Pizza Hut vs US Pizza: How They Do Influencer Marketing, and Who Does It Better

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SushiVid analysed the influencer marketing of Pizza Hut and US Pizza in Malaysia over the first half of 2022. This article covers each brand's campaigns, the influencer tiers they used, estimated KOL cost, views and engagement, and their cost per view and cost per engagement. It ends with our verdict on who got more value for their spend.

How we did this analysis

We analysed data for US Pizza and Pizza Hut in Malaysia across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Facebook, covering a six-month period (January to June 2022). Some data may be inaccurate, for these reasons:

• We found the influencers by checking who tagged the two companies' official social media accounts. We cannot confirm whether each post was sponsored or unsponsored.
• SushiVid is not the influencer marketing agency for either brand, so we do not know the arrangements with their influencers. Some content may have been deleted, so our data may be incomplete.
• Instagram hides "like" counts on some influencer posts. Where likes were hidden, we used an average: 100,000 followers generate 10% views, 1% likes and 0.1% comments. We had to do this for fewer than 20% of the influencers on the list.
• Some content, such as Instagram photos and carousel posts, shows no view count, so we estimated reach at 10% of follower count.
• Shares and saves are not shown publicly, so we could not retrieve them.

The raw data for this competitor analysis is available in our public spreadsheet.

Influencer tiers used in this report

• Organic: fewer than 3,000 followers
• Seeders: 3,000 to 10,000 followers
• Micro influencers: 10,001 to 50,000 followers
• Mid-tier influencers: 50,001 to 100,000 followers
• Macro influencers: 100,001 to 300,000 followers
• Alpha influencers: 300,001 followers and above

Calculation rules

• All Instagram Stories views, reach, shares and saves were removed, because we cannot know how many Stories were created over the six months.
• We do not know the agencies' management fees, so all agency cost is removed. Only KOL cost is shown.
• Photos and videos are counted together, so reach (the usual measure for photos) and views (the usual measure for videos) are combined.
• Engagement = likes + shares + comments + saves.

Content type codes in the tables: IGP = Instagram post, IGC = Instagram carousel, IGR = Instagram Reel, IGV = Instagram video, TTV = TikTok video, YT = YouTube.

How did Pizza Hut do influencer marketing?

We found 59 pieces of content so far, and we suspect at least 11 were organic and unpaid. Of the content we believe was paid (44 pieces), 70% was on Instagram, 15% on TikTok and 15% on YouTube. These were the six notable campaigns:

Of the paid content, 40% was made with alpha influencers, 10% with macro influencers, 20% with mid-tier influencers and 30% with micro and seeder influencers.

Organic reach from the 1 Meter Pizza

Pizza Hut achieved a total of about 5.5m views/reach from January to June, and 680,000 engagements. Of this, 2.9m views and 258,000 engagements were organic. Much of the organic content came from the 1 Meter Pizza. We treat it as organic because the 1 Meter Pizza content had no specific hashtags and no call to action.

One example has over 1.5m views on the 1 Meter Pizza, yet the creator has only 1,500 followers. Her follower-to-likes ratio is far too high, which shows the content was abnormally viral even for her own account.

Paid results and campaign timeline

Paid influencer marketing delivered only about 2.4m views and 166,000 engagements in 1H2022. Pizza Hut loaded heavily on #SyiokRM6, with 12 alpha influencers, 4 macro influencers, 6 mid-tier influencers and 2 micro influencers.

• January: Pizza Hut started with foodie influencers such as KLFoodie and JohorFoodie. We found 4 such posts. The campaign was called Happy MMMMonday.
• February: They launched the heart-shaped pizza. We found 2 posts, both by relatively big influencers, including 1 alpha (Iman Troye) who made a video.
• March: Anniversary content. They paid little attention to the 40th anniversary, using only seeders and micro influencers. We found 4 posts and suspect many were deleted, as they may have been free or low-paid.
• April: No content found.
• May and June: A lot of noise from the 1 Meter Pizza, which we believe was largely organic, and from #SyiokRM6.

Most of Pizza Hut's influencers target a Malay audience: most captions are in Malay and most influencers are Malay.

How did US Pizza do influencer marketing?

We found 126 pieces of content for US Pizza, with a combined 688,000 views and 54,000 engagements. Of these, 120 were paid and only 6 were unpaid (from accounts with fewer than 2,000 followers). 80% of the content was on Instagram and 20% on TikTok.

About 15% of the content came from seeders (likely inaccurate, as many seeders delete posts done as unpaid endorsements). 73% came from micro influencers (10,000 to 50,000 followers), 10% from mid-tier influencers and 4% from macro influencers. US Pizza did not engage any influencers above 250,000 followers.

Very little content was found for 1Q2022: only 5 of the 126 posts. Again, this may be because influencers deleted or archived their posts.

There were only 2 visible campaigns: Chef Wan's Special, and the promo code PIZZA6 (a free personal pizza with any purchase of RM25).

We also found that quite a number of the influencers US Pizza engaged have relatively low engagement, which makes their accounts suspicious.

Comparing the two brands

• TikTok came late. Both Pizza Hut and US Pizza only started on TikTok in early May. We feel they could have started sooner.
• Different influencer tiers. Pizza Hut focused on alpha and macro KOLs, while most of US Pizza's influencers were micro influencers (85%).
• Product-led organic buzz. Pizza Hut's strong operations and marketing relationship let it create products like the 1 Meter Pizza and the Pizza Heart (a heart-shaped pizza). These gained over 2.9m organic views and 258,000 organic engagements, which are not included in its cost per view and cost per engagement.
• Strategy. Pizza Hut's Q1 looks like a PR company's approach to influencer marketing, while Q2 2022 feels like an influencer marketing agency was involved. US Pizza's strategy is largely tactical, with no campaigns built around a specific month or event. At best, it feels like an ad hoc influencer marketing agency was involved.
• Content. In Q2, Pizza Hut had a clear strategy, and the budget to match. It engaged Aunty Siow, one of the characters of popular Malaysian creator Soimjenn (@soimjenn), who pretended to open a pizza food truck selling RM8 pizzas. Pizza Hut was promoting its pizzas at RM6. The pizzas were from Pizza Hut, but Aunty Siow just slapped a sticker over the box and made RM2 profit on each one.

Cost per view and cost per engagement

*, ** We may not have the exact number of KOLs, because some content may have been archived. However, the cost per view and cost per engagement are accurate, because we calculated them based on the influencers found for this report.

Who does influencer marketing better?

The two brands had very different strategies. US Pizza used micro influencers, possibly at an even lower price than we estimated, but the content was tactical and generated no talkability.

Pizza Hut's paid content cost about the same per view and per engagement as US Pizza's, but it did a lot more for the brand. Content by alpha and macro influencers generated more talkability. So in our view, Pizza Hut got more mileage for its KOL cost.

This analysis was an eye-opener for us, and we believe it will shape how we create content for our brands in the future. Questions? Email Wen at wen@sushivid.com.

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Want this kind of competitor analysis and a campaign strategy for your own brand? See how SushiVid runs managed influencer marketing, browse our case studies, or check the influencer marketing pricing guide for Malaysia.

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