The Boston Pizza Designer Pizza Vote has come to an end, and the results are in.

For our team at Strutta, the most important metric we measured this time around was how the client felt about the experience and the technology. "We had the pleasure of working with Strutta on a brand new venture for our company," said Ryan Ashton, National Advertising Manager for Boston Pizza International. "From idea conception through to final deployment, including all project management work, they assumed the role of experts and navigated us through to the end product, which we couldn't be more pleased with."

We're equally delighted to be working with them, and we're glad the promotion was such a big success. The winner of the grand prize of free pizza for a year hasn't been announced yet, but we thought that now would be a good time time share a few details about how the contest was operated and even give you a sneak peek at some of the results.

Contest Type

The Designer Pizza Vote falls into the "product testing" category, where the "contestants" (in this case, six very bold pizza designs) are already determined, and visitors vote to pick their favorite. 

Software Used

The "pizza carousel" at the core of the vote is now legendary. Senior Architect Steven Wittens created it as a fun experiment with javascript, and people have been mistaking it's smooth fluidity with Flash ever since. When our clients at Boston Pizza saw the first versions of it, a quick decision was made to feature the carousel right on their home page, as a widget. 

Who Could Enter? How?

The contest was open to all Canadians over 13 years of age with a valid email address. Each visitor could register just one vote for their favorite, and immediately see the results in a pie chart (Get it? Pie chart? Just checking).  

Results? 

I'm sure the biq question on everyone's mind is "Which of these delicious pies won the vote?" In the end, it wasn't even close. The Canadian Classic took first place with 33% of votes, while the remaining contestants split the rest. It's tempting to think that it's all in a name, and that Canadians were just voing patriotically, but Francis Steiner of Let'sGoForDinner.com seemed to suggest that the rest of the recipes were just too polarizing in a popular vote. "It (the Canadian Classic) was closest to one that I would actually eat," said Steiner, when reviewing the choices.

While we will protect the actual figures of the votes out of respect for our clients, there are a few numbers that are just too good, so we HAVE to tell you. During the period of the contest, BP experienced the largest increase in subscribers in the history of their email club campaign. By offering both a grand prize and a free appetizer coupon just for voting and the opt-in email form converted a whopping 91.8% of all voters. We'd love to take all of the credit for making it so easy for all involved, but that kind of conversion rate tells a story about people's affinity to the Boston Pizza brand as well. Due to the fact that two promotions were running concurrently, all of those email club subscribers were rewarded with a free personal pizza coupon after their first week, a happy accident for Boston Pizza as it inevitably creating a new army of faithful BP fans, whose lifetime value as customers will mean that BP will enjoy the benefits of this promotion for years to come.

"Our experience in dealing with Strutta has been nothing short of spectacular, said Ashton. "And it's easy to see that we'll be joining forces with them again down the road for bigger, better and more engaging initiatives, which I know they'll come through on."

We look forward to it, and we'll be sure that you're the first to know when we have more news to share on what's next. 

If you have questions about contests like this one, or promotions that use user-generated video, photo or text submissions, visit our contact page and we'd be happy to talk to you about what your options are. 

Last night around dinner time we launched a voting widget for BostonPizza.com's Designer Pizza Sale, where voters choose their favorite of six new pizza recipes and are entered to win free pizza for a year. You can also receive a free appetizer from Boston Pizza if you join their email club.  

In a later post, we'll dissect the functionality of everything we built, and for now I'll simply say that the whole thing is hosted by us, and is nested on the Boston Pizza site in an iframe.

In the meantime I thought I would just share these screens along with a few words about voting, because if you're reading this before November 8, 2008, there's still time to enter! Oh, and don't miss the "Share with a Friend" button on the bottom left. 

When you first visit the voting "page" you see the six pizzas rotating around in a circle, with changing perspective as they come into the foreground. I know what you're thinking, but no- there is no flash, and you can tell because it loads almost instantly (We'll have the smart dudes explain the javascript magic later.When you click any pizza, it rotates to the very foreground, along with a description for that pizza:

When you're convinced that you've found your fave, you click the "Vote for this Pizza" bubble and then you see the form:

For me, the best part happens AFTER you vote. A colored pie chart showsyou the results of the nationwide vote. At the time of the posting, the Canadian Classic was enjoying a healthy lead, but not a majority government. 

This is the first of many examples of Strutta-powered contests that we'll be featuring over the next little while, and I will make good on that promise to share more details of the technology that makes this all possible very soon, with the help of one of our (presently very busy) developers. 

Thanks for voting! If you have any feedback about this or future contests sites, feel free to leave it in the comments below.