Book It!
Pizza Hut's reading-incentive program that made a Personal Pan Pizza feel like a trophy. Launched in 1985 and still running, Book It! rewarded monthly reading goals with a free pizza certificate — and the star-shaped pin with stickers became the badge of every elementary-school reader.
Pizza Hut president Art Gunther and SVP of marketing Bud Gates conceived Book It! at a 1984 dinner, and the company launched it in January 1985. The model was elegant: teachers set monthly reading goals running October through March, and any child who hit the goal received a certificate for a free one-topping Personal Pan Pizza. The class that read the most books earned a pizza party. The results, according to a 1987 report, were striking: participating children's reading jumped from an average of three books a month to nine.
The program drew criticism alongside its success. In 2007, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood called it "one of corporate America's most insidious school-based brand promotions," while research found the program neither increased nor decreased children's reading motivation. But for a generation, the memory is concrete and tactile: the star-shaped pin with stickers, and the walk into Pizza Hut with a certificate in hand, ordering a personal pan like you'd genuinely earned it—because you had.
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