Papa John's returns to Snapchat with Valentine's AR lens

Brief:

Papa John's pizza is coming back to Snapchat with a Valentine's Day promotion that lets people order food directly from an augmented reality (AR) face lens, per an announcement shared with Mobile Marketer.
The lens overlays the image of a heart-shaped pizza, which the chain adds to its menu every Valentine's Day, on a selfie that Snapchat users can share with their friends. The activation uses Snapchat's Shoppable AR technology to handle pizza orders. Snapchat users can either tap an "order now" button on the lens or swipe up on a Papa John's Valentine’s Day ad to order a heart-shaped pizza.
For a limited time, Papa John's is offering one-topping heart-shaped pizzas for $11 to customers who enter the code "VALENTINE," or a one-topping heart-shaped pizza and a double chocolate chip brownie for $16 with the code "BEMINE." Papa John's started offering the pizzas on Feb. 10 and will run the promotion through Feb. 16.

Insight:

Papa John's return to Snapchat for its Valentine's Day promotion indicates that the pizza chain wants to build on the positive results it saw last year with a similar campaign. Last year, more than 25% of Snapchat users who swiped up on the Papa John's AR lens ordered a Valentine's Day pizza, a strong response rate for a call to action on social media.

The campaign also led to a 6% lift in ad awareness among Papa John's customers. Papa John's additionally printed Snapcodes on its pizza boxes to activate the AR experience. Sixty percent of lens views unlocked with the Snapcode were from unique users, per a case study video about the campaign that Snap shared.

Snapchat's AR offerings, like lenses, have endured as a popular feature in the image-messaging app, with more than 75% of users engaging with AR every day on average, per information provided by the company. Looking ahead, parent company Snap is gearing up for the 82nd NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament that begins on March 17 and ends on April 6. Almost 75% of Snapchat users who plan to watch March Madness also look at the image-messaging app while viewing live sports, the company said. Snap last week reported that Q4 revenue grew 44% to a record $561 million on heavy ad spending during the holiday season.

Papa John's campaign comes as brands vie for attention among consumers who are forecast to boost their Valentine's-related spending by 32% to a record $27.4 billion from the prior year, per the National Retail Federation. The strong economy and low jobless rate have customers feeling better about opening their wallets, spending an average of $196 each on gifts for the occasion. Coors Light, Burger King and Kraft have also recently created campaigns for Valentine's Day.