Durian or stinky tofu? Pizza Hut Taiwan leverages online buzz to promote new products

Marketers understand the importance of localisation. And for restaurant chains, creating food items that touch on local flavours is crucial to grabbing the attention of customers and satisfying their palate. With this in mind, Pizza Hut Taiwan has leveraged online buzz to introduce three new pizzas with Taiwanese culinary hallmarks.

Prior to launching the new items, Pizza Hut Taiwan conducted research on common keywords in use among Taiwanese netizens, revealing that netizens were surprisingly uninterested in its range of utilised ingredients.

?As 70% of our orders are made online, Pizza Hut Taiwan needs to rebuild our image as an innovative brand and among netizens, since they are not interested in our new products,? said Antony Leung, general manager of Pizza Hut Taiwan.

After completing its research, Pizza Hut Taiwan launched three extremely bold new flavours, such as durian, stinky tofu, and brown sugar bubble tea.

The launch was mentioned across multiple Taiwanese programmes including the news on CTI Television and SET News Channel, talk show Half and Half (?????), and Taiwanese big data explorer Dailyview. Online, Taiwanese influencers HuangHuangBrothers (????), YouTuber God Tone Asia (???????), and BESTIES (??) have also all published videos about the new pizzas.

?As Taiwanese media have been conducting social monitoring to find out latest trends, we have decided to create viral topics across online platforms to draw media?s attention to help us maximize exposure,? said Lily Chou, marketing director of Pizza Hut Taiwan.

We're not cowards at Marketing, but if someone can try the durian one and report back to us, we'll take your word for it on how it tastes.