With the help of Toronto-based marketing firm Big Thinker, Pizza Nova recently created PizzaNovaGuy on Twitter to help raise more dough as part of its annual fundraiser That’s Amore Pizza for Kids, held last month to benefit Variety the Children’s Charity. The southern Ontario pizza chain reported its largest tally in its history at $109,061, after gaining 1835 followers in two weeks.

‘We made it PizzaNovaGuy so that it wouldn’t be Pizza Nova the brand, so that it didn’t become a forum for ‘where’s my pizza? Its 45-minutes late’,’ says Angelone. ‘Some companies Twitter accounts become the ombudsman,’ adds Jonathan Sinden, chief relationships officer at Big Thinker.

On May 12, Twitter was actually used to speed up pizza acquisition – real-time updates were posted by users who acted as agents to inform people where lineups were longer or shorter at various Pizza Nova outlets. PizzaNovaGuy was utilized to assist followers to find other store locations. In the weeks leading up to the fundraiser PizzaNovaGuy also provided followers with daily Italian lessons, soccer updates and links to Andrea Bocelli songs. ‘It’s a representation of the Italian background of the staff that we have here,’ Angelone tells MiC.

Stephanie Angelone, director of marketing at Pizza Nova, says the social media tool played a major role in alerting people to the event. The fundraiser was also promoted by radio spots on Q107 and ads in Toronto dailies. Translations of the ads appeared in Multicom Media’s Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Indian, Russian and Polish publications.