Regional Influencers

The Challenge: Igniting Local Awareness Surrounding Marco’s new Fiery Flavors Menu

Marco’s Pizza launched its Fiery Flavors Menu to meet growing consumer demand for bold, spicy options – but needed to do more than just go national. The challenge was creating localized excitement in key markets to drive consumer trials. Traditional advertising would support the broad launch, but Fishman PR sought a way to build buzz with authenticity and relevance in specific regions. The goal: generate immediate trial, social buzz, and grassroots awareness for the new limited-time menu, especially among younger, digital-native audiences.

The Solution: Regional Influencers Bring the Fire

Fishman PR activated a strategically vetted and selected group of regional food and lifestyle influencers in high-potential markets where Marco’s has a strong store presence. These creators, known for their high engagement and community trust, received early access to the Fiery Flavors Menu. They shared reactions through short-form video content on their social channels, highlighting their favorite spicy items and encouraging followers to try the new menu for themselves. Gift cards were leveraged for influencers to host their own giveaways with their loyal follower-base to amplify engagement and incentivize trial, while hashtag tracking allowed for monitoring traction and impact across regions.

The Outcome: Authentic Engagement Sparks Hot Results

Collectively the campaign delivered 110 placements and over 35 million total impressions. Influencers played a key role in the overall strategy with social engagement rates averaging 6.7% – well above QSR industry benchmarks. Furthermore, influencer content sparked conversations and comment threads filled with real-time cravings, location lookups, and user-generated posts using #FieryFlavors. Some influencers even reported record engagement for sponsored content, thanks to the relatable, reaction-driven format.

Most importantly, Marco’s was able to validate that combining national innovation with hyper-local storytelling can effectively ignite trial and drive bottom-line impact. Marco’s saw strong system sales impact during the 10-week promotion, rise in customer attraction with nearly 25% of buyers being new the the brand – Fiery Flavors driving nearly 7% of all orders in its run, an increase in brand loyalty with customers who experienced Fiery Flavors returning at rates 2.% higher than average, and overall market growth – increasing Marco’s QSR traffic share during the quarter.