 retweets, 135 favorites, and was picked up and posted on major news outlets across America. It even found it’s way to being covered by ESPN.

Huge S/O to Digiorno Pizza for the year supply of free pizza and the gifts! #ItsNotDeliveryItsDiGiorno… http://t.co/58H6F93luk

— Nathaniel E Burleson (@Nate13Burleson) October 28, 2013

In his Instagram picture, he included a letter sent to him by DiGiorno.

“Hello Nate, We hope you are feeling better after your recent car accident and are on the road to recovery, DiGiorno Pizza understands the challenges that come with carry out and delivery pizza so we’re sending you a gift along with a year supply of DiGorno pizza so you can skip carry out.”

With all of this press coverage and social media notoriety, I’m sure the fine people at DiGiorno Pizza won’t be asking the tired question that I keep hearing from CMOs of brands and technologically unsavvy advertising agency executives.

Why? Because I’m quite sure that DiGiorno Pizza clearly understands where the ROI is in social media. Here’s hoping they spread the word!