The story behind My Pizza Personality

I recently launched www.mypizzapersonality.com to help you find your inner pizza and to help me answer a very critical question.  This is the story behind the project.

Captain Planet

Back in 2006, I spent 12 months at the Environmental Protection Agency preaching sustainability to business.  Each morning, I put on my Captain Planet underoos and set out to save the world. I had the exciting opportunity in my role to get in front of businesses and assist them in their journey towards sustainability and eco-efficiency.

Over the course of a year, I discovered many things about sustainability and public sector.  I learned about the true role of government as facilitators for the invisible hand of the market, not competitors.  I encountered challenges of power and influence being controlled by popular opinion.  Finally, I learned why the Captain Planet cartoon was not set up in a bureaucracy.

Private Sector Preaching

So I picked up my ideals and went back to the private sector as a production manager for a digital studio.  I took with me my sermon of business savings through environmental initiatives and how people want to work for and customers want to buy from environmentally friendly companies.  I started sharing my passion… and got worn down by the silent response.

It was not that businesses didn’t care, but there was a disconnect between my role as a digital expert and a green promoter.  Furthermore, there are so many things for businesses to focus on, and being green is just not at the top of the list in a cost / benefit analysis.  As a production manager for a rapidly growing digital studio, I even found myself challenged to keep focus on integrating environmental initiatives into competing priorities of quality, culture, and profitability.

Green Pizza

No longer able to rely on my position with the EPA as my justification or influence, I needed a new approach if I were to maintain any self-respect for my ideals.  The catalyst for a new approach came from my role as account manager for a major food retail client.  As I posted recently, you would think that pizza would be at the top of products where being green would not matter to the consumer.

My questions were many.

• Do people who buy pizza really care about the environmental activities of their pizza company?
• Would their decision be impacted by their attitude towards the environment?
• How would this decision be ranked against other factors such as price, service, quality, brand loyalty, and convenience?
• What is the impact of naturally occurring communities such as social media channels?
• Finally, would any of these factors be consistent based on a particular favourite pizza provider?
• And how would I be able to get enough people to answer my seemingly mundane questions?

My Pizza Personality

To find the answers, I dusted off my questionable ColdFusion programming skills and gave birth to www.mypizzapersonality.com.  Using Myers Briggs and the Keirsey Temperament Sorter as inspirations, the survey wraps up my questions into a fun package that rewards with a pizza type mapped against one of the sixteen Myers Briggs personality types.  The entire package was made possible by the exceptional illustrations by the obviously related Theresa Renando.

This project is as much about following through with an idea and a personal commitment to finding the truth as it is about the results.  How often do we ask the question, but are satisfied with not knowing the answer?  For those who take a stand for the marriage of commerce and sustainability, are you really justified beyond it being the “right thing to do”?  Is there a commercial mandate to be green?

Please help

Please help me discover these answers.  If you haven’t already, please take the test at http://www.mypizzapersonality.com/ and pass it on to your friends using the tools available once you finish.  If you have taken it, please send the link onto your friends.  If you have a blog or participate in forums yourself, please post the link to the site to get the word out.

Finally, I would love your thoughts.  Pop me a line to be kept up to date on the outcomes or just let me know I am not alone using the Feedback Form here: http://www.mypizzapersonality.com/survey/feedback.cfm

Other Pizza Personality posts:
Do you want spam on your pizza personality? A Twitter case study
The value of the green referral (A My Pizza Personality case study)