Montco's Best Pizza Tournament

It all began with a Facebook post that everyone hated.

It all began with a Facebook post about the best pizza in Montgomery County, PA. It wasn't well received...

I was in my apartment that night and opened my Facebook app to check out the page. The comments were a minefield. Person after person was ripping our page to shreds. I'd seen it before. People on Facebook can be ruthless. Let's face it, most comments are negative. Unfortunately, people that enjoy something are far less likely to voice their opinion. The negative is always louder.

It was March, and there was a board of directors meeting coming up for my employer, the Valley Forge Tourism & Convention Board. We had talked earlier that week about how the board meeting was on a day with two significant event happening. 

1. It was St. Patrick's Day
2. It was the start of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament aka March Madness

Posting our best pizza page was not even a planned event. It was Pie Day, March 14, and we were looking to see if we had a best pie page ready for posting. We didn't. My associate Taylor was in my office, and we were wracking our brains around what to post. Another colleague Lindsay entered...

"Why don't you post our pizza page. You know...pizza pies?"

Brilliant.

We thought ourselves so clever at the time. Then the comments came...and more comments.

I had always wanted to use social media to get the public to tell us the best spots in Montgomery County. We of course want to be viewed as an authority, but getting input from our followers is a great way to have a conversation and build more trust in our brand. We never quite able to execute that as well as we would have liked. But now I found myself  staring at comments of people ripping apart and thinking about what to do.

I had three things going on in my head:

1. How do we turn this negative into a positive?
2. How can we incorporate people's feedback into this and make them feel heard?
3. March Madness

It clicked in a moment of  inspiration, like taking a bit of a delicious slice of pizza. Let's get people's feedback in a Montco's Best Pizza Tournament. Let's have some fun!

And so it began.

I came to work next day ad pitched my idea. We researched the best way to do brackets with google forms and put out a post, admitting that our pizza page sucked (humility) and calling for entries into our tournament.

The entries flowed in and we filled our bracket.

Another associate of mine, Zach Brown, came to me about wanting to do a bracketology video to announce our bracket with our sports sales manager Andy Carl. Within a day we were in our Vice President of Marketing's office filming.

And then we built on it. this is where I believe the magic of every creative project comes from. The back and forth collaboration. The idea of the video spawned a million ideas in my head about future videos for the tournament. From there, we created a sportscenter-esque video going over the "scored for round one and previewing round 2. 

We received a call from a pizza place complaining that tomato pie was not pizza. I remember distinctly that it was April 1, because when someone came to my office telling me we had a pizza owner on the phone yelling at us I thought for sure it was an April Fools joke. To my surprise it wasn't. We huddled in Taylor's office and listened to what seemed like an angry phone call on WIP sports radio (Philadelphia fans can be visious). 

"If tomato pie is in the tournament this list is bogus! blah bla blah!"

For those who aren't in the Philly area, tomato pie is bread with tomato sauce, served cold. sometimes with cheese sprinkled on after.

Ed handled it with such diplomatic grace, he could have made someone less angry. He said we will discuss what to do and get back to him.

Another negative. Well, if you're going to make an omlette, you're going to break some eggs. But let's get creative.

The whole theme of this tournament thus far was to turn negatives into positives and turning over the results to the people. So why not solve this problem the same way?

that day we put out another post on fAcebook. Was tomato pie pizza? You decide. The comments came pouring in. We let the people decide so we weren't responsible for the result. And we got more engagement.

Then the best part, the video highlights of the final four pizza places...and not because we got free pizza at each place! I had originally planned to feature all four pizza places in one tournament, but we couldn't schedule them all on the same day and time was running out for the voting. So we adapted. Turn a negative into a positive. We split it into two video highlighting each match up.

What resulted was more videos that allowed us to focus the videos more and honestly made them better. Once again, a lot of time it's the accidents that can result in the greatest creative work. It's good to have limitations. It's good to have things go wrong. It's good to have things not go as planned. Because all of those things force us to focus and be creative. It forces us to ask ourselves, what is really important about this project? And the result is much better work.

Ultimately we met some great people and pizza shops along the way. We recieved #### votes, #### comments, ### video views. We made some great friends and helped increase the reputation of our brand. We further solidified us as the experts of Montco. And we had fun doing it. Even people on our staff who weren't involved were happier because we brought back pizzas for them to sample. Nothing like that to boost morale.

Top Takeaways

• Turn negatives into positives. It's how you create your best work.
• Creativity takes a team. Build on each other's ideas and you will make something greater.
• Sometimes, things start as accidents, you just have to realize the potential in them. Not everything can be anticipated or planned. The best work is when we adapt to the unplanned.
• People are really passionate about pizza. I doubt this would have worked as well with any other food.
• Build trust by involving your audience. Content is not a one way street. It's not all about your content marketing strategy, it's about the conversation and engagement.
• Be agile. Most of this project would not have been possible if we didn't have as much inhouse talent as we have at the VFTCB. It allows us to think and turn things around more quickly than utilizing outside partners.
• Have fun. We lived our business - tourism. And what resulted was inspired work that connected with people.
• Don't repeat something just because it worked once. After the success of the tournament, people wanted to repeat it for other foods. "Which food you going to do next? We should do a tournament for wings, or outside dining!" It wasn't the tournament that made this successful, it was the thinking behind it. People often want to repeat success by just copying something exactly, but it was the storytelling philosophy behind the work that made it successful, and that's what needs to be learned from and applied to future projects.