This Pizza Hut Box Lets You Play Pac-Man In AR

Pizza Hut is bringing the thrill of arcade gaming to its pizza box with a playable AR version of Pac-Man on limited-edition boxes.

The campaign is part of a larger marketing effort to elicit nostalgia.

Pizza Hut is introducing a series of limited-edition boxes with QR codes that let you start an AR game of Pac-Man which can be played on the maze printed on the box itself. This activation kicks off a marketing campaign dedicated to elicit nostalgia, as Pizza Hut CMO George Felix explained: “Part of that experience that people used to have at Pizza Hut was playing the video games and the tabletop Pac-Man games. So it’s about making all of those things relevant in a new way.”

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The AR Pac-Man games are only available on select boxed for Pizza Hut’s large-size $10 Tastemaker pizzas.

For this activation, Pizza Hut worked with Pac-Man developer Bandai Namco Entertainment to secure the rights to the classic game. The overall campaign, dubbed “NEWstalgia” and powered by Craig Robinson and agencies GSD&M and Tool of North America, which helped produce the campaign.

The brand is also organizing a live contest to win a custom Pac-man game cabinet. To enter, you have to share your score on Twitter, probably alongside a screenshot.

The campaign also aims at supporting online sales, by developing a complete digital experience for customers:

“We’re always looking for opportunities from a marketing standpoint to see where new technologies or emerging technologies can help us tell the stories that we want to tell,” Felix said. “And the Pac-Man collaboration is an example of that.”