Lou Malnati’s x Mike’s Hot Honey Collab Case Study
Situation
Lou Malnati’s was launching its first-ever limited-time pizza collaboration with Mike’s Hot Honey across its restaurant locations. The goal was to create buzz around the product and drive both in-store visits and online engagement.
Task
As part of the marketing team, I was responsible for driving excitement and awareness for the collab through a strategic paid social campaign. The goal was to ensure creative excellence, maximize performance, and deliver strong results within the 2.5-month promotional window.
Action
- Collaborated cross-functionally with the Design and Social Media teams to develop a wide range of creative assets that aligned with the campaign’s storytelling goals.
- Partnered with Design to repurpose video footage of the collaboration between Marc and Mike, requesting tailored cuts for paid social ads to leverage their compelling narrative.
- Coordinated with the Social Media team to source high-quality UGC, setting up whitelisted partnership ads to feature authentic, audience-driven content.
- Launched the campaign with a variety of creative formats, analyzing performance metrics early on to identify top-performing assets.
- Optimized campaign performance by doubling down on the best-performing creatives, sharing insights with Design and Social Media teams to develop additional iterations and avoid creative fatigue.
Result
- The campaign broke records upon launch, driving website traffic and in-store visits to their highest levels to date.
- For paid social:
- UGC vs. branded creative: UGC had a 17% higher engagement rate, proving its value in capturing audience attention.
- Top-performing creative: Content showing people enjoying the pizza outperformed branded creative, delivering CPAs 7% below the campaign average.
- Leveraged these insights to refine creative iterations, sustaining high engagement and conversions throughout the promotion.
The following charts illustrate the performance differences between top-performing and bottom-performing creative based on CPA and engagement rate.
