Pizza Hut’s new limited-edition boxes, complete with the retro Pizza Hut branding, are printed with the Pac-Man maze—not only to serve as a throwback to the past but to also let you play Pac-Man while biting down on a slice, just like in the good old days. Shooting your phone’s camera at the QR code on the boxes turns the packaging into a real-world interface, enabling you to play the video game in augmented reality.
Excerpt via Adweek
Pizza Hut teamed up with Pac-Man developer Bandai Namco Entertainment to secure the rights to the classic game.
The Pac-Man games are available on select boxes for the chain’s large-size $10 Tastemaker line of pizzas. Users who share their scores on Twitter will be entered into a contest to win a custom Pac-Man game cabinet.
“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.”
Pizza Hut isn’t the only brand turning to AR as a way to engage customers at a time when the pandemic makes physical interactions more difficult. Quarantine measures have led to a surge of popularity for the technology, especially among retail businesses, with brands ranging from Prime Video to Ford rolling out AR campaigns in the past year.
