Pizza Patrón, the Texas-based Mexican pizza chain, fired up taste buds, the media, and global conversation with its recent limited-time pizza offer, La Ch!#gona. As a result, the La Ch!#gona campaign lit up the 2014 U.S. Hispanic Idea Awards held at the Eden Roc Renaissance in Miami Beach, Florida, winning Best PR Campaign.
Pizza Patrón’s La Ch!#gona pizza is a pizza topped with jalapeño-infused pepperoni and fresh-diced jalapeños. Its launch shattered all-time sales records in many stores, making it the most successful LTO product launch in the company’s history. However, right before the product launch, Hispanic radio stations refused to air the spots uncensored. The campaign then turned to fighting censorship. Pizza Patrón took to social media with a barrage of feisty “Censurado” photos, communicating to its fans that the company was being censored for speaking “Mexican Spanish.”
“The impromptu ‘censurado’ campaign sparked a nationwide debate over whether the word was actually a compliment or a curse word,” says Andrew Gamm, brand director for Pizza Patrón. “It also made our media impressions and sales of the product red hot.”
“La Chingona” is a term that is broadly used in Spanish speaking countries but has different meanings depending on where it is used. The meaning in Mexico is different from the meaning in Puerto Rico or Brazil for example. Pizza Patrón and its advertising agency Richards/Lerma received the award jointly for their collaborative work on the campaign, says Gamm.
“The goal of the campaign was to use broadly-used colloquial terminology and ‘picardía’ (street-wise humor) to speak directly to our customers’ hearts. And, this one really hit home with our audience,” Gamm says.
