Papa Johns = Football

I always see Papa John commercials when I'm watching football and never ant other time. I have come to begin to wonder why that is. My best guess is that this is their target market, families (because a large portion of their commercials include families and not just a few men or women) that watch football and need a quick and easy meal while they're watching the game. Maybe its more focused on groups of friends that have come to watch the game together (it seems to be probably around the ages of 18 to 30 or so...basically a younger to mid age group). I couldn't help but notice that in most of their advertisements they have Papa John himself either go to the family and deliver the pizza to them or do something different then the other people in the commercial. i feel as if they're trying to get him to stand out in the audiences mind so that they might remember that they can always turn to Papa John's pizzas if they're in a tight squeeze. Along with this their commercials are always centered around football. Whether it be the game itself or a few of the athletes there is always some aspect of our American football within both their commercials and the print ads.



This commercial of their specifically has two significant techniques that I noticed. First, and probably most obvious, is their use of the Testimonial Technique. By having Peyton Manning in many of their commercials and having these commercials play during football games they really hope to get their audience to focus on the fact that Peyton Manning is their and that, because of that, their pizza must be exceptionally good because why would Peyton Manning get bad pizza? Basically they're trying to get their audience into a somewhat starstruck state where they will follow the star (in this case Manning) no matter where he goes or what he does. Along with this technique is the Time Pressure Technique. They use this when they say that Papa John's allows you to get one large pizza or two large pizzas for discounted prices for the Super Bowl. They want people to feel like they need to take advantage of this opportunity while the deals last, so they'll rush over and by Papa John's pizzas up until the deal is over without thinking about how it's probably not any bit of a discount and that their prices were never really all that different....ever. With these two techniques I found one need that they tried to put upon their audiences' minds. This is the Need for Affiliation and it came up largely when  they said that Papa John's gave away free pizzas to all the fans (obviously this is a bit of an exaggeration) which makes the audience think that tons of people must go to Papa John's. This makes them want to not be the last to go their (they don't want to be left out) so they rush to go and be with all the "tons" of people who are ordering from Papa Johns.