You’ve no doubt seen the colorful pizza boxes of this co. in the frozen Pizza section of your favorite supermarket. And maybe you’ve thought what’s this all about?
Well, we spoke to Scott Conerly who just happens to be the Vice-President of Marketing for Wild Mike’s Ultimate Pizza about the history of the co. and what goes into the promotion of Wild Mike’s.
Q – Scott , what exactly are your job duties? Do you go out in the field to see how the pizzas are being displayed in the cases? I suppose the sales numbers are coming in every day aren’t they?
A – Yeah, absolutely. We are a smaller brand and are fully immersed in the pizza world. A lot of manufacturers make multiple kinds of products. We are one hundred per cent focused on making the best pizza we can make. So, I am fully immersed in multiple markets. We travel often. I have been all over the country in multiple different retailers and learn as much as I can at all times. Our CEO is everyday trying to make our pizzas the best. I would challenge anyone to find a CEO that has a kitchen attached to his office which is what our CEO has. He’s constantly making new products and testing products and trying to make them the best.
Q – Are you saying he’s making, and testing the pizzas himself? Or does he have people come in and say “ How about this Boss”?
A – No. He does it himself.
Q – Is he a former pizza maker?
A – This has been going on since 1967, Piazza Pizza. The Piazza family has been making pizzas since 1967. Ron Piazza founded it and now Steve Piazza is the CEO and his son Steven is the Vice-President. And yeah, he still makes pizza. He worked with quality control people and bakers and experts in their field but at the end of the day he’s been doing this for 50 years so he’s immersed within it.
Q – Take away the a in Ron’s name and he’s in the perfect business.
A – A hundred per cent.
Q – Where does this name Wild Mike’s come from? Is there some kind of meaning behind it?
A – Well, it’s pretty charming, but Steve’s older brother Mike who’s also been in the business for decades is the mild one. So, Mike is like real sweet and pretty tame and Steve is a little wilder. He’s fun and definitely a little wild. So, it’s kind of a combination between the two. The Wild is Steve and the Mike is Mike. Mike is the Senior VP of our K through 12 division because we sell in all 50 states. School pizza. So, like lunch pizza is K through 12.
Q – I’ve never seen so many frozen pizzas in the freezer section as I’ve seen lately. How does Wild Mike’s Ultimate Pizza compete especially when stores sell their own pizzas.
A – Well, how we compete is by being the best on the shelf. So, the first thing that comes out of that is no artificial anything. We don’t have any artificial ingredients of any kind in anything we make. One hundred per cent all natural. So, we start there. Second is the taste profile. It is an unbelievable taste. That comes from the best ingredients. Then the third is we are a very different brand. Loud and disruptive. We make a completely different product. The main product we sell right now is our super-sized pizza which is actually a 14” pizza in comparison to the 11” or 12” pizzas that are on shelves. So, it actually feeds a family. The Number One pizza in the nation if you just take out frozen pizza as a 14” pizza. So, that’s take and bake and delivery. That’s the deli pizzas and so that’s how we compete. We make the best of the best and we have an unbelievable fan base of people. We call ‘em the Wild Mike’s Pizza Rebels and they’re rebelling against artificial ingredients. We get love letters on Social Media. We get physical letters. We get e-mails in the thousands. And the other thing that is a differentiation is that we do have our food service in K through 12 which is branded. So, you have kids that come home and they want Wild Mike’s for dinner. They had it at Pizza Day at school and can now have it at home. That has been really beneficial to have that. Two divisions kind of working in tandem together as retail helps push food service and food service helps push retail.
Q – The artwork on Wild Mike’s Pizza box is certainly different.
A – A hundred per cent. All by design.
Q – Did Steve Piazza come up with that?
A – Absolutely. That was all Steve. He wanted something youthful and exciting and disruptive and a brand that could live within the space and that wasn’t just another name. He wanted a brand that was really fun and we had a lot of fun with it.
Q – Do you advertise?
A – We do a bunch of advertising in a variety of forms. What we really specialize in is events being in communities and partnering with Big event series. We do advertisements though. We do tons of whether it’s Social Media or Digital Advertising through our retail partners. We’ve done traditional advertising through tv campaigns and radio spots but, it’s a very comprehensive approach. We kind of done it all. We do it all.
Q – Have you ever done in-store sampling of Wild Mike’s Pizza?
A – Absolutely. Demos, yup. We’ve done tons of demos. We actually have a Street Team that works on in-store demos and gives merch. To people. We have a lot of people that absolutely love Wild Mike’s and we hook ‘em up with merch and then if we are meeting people who never heard of it we introduce them with couponing. So, yeah we’re all about the demos and store marketing and anything to create trial.
Q – How long have you been with the co?
A – It’ll be 9 years in April (2025)
Q – And what were you doing before that?
A – I was the Marketing Director for an action sports co. for 10 years. It’s a co. called Dakine. They make backpacks and ski gear, surf gear, mountain bike gear. Why I came to Wild Mike’s was because my expertise is with brand building and Steve wanted to build Wild Mike’s Ultimate Pizza into a living brand to the youth markets and to young adults and Millennials and Generation X and their connected families. That is my expertise. So, I came in here and fully immersed myself into the pizza world. Now I consider myself a pizza guy after this many years. But that is why I came aboard.
©Gary James
Official Website: www.wildmikesultimatepizza.com
