Naked Pizza claims to make the world’s healthiest pizza. The crust is made of 12 whole grains, low-fat mozzarella, and an additive-free tomato sauce. And from what I have heard, it is pretty darn tasty. The company’s pizzas are 100 percent natural and gluten-free, so people with a condition (such as celiac disease) who cannot have wheat, can still enjoy their pizza.

In March 2009 Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and a gazillionaire,⁶⁰ advised Jeff Leach, co-founder of the pizza place, to get on Twitter. The owners wanted to create a virtual but local presence that would not only engage their marketplace but reduce the typically high cost of marketing that goes along with the pizza industry. They tested out their first Twitter-only promotion the following month on April 23, 2009.⁶¹ The promotion brought in 15 percent of total sales for the day. The best part is that 90 percent of those sales were new customers. One of the concerns with using a new type of marketing channel like Twitter is that if you sold 100 units of something on Twitter, it doesn’t mean much if all you do is cannibalize business you would have gotten anyway—which is why the 90 percent of orders to new customers is significant. On May 29 the pizza place owners decided to try another campaign. This one generated almost 75 percent of their record-selling day—directly from people calling from Twitter.

The owners went as far as removing their old billboard that posted their phone number to call for delivery and changed it to, “Twitter follow us for specials www.twitter.com/nakedpizza.” They have also added a kiosk in the store, inviting customers to sign up for Twitter and to follow them.

I spoke to Robbie Vitrano, Chief Brand Designer and Co-Founder of Naked Pizza⁶² when doing research for the book, and he kind of surprised me with how much he “got” social media. And I don’t mean that I was expecting him to be an idiot. It’s just that he comes from an agency background, which is usually about mass-market push messages. He really emphasized the point that he was more than happy that most companies were missing the boat when it came to social media because their loss was Naked Pizza’s gain. It was also encouraging to hear that he had such passion behind the product and that the company as a whole was not afraid to show its passion in its blog.⁶³ These guys take a stand on many issues because they are trying to redefine pizza away from its image as a food that has contributed to the obesity epidemic in the world. They make no bones about why they think things like Crohn’s and Celiac diseases have been on the rise and what they should and shouldn’t be doing about them. That is a powerful stance, even though it repels some people who just also happen to be their target market.