Move over Addison Rae. Thanks to Little Caesars' newest campaign, TikTok’s next stars might be life-sized dolls stuffed with felt cheese and pepperoni.
Little Caesars' "Extra Stuffed" social campaign rolled out this week with two 30-second ads that are both eerie and absurd. A monotonous voice chants “stuffed, stuffed, stuffed” in a singsong over pseudo-eighties electro music before the felt friend introduces himself with, “Hi, I’m a stuffed person.”
Button eyes, a two-dimensional handlebar mustache sitting above a non-existent mouth, a felt hand pulling felt cheese and pepperoni out of a khaki pants pocket — it would all be terrifying if it weren’t so patently strange. There’s not just one freaky element, but an overwhelming sea of oddities. Viewers might as well sit back and laugh.
The campaign comes from McKinney, Little Caesars' agency of record, with production handled by CYLNDR. As part of the push, four TikTok influencers — SpencerX, Adam Waheed, The McFarlands and Brooke Averick — will promote the chain with their own "pizza"-stuffed doppelgangers on TikTok beginning on Monday. The dolls were designed by artist Russ Vick.
Little Caesars’ bold marketing choice mirrors the brand's approach to pizza toppings and crust fillings. The chain claims there are more than nine feet of pepperoni on each pepperoni-and-cheese-stuffed crust pie. The message of the ads and the product is clear: more is more.
The quirky content feels ideal for social media, where outlandish posts can win eyeballs and rise to the top of an algorithm. While the larger Pepperoni & Cheese Stuffed Crust push included TV commercials, this campaign was designed for social, with a specific focus on TikTok.
The new marketing content continues Little Caesars' “Big Pizza” campaign, which launched earlier this year featuring a fictitious corporate pizza powerhouse only Little Caesars can topple. Chief Marketing Officer Jeff Klein discussed the 'Big Pizza' campaign with Ad Age in January on the "Marketer’s Brief" podcast.
Little Caesars spent $800,000 on media for the new push. Last year, Little Caesars spent $166 million in total on U.S. measured media, an 18.4% drop from 2019, according to the Ad Age Datacenter, which ranked it as the 80th most-advertised brand in the country.
