The Pitch Pizza Tracker

Chicago adland’s late-night pitch crunch, measured in deep dish.

Live feed

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Office of Creative Activity Monitoring

Chicago Metro Pitch Condition

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STANDBY

awaiting live signals

Connecting to public data feeds…

— Weather — Divvy — Foot — Hiring — News — —

Sector Readout

Pitch Trends

Trends build as the collector runs — one point per day, per agency. After a few days you’ll see each agency’s normal band, and any spike that punches above it.

Why We’re Really Watching

The advertising industry calls pitch meetings “war rooms,” ads “campaigns,” and audiences “targets.” But the Pitch Pizza Tracker is just a joke about an industry that takes itself too seriously—especially when the worst casualty is a missed deadline and cold deep dish.

If this tracker got your attention, put it to good use. World Central Kitchen is on the actual front lines, serving fresh meals to families caught in the middle of disasters. A pizza here is a punchline. A meal there is a lifeline.

A meal can be a lifeline.

Donate to World Central Kitchen →

Donations go directly to World Central Kitchen on their own site — HoneyWired collects no funds, takes no cut, and is not affiliated with WCK. See the Terms.

Event Feed

from live data

No events yet — entries appear when a real reading crosses a threshold (rain onset, foot traffic spiking after dark, a bike cluster emptying).

Signal Sources

Every signal here is real

—Weather & daylight — Open-Meteo (open-meteo.com, CC BY 4.0). Citywide context: rain and darkness raise the odds of staying in.
—Bike movement — Divvy bike-share (operated by Lyft for the City of Chicago / CDOT), via the public GBFS feed. Bikes, docks, and how many are taken between polls (departures) beside each cluster.
—Foot traffic vs normal — Google “Popular Times” for the pizzerias near each agency, retrieved via SerpApi, only during the evening dinner window (~4–9 PM CT, Sun–Thu) when the spots are open. Shows how busy each is relative to its own usual for this hour; a positive after-dark delta is the pitch tell and flags the card BUSY AFTER DARK. Outside those hours it reads closed — by design, since pitch dinners are ordered in the evening.
—Freelance hiring — public applicant-tracking boards: Greenhouse, Workday, and iCIMS. A spike in freelance / contract creative roles is a classic pre-pitch ramp.
—Industry news — Google News (RSS), via the collector. Per-agency pitch / account-review / AOR chatter; like freelance hiring, an account review is a strong sign a pitch may be in play.

Data comes from the independent third-party sources named above, each subject to its own terms of service; all trademarks and data belong to their respective owners. HoneyWired is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them.

Honest by design, satirical by intent. The Pitch Pizza Tracker is an experimental data-art / commentary project. Every reading is an inference computed from indirect public signals — nearby venues’ popular times, public job posts, public industry news, bike-share counts, weather — and is not a factual claim about any company’s actual pitches, clients, staffing, or business, or about any person. “Pitch activity” and “busy after dark” are playful labels for a computed index, not assertions of fact. Indices use only the live signals actually present; missing data shows as “no data,” never a guess. Company names identify the subject of commentary (nominative fair use); HoneyWired is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or surveilling any company, account, pitch, employee, or person shown. Named and want out? Email DMCA@honeywired.com — we’ll remove you, no questions asked.