Political responses aside, Pizza Patron's peso promotion transcends marketing boundaries

Nation's Restaurant News,  Feb 12, 2007  by Paul Frumkin

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Take heed of the following headline: "Peso-Popping Pizza Place to Ruin Economy, Trigger End Times."

That's the headline over a story about Pizza Patron's decision to accept pesos as payment for pizza orders. As the story points out, "sharp-eyed Americans knew right away that this issue would be big-bigger than terrorism, bigger than Iraq."

Take heed, because the headline and story appeared on a website called ridiculopathy.com, a site that satirizes current events, and it effectively skewers those who believe that accepting pesos for pizza is the latest indication that American values and traditions are crumbling.

Rest assured, they are not.

If you haven't heard, Pizza Patron is a 59-unit chain based in Dallas that targets the Hispanic markets in Texas, Arizona, California, Nevada and Colorado. In early January it launched a promotion called "Pizza por Pesos." The promotion, which is scheduled to run through the end of this month, allows customers to pay for pizzas with the leftover pesos they might have after visiting Mexico. In-store posters proclaim, "Aceptamos pesos," meaning, "We accept pesos."

Now, accepting pesos in exchange for goods is nothing new along the Texas-Mexico border. It's been a common practice for decades, just as common as U.S. stores along the United States-Canada border accepting Canadian currency as payment.

Predictably, Pizza Patron's promotion triggered a raft of protest from consumers and the blogging world. Here's one example, a reply to a posting about the promotion on pegasusnews.com, with the commentator's spelling and grammar kept intact: "Illegal Aliens have invaded our land, breaking every law to reach the top of the ladder! It can not be tolerate any longer! Those here illegally demands rights which are only for Americans and deportation is also visible! A 'Crackdown' of illegal aliens in our country has begun. The source of this invasion is caused by business like your!"

Aside from the misspellings and overuse of exclamation points, the comment is odious because it blames Pizza Patron for fostering illegal immigration. It is typical of the comments that Pizza Patron says it has received by e-mail and phone.

Those who object to the promotion frame it in terms of illegal immigration and how it is destroying the fabric of the nation, to use their language. Generally, this group consists of the type of people who can predict when the world will end--any day now--and how it will end: destruction by creatures from another planet.

Reasonable citizens could applaud Pizza Patron's promotion for what it really is: a textbook example of American entrepreneurship at work. It's all about knowing the customers better than the competition does and catering to them with an innovative program.

Some bloggers say the promotion is nothing more than a publicity-seeking gimmick. That's a valid criticism because marketers often do run advertising and promotions for nothing more than shock value, and consumers can spot them a mile away.

According to all indications, however, this is not done for publicity alone. Yet the chain admits that all the press coverage the promotion generated is a way to raise the brand's profile.

Chain founder Antonio Swad had this to say about the publicity: "I'm a businessman who is trying to out-position the company with competitors who have more resources. We've reached out to our core customer and reinforced our brand promise that it's a Latino brand."

The only way to judge a promotion is by how much real value it delivers to customers. This one forges a stronger emotional bond between the chain and its core customers and provides a convenient way to buy a pizza. That's real value.

Pizza Patron is competing with the national pizza chains for customers, and the promotion takes the battle for market share a step further. Papa John's International and Pizza Hut both are seeking to expand business among Hispanics by launching Spanish-language ordering features on their websites, but the Pizza por Pesos promotion alone gives customers an extra option on how to pay for their orders.

The only unfortunate thing about the promotion is its timing. It comes when the issue of illegal immigration is as prevalent as it has ever been.

That is not to say it is ill-timed. There probably is no especially good time to run such a promotion, given the reaction that anything involving Hispanics generates among the public.

Swad has acknowledged that the promotion spurred some people to bash it as a way to make their feelings known, not so much about Pizza Patron but about the immigration issue.

From a marketing aspect, however, the question is not whether Pizza Patron should have proceeded with this. The only question is one that many bloggers asked in response to the controversy the promotion generated: "What's all the fuss about?"

Editorial Page Editor: Paul Frumkin. NRN's editorial board: Alan Gould, Ellen Koteff, Robin Lee Allen, Richard Martin, Gregg Cebrzynski, Elissa Elan, Alan Liddle and Ron Ruggless.

COPYRIGHT 2007 Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
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