Boston Pizza imagines some pizza inspired holiday gifts

Who: Boston Pizza, with John St. and production partners Brad Pickard, Nabil Elsaadi, One Pixel Off, Gas Company, and media by UM.

What: A playful digital gift guide featuring 20 make-believe pizza-themed Christmas gifts.

When & Where: The digital gift guide is live now at BPWishList.com, with some printed for direct mail. There is also social and out-of-home advertising featuring some of the “gifts.”

Why: Boson Pizza is hoping to connect with people who grew up in the ’80s and ’90s with the annual holiday tradition of flipping through a catalogue to make a wish-list of toys for Christmas. “There’s a deep emotional connection to that routine that’s been lost in the digital age,” said VP of marketing James Kawalecki in a release. “We wanted to tap into those nostalgic feelings and put our messaging right into that headspace, but in a Boston Pizza way.”

How: The digital catalogue—“Where pizza dreams come true-ish”—is comprised of some fantastical ideas for gifts that either look like pizza, or feature parts that look like pizza. There’s a BP SnowScooter, with pizza slices for skis; a slice-shaped windshield scraper called the SL-ice Scraper; and a snow globe filled with parmesan cheese. And instead of the familiar Elf on the Shelf, Boston Pizza and John St. imagined Pep on a Step, a slice of pepperoni complete with a festive hat that can be perched on a step.

The campaign is an attempt to make a stronger connection between Pizza and Christmas, said John St. “Pizza is something we’re all eating over the course of the holidays, but it’s just not automatically associated with this time of the year,” said creative director Cam Boyd.

David Brown