Dr. Oetker Taps Gen Z Creativity With Crowd-Sourced Ristorante Pizza Campaign

What happens when a frozen pizza brand hands creative control to Gen Z? This fall, Dr. Oetker Ristorante launched Crowd-Sourced Ristorante, a creator-led campaign that invited Canadians to rethink frozen pizza through unexpected topping combinations, interactive Twitch livestreams and real-world sampling experiences.

The idea: Tap into Gen Z’s love of food experimentation and customization by positioning Ristorante as a starting point for creativity, rather than a finished product.

How it came to life:

Creator-led engagement: Canadian creators Sarah Farrugia and Ashley Roboto invited their Instagram and TikTok communities to suggest unexpected pizza toppings.
Interactive livestreams: The creators brought those suggestions to life during Twitch livestreams from the Dr. Oetker kitchen, with viewers helping shape the final combinations in real time.
Experiential activations: The winning creations were brought to Nuit Blanche Toronto, where attendees could sample them firsthand, followed by campus sampling events at TMU, McMaster and Western University.
Continued participation: Recipe content and a social contest encouraged Canadians to create their own Ristorante combinations for a chance to win pizza for a year.

The result was a campaign that connected social engagement, creator storytelling and real-world product trial, giving younger consumers an active role in shaping the brand experience.

“We saw an opportunity to reposition Ristorante from a finished product to a starting point. By turning customization into the creative platform, we found a way to connect the brand with a generation that values self-expression and participation,” said Sandra Baumander, Creative Director, Publicis.

In an interview with Retail Insider, Tyler Bigden, Brand Manager, Dr. Oetker Canada, talked about the campaign.

What prompted Dr. Oetker to give Gen Z consumers a more active role in shaping the Ristorante brand experience, and why did the company see customization and food experimentation as an effective way to connect with this generation?

Gen Z is actively participating in culture rather than simply consuming it. They are sharing ideas, experimenting with trends and putting their own spin on the content they discover. For this generation, food is about more than convenience or taste. It’s also an opportunity for creativity, individuality and self-expression.

We recognized an opportunity to introduce Ristorante to younger Canadians in a way that reflected these behaviours. While Ristorante has a long history of exploring unconventional pizza toppings and flavours, we wanted to take that spirit of experimentation further by inviting
consumers to make the experience their own.

That thinking inspired Crowd-Sourced Ristorante. Rather than simply introducing new pizza combinations, we invited Canadians to help shape them, turning a familiar frozen pizza into a starting point for creativity. Ultimately, our goal was to build relevance with Gen Z by
demonstrating that Ristorante can be enjoyed as-is or personalized in unexpected ways.

The campaign relied on creators Sarah Farrugia and Ashley Roboto to engage their social media audiences and generate unconventional pizza topping ideas. How did you select the creators, and what role did influencer partnerships play in reaching and engaging younger consumers?

Authenticity and audience engagement were central to our creator selection. We wanted partners who were not only relevant to younger Canadians but also genuinely comfortable engaging with their communities in real time.

Sarah Farrugia, a lifestyle creator and established Twitch streamer, brought an engaged community and existing familiarity with Dr. Oetker through a previous partnership. Ashley Roboto, whose content spans gaming and entertainment, brought a similarly interactive
approach and a strong connection with Gen Z and Millennial audiences.

Both creators were a natural fit for a campaign built around participation. Rather than asking them to simply promote Ristorante, we invited their communities into the creative process.

Followers submitted unconventional topping suggestions through TikTok and Instagram, then helped shape different combinations during interactive Twitch livestreams through ingredient ideas, swaps and reactions. Influencer partnerships were essential because they allowed us to reach younger consumers through personalities and platforms they already engage with.

Rather than approaching the partnerships as traditional sponsored content, we wanted to give
creators and their communities an active role in shaping the experience, turning audiences from
passive viewers into participants.

The campaign combined TikTok and Instagram engagement with interactive Twitch livestreams and in-person sampling at Nuit Blanche Toronto and university campuses. Why was it important to combine digital engagement with real-world experiences, and what did each element bring to the campaign?

We wanted Crowd-Sourced Ristorante to be more than a social media campaign. The goal was to create a connected experience where Canadians could contribute ideas online, see them brought to life and ultimately taste the results themselves. Each platform played a distinct role. TikTok and Instagram helped spark conversation and encouraged audiences to share their most unexpected topping ideas.

Twitch was a natural next step, given its roots in gaming and entertainment culture, where audiences are already accustomed to interacting with creators in real time. Pizza also has a natural connection to gaming, whether it’s sharing a meal with friends during a gaming session or enjoying a slice while watching a favourite streamer.

By partnering with Sarah and Ashley, who already had established livestreaming communities, we could bring Ristorante into an environment that felt familiar and authentic to their audiences. The livestream format also made the creative process more spontaneous and collaborative, allowing viewers to suggest ingredients, debate combinations and influence the pizzas as they were being made.

Nuit Blanche Toronto then brought those crowd-inspired pizzas into the real world, giving visitors the opportunity to sample both creators’ combinations and vote for their favourite.

We extended that experience through university activations at Toronto Metropolitan University, McMaster University and Western University. Working with student creators, we encouraged campus communities to discover Ristorante firsthand and inspired
Canadians to continue experimenting at home through a social contest. By connecting digital participation with in-person sampling, we were able to bring the campaign full circle, from online inspiration and collaborative creation to real-world product experiences.

How did consumers respond to the opportunity to influence the brand’s product experience, and what measures are you using to evaluate the campaign’s success in terms of engagement, brand awareness, product trial and potential sales impact?

We measured success across the full campaign journey, looking at both awareness and active participation. That included the reach and performance of creator content and livestream viewership, as well as deeper engagement signals such as chat activity and messages per minute. For example, both creator livestreams exceeded their average concurrent viewership and messages-per-minute benchmarks, showing audiences were not only tuning in, but actively participating.

We also looked at experiential product trial and attendance through Nuit Blanche and campus sampling as part of the overall experience. Ultimately, success was about more than any one metric: it was about reaching younger consumers by generating awareness in the right places and through multiple touchpoints while creating meaningful opportunities for them to engage, contribute and experience Ristorante for themselves – both on and offline.

With younger consumers increasingly interested in personalization, participation and authentic brand interactions, what has Dr. Oetker learned from Crowd-Sourced Ristorante, and could this approach influence future marketing campaigns, product development or how the company engages with Canadian consumers?

Crowd-Sourced Ristorante reinforced the importance of creating opportunities for consumers to participate in a brand experience, rather than simply receive its messaging.

One of the key ideas behind the campaign was that personalization doesn’t necessarily require reinventing the product itself. By giving Canadians the freedom to experiment with a familiar Ristorante pizza, we could invite creativity and self-expression while
introducing the brand to younger audiences in a fresh way.

The campaign also highlighted the value of bringing together creator-led storytelling, interactive digital experiences and real-world opportunities for consumers to engage with the product. Each element served a different purpose, but together they created a more connected experience.

As we think about future marketing initiatives, approaches that encourage creativity, participation and authentic engagement are certainly valuable considerations. Continuing to understand how Canadians discover, personalize and enjoy our products
remains an important part of how we approach consumer engagement.