The Hut

Pizza Hut Adopts an Alias to Market Diversified Menu
Category Leader Going by ‘The Hut’ Amid Increased Competition From Freezer Aisle and Elsewhere

Another surprising victim of the recession: delivery pizza. Improved frozen fare, more grocery-made pies and a profusion of high-quality mom-and-pop shops have led the billion-dollar pizza chains to expand their menus to include wings, pasta and sandwiches. But the larger selection seems to have created a bit of an identity crisis for industry leader Pizza Hut, which will begin calling itself “The Hut” in some of its marketing efforts.

Even as overall pizza consumption increases, “the large chains have been losing share of the pizza market for years,” said Technomic President Ron Paul. As a result, he said, major companies are leaning on their next-best asset: massive delivery infrastructures that can bring a variety of fare to consumers’ doorsteps in 30 minutes or less.

Campaign for Wrangler Jeans

… Portrays People Getting in Touch With Their Inner Animals

Press Grand Prix Goes to Paris Hotshop Fred & Farid

Print is France’s forte this year. Two-year-old Paris hotshop Fred & Farid has won a press Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival for its European campaign “We Are Animals” for Wrangler jeans. The idea is that people have lost touch their animal instincts, buried in daily urban life.

Different executions portray young people in nature-filled settings posed like animals in the wild. Some ads show people in Wrangler jeans or denim shirts. In “Dakota on Road,” a woman clad only in white jeans stands in the middle of a road’s yellow lines, caught like a deer in approaching headlights. In “Dakota 1,” a woman is submerged in water up to her nose, like a crocodile or a hippo.

JetBlue Taps Plane Full of YouTubers to Promote New LAX Route

JetBlue will land its first jet at Los Angeles International Airport today and has packed the plane with YouTube celebrities to document the ride.

In a bid to build buzz for its new routes from New York’s JFK and Boston’s Logan International to LAX, the airline is counting on a stream of tweets and videos produced by Howcast and YouTube stars such as Kevin Nalts, Delphine Dijon, Justine Ezarik and Meghan Asha. To facilitate that, JetBlue is using its one plane with wireless internet access, BetaBlue, for the JFK-to-LAX flight.

None of the bloggers is being paid directly by JetBlue, but all got a free flight, and some are being paid by Howcast to produce how-to videos featuring JetBlue. The airline asked all the bloggers to disclose the relationship in whatever videos they produce and to keep them “family-friendly.”

Microsoft Sues Three in Click-Fraud Scheme

AFTER an investigation that took more than a year, Microsoft has filed its first lawsuit over click fraud, where people manipulate clicks on a Web advertisement. Microsoft filed the civil complaint on Monday in United States District Court in Seattle against Eric Lam, Gordon Lam and Melanie Suen, of Vancouver, British Columbia, along with several corporation names they were believed to have used, and several unnamed parties.

Block Tobacco Legislation

ANA Mounts Suit to Block Tobacco Legislation

Nearly a half-dozen entities, including the Association of National Advertisers, are aiming to block legislation passed last week to give the Food and Drug Administration regulatory control over the packaging, manufacturing and marketing of tobacco products.

In a lawsuit that’s also expected to include tobacco companies and the American Civil Liberties Union, the groups will argue that marketing and advertising restrictions laid out in the bill fail to comply with free-speech protections provided by the First Amendment.

Which GM Brand Should Be Saved?

Consumer Survey Picks Pontiac – the One Least Likely to Survive

General Motors Corp. is looking to sell three brands and kill off one, Pontiac. And which brand was overwhelmingly named by consumers in a recent survey as the one they’d like to live on? Pontiac.

In a new worldwide survey from online auto community CarGurus, consumers were asked which of the four brands they would most like to see survive. Of the nearly 1,700 respondents, 44% named Pontiac, 27% said Hummer, 20% picked Saab and only 9% named Saturn.

Langley Steinert, CEO of CarGurus, cited Pontiac’s “trailblazing heritage” — including the 1964 GTO, which started the muscle-car craze — as reasons for consumers’ apparent fondness for the brand. Pontiac’s “current G6 is the 20th-best-selling car in the U.S.,” he said, “so I’m not surprised to see consumers vote to save this historic brand.”

That’s not to say there weren’t a few of the findings that took him aback — such as the popularity of the gas-guzzling Hummer. “What did surprise me was the relative popularity of the Hummer brand over that of Saab and Saturn,” Mr. Steinert said. The Saturn Vue, he said, is a top-50-best-selling car in this country, while Hummer’s best-selling model, the H3, ranks in the No. 153 slot. “I would have expected Saturn to be the other brand consumers wanted to see survive GM’s reorganization,” he said.

The Ad Campaign for a ‘New’ G.M.

Can General Motors make up for decades of mistakes and misfires in a minute?

That is the ambitious goal of a 60-second commercial to begin running on television on Wednesday. The spot is already available on a Web site (gmreinvention.com) and on YouTube.

The commercial is part mea culpa, part gauzy paean to the concept of a “new” General Motors. Although portions seem self-serving, there are moments when a viewer may think, “Hey, maybe G.M. deserves another chance.”