It would have been hard to miss the rebranding of Pizza Hut into Pasta Hut just out this week…unless you tried to find their website using the internationally recognised .com domain. The marketing team were obviously poorly advised in terms of protecting their brand online and only own pastahut.co.uk. The .com, .net and .org domains have been taken by opportunistic cyber-squatters.
Personally I think they are doing the right thing – you only have to look at McDonald’s 4 year strategy to be known for Salads to see that moving your brand towards the healthy is a sound strategy, it just frustrates me that even now digital communications are not being managed with a genuine understanding of the international nature of the web.
However the most important thing is that Pasta Hut can still be included in the children’s rhyme above which is of an course excellent guerilla marketing activation with a key target audience…
Pasta Hut, Pasta Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pasta Hut