Pizza Hut unboxes 75 stores at once in $10m brand reset

Pizza Hut Australia has unboxed 75 restaurants simultaneously across the country, using a nationwide experiential activation to launch the next phase of its $10 million brand transformation.

The centrepieces were takeovers of Pizza Hut Waterloo in Sydney and Pizza Hut Docklands in Melbourne, where the restaurants were covered by giant pizza boxes before being torn open to reveal their new designs and live events. Hayden James played from the counter in Waterloo, while Young Franco performed at Docklands.

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An earned-first national rollout

WiredCo. led the events, earned media and creator and media partnerships, working with We Are Komodo on the flagship activations. jnr. handled the social component, while Burson led corporate communications around the broader transformation.

WiredCo. partner and managing director Michelle Hampton said the unboxing idea connected a familiar social format with the product itself.

“That's what made it the perfect idea to signal a major change for the brand. We didn't have to force the metaphor, we just had to bring it to life in a scalable way,” Hampton said.

She said the activation had been designed around earned attention rather than relying on paid media to create the moment.

“This was built as ‘earned-first’ from day one. The idea had to be strong enough to make news on its own merits, with creators, social and boosting there to amplify it, not manufacture it,” Hampton said.

A social competition offered VIP access to the flagship parties in the lead-up. Pizza Hut said thousands of people attended participating restaurants across the day and night, with close to 10,000 pizzas served and the brand tagged in hundreds of social posts.

Pizza Hut takes its new look nationwide

Pizza Hut Australia chief marketing officer Nora-Kate O’Connell said the activation was intended to communicate more than a change to the restaurants themselves.

“Our Unboxing moment across the country was about showing Australia what the next chapter of Pizza Hut looks and feels like. We didn’t want to simply reveal a new restaurant design, we wanted to show that this is a bigger change in the energy and attitude of Pizza Hut,” O’Connell said.

The activation sits inside Pizza Hut’s broader $10 million Australian overhaul. The new restaurant format is set to reach 250 locations by the end of 2026, while the business is targeting more than 100 new Australian stores by 2030.

Pizza Hut said it currently serves close to 400,000 pizzas each week and more than 20 million a year in Australia.