Thursday 30 April 2009

Pizza / Pasta Hut

From: tim broughton
Sent: 17 October 2008 15:02
To:
melanie.fanning@pizzahut.co.uk
Subject: Pasta Hut


Dear Melanie

I feel the need to get in touch with you as marketing administrator for Pizza Hut UK as it has come to my attention that you are in the process of changing your name from Pizza Hut to Pasta Hut.

I can only suppose that some 'important' individual in your Brands Team has had some sort of haemorrhage in their sleep, come to work with socks on their head, blurting out random words, four of which happened to be "Change pizza to pasta" and the rest of you all got on with it. The effects of blindly obeying those in positions of power are clear to see. Take the war in Iraq and present global economic meltdown – all catastrophes created by a group of people saying 'Derrrr, ok boss" to a man in a White house with an Oval Office.

I even have hard, cool statistics to support my claim the changing the name of Pizza Hut to Pasta Hut is not only an unwise business decision but also a socially irresponsible one. In an independent survey carried out in 2006, 10,000 randomly selected members of the British public were asked the question "Do you prefer pizza or pasta?" An overwhelming 87% said with confidence that they preferred pizza*. On merely hearing the word 'pasta' over one fifth of this 87% spontaneously vomited in the face of the field marketeer. Bad news for pasta, good news for Wet Wipes.

There is one burning issue which I would like to raise. Don't you think it would have been more effective to maybe park your attention to the pizza or pasta quandary for a moment and maybe spend a little time focusing on the word 'hut'? Now, call me unadventurous, but of all the vibrant and pleasurable places to dine in this day and age, maybe 'a hut' doesn't rank so highly? Hmmm? Even my house is better than a hut.

Let's think of a few famous huts from entertainment, literature and politics:
Jabba the Hut – He was gross.
Robinson Crusoe lived in a hut – I expect, being stranded on an island, his diet was poor.
The Hutton Report – An independent report by Lord Hutton following the suicide of a British Weapons inspector, which vindicated the role of the present government and, to surmise, concluded that an invasion of Iraq was justified.

Not great company to be keeping there, hmmm?

This whole project is a complete waste of time and money.

Yours sympathetically

Tim


*Pizza or Pasta Magazine, 2006

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