Pizza Hut has created an unneccessary publicity backlash by tentatively changing its brand to the "The Hut." Do a search for Pizza Hut in Google News and you'll see that the move was met with gales of laughter from the media and scorn from the public.

The company was forced to put out a press release saying that Pizza Hut was not changing its name, even though it, er, was actually changing its name. Here's the release in its confusing entirety:

"Pizza Hut is not changing its name. We are proud of our name and heritage and will continue to be Pizza Hut. We do use 'The Hut' in some of our marketing efforts," said Brian Niccol, CMO, Pizza Hut, Inc. "To the loyal fans of Pizza Hut and pizza lovers around the world, we're happy to tell you that nothing is changing, we're still Pizza Hut, America's Favorite Pizza."

... we're also introducing another vocabulary word with Pizza Hut, which is 'The Hut.' That ties in nicely with [today's] texting generation. We wanted to make sure that Pizza Hut and 'The Hut' become common vernacular for our brand

By abandoning the word "Pizza," it runs the risk of turning the rest of its brand into a question mark. What, exactly, should we expect from "The Hut"? It's not a trivial question. No pizza chain dominates the category -- most pizzas are served by local mom and pop restaurants. So Pizza Hut runs the risk of losing share of mind to them.

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Second, Novak is running a bigger risk than he thinks. Children and immigrants are not automatically familiar with Pizza Hut the way adults are. They have to learn about it the same way they learn everything else. A generation of people who don't strongly connect The Hut with pizza may arise faster than Novak thinks.

Meanwhile, the folks at Papa John's -- The Hut's hated rival -- are laughing into their dough.