Legendary Windy City restaurant giants, Portillo’s and Lou Malnati’s, teamed up to create the most “Chi-conic,” yet universally delicious pizza to ever hit home ovens: The Lou Malnati’s x Portillo’s Italian Beef Deep Dish Pizza. The mashup saw Lou Malnati’s buttery-crust deep-dish pizza topped with Portillo’s slow-roasted, thin-sliced Italian Beef and either homemade sweet peppers or hot giardiniera.

To drive awareness for this limited, once-in-a-lifetime collaboration, a series of exclusives were strategically lined up with top tier consumer, business and trade media to jumpstart the news cycle. Once available for sale online, widespread outreach to both national and local media in Portillo’s and Lou’s respective markets turned out countless stories detailing how to order the pizza for home shipment via the Tastes of Chicago platform. In addition, an earned influencer campaign was executed that saw a groundswell of organic content shared across all major social platforms – all successfully completed with zero amplification budget. 

After becoming the highest selling, limited-time offering in Lou Malnati’s 52-year history, the teams decided to bring the popular pies back for another round. In year two, the team topped the previous year’s already impressive results, generating more than 1 billion impressions through the power of creative storytelling.