As marketing director of Gung Ho! Pizza the campaign that still makes me the happiest was the Feeding Starving Artist project. Started in March 2011, Feeding Starving Artists invited local Beijing artists to create pizza box covers depicting "Seasons in Beijing". These boxes - which quickly became a customer fave - featured the bio of the artist and a contact link on the side panels.
Not only did these pizza boxes provide a platform for burgeoning artists, they were (and are) beautiful to look at, presenting people with unique local perspectives on Beijing life.
We also gave them lots of free pizza.
Over the years we got to feature the work of well-known local artists such as: Wen Ling, Ray Lei, Yan Cong, Yangzi, Xiong Liang, Kang Haoxian, Zhang Zhanzhan, Wu Lidan, Meng Jin & Fang Er (FAKE Media), local creative legend Dominic Johnson-Hill (Plastered 8 T-Shirts), tattoo legend Wang Ke and pioneering graffiti team ABS Crew among others.
In 2015 we decided to broaden the scope by launching a Pizza Box Art competition for kids judged by past FSA collaborators. Winners got their artwork featured on our pizza boxes for 3 months, along with their name and the name of their school. Winner's also received a certificate, pizza vouchers, and a pizza party for them to celebrate with their friends.
In later years I refined the competition to better engage with teachers, structuring the competition around a 'unit' of study. We packaged materials and details into a proper 'design brief', and went school to school to present on not just the competition and the brand, but also about graphic design as a career choice.
At it's peak we received over 120 submissions from 7 different schools in Beijing. And even now I'm blown away by the talent and vision of these amazing little kiddos.
