In the summer of 2024, Midwest Dairy worked with a new partner, Marco’s Pizza, to drive dairy sales through their limited-time offer of “Fiery Flavors” menu items. Marco’s Pizza is one of the fastest-growing pizza brands in America, with 1,222 stores across 35 states.
Their consumer research aligned with checkoff, confirming that consumers want new flavors and menu items. To meet this demand, Marco’s developed seven items for its new Fiery Flavors menu, including a spicy cheese blend infused with Carolina Reaper, Habanero, and Jalapeno peppers.
Together, checkoff support from Midwest Dairy, American Dairy Association Mideast, DairyMax, and United Dairy Industry of Michigan enabled Marco’s to add significant social media support and in-store point-of-sale materials promoting the Fiery Flavors menu. Other marketing tactics included email communications, digital advertising, and box toppers with coupons for return visits. A video telling dairy’s story using the tagline “Real Dairy. Real Fresh.” was included in the promotional emails and other digital media.
Campaign results show that this menu upgrade was successful. Over 93 million emails were sent during the campaign, and paid media delivered over 30 million impressions. Marco’s website received over 650,000 clicks for the Fiery Flavors items alone! Some stores reported an increase overall and saw a 2 percent increase in new customers. The customer return rate exceeded 14.9 percent, outdoing their typical single-digit benchmark.