The hottest thing at Pizza Hut isn’t the pizza. It’s a new service launched at the pizza conglomerate’s fall conference that enables franchisers to log onto the Web and build customized print ads and coupons – for free.

The service, provided by Graphic Resource Center’s Heliogramme Imaging Division and supported by Pizza Hut, Inc., ensures that the ads and other related materials created by the franchise owners conform to corporate specifications, while enabling each franchise to customize them to their own specific needs.

Pizza Hut estimates that the new service, called AdBuilderPro, will potentially generate annual savings for all franchisees in excess of one million dollars. This is due to the fact that the average savings for producing one printed ad or coupon set for each franchise location, compared to previous methods, ranges from $100 to $150 dollars, the company said. The whole setup automates not only the production of Pizza Hut&singlequot;s coupon ads, but any other printed material and digital files.

How it works

Pizza Hut’s creative and marketing teams develop the artwork, content and layouts for each ad or coupon piece, and then upload them to the AdBuilder Pro database, which runs on a secure central server. Authorized users at each franchise are given a secure password and logon, which allows them to access the database via their Internet Web browser. Although the service runs best via a broadband connection, it has also been optimized to be used at connections as slow as 56K bit/sec.

The best part is the service ensures that franchise owners conform to corporate specifications, since all of the materials are professionally created and strictly adhere to Pizza Hut&singlequot;s internal branding and marketing rules. Plus, the entire ad creation process is eased for the franchise owners, enabling them to concentrate more resources on running their business.