They’re the largest restaurant on our moist little Earth, according to the latest stats I could find.
They could spend more, engage more, speak more clearly, be more places, be more period—they could focus, and own the world.
Instead, they steer all over the road and inadvertently reveal how clumsy they are in social media. Recently, though, they appear to have had a bunch of productive marketing meetings and decided to focus on a true strength—good for them. But the resulting ads look like they’re visiting us from 1979.
Strategically, I couldn’t agree more whole-heartedly that this commercial illustrates their advantage, and their success. This is Subway’s point of difference, their reason to believe, their unique selling proposition. They’re a convenient, inexpensive, true alternative to America’s fatal attraction to fast food.
Basically, they win in several Marketing Moments (um, if you’ll recall, I wrote a book on this and go in-depth on the topic of Marketing Moments; see Selling Eating, Chapter 9, “Marketing the Moment: Dividing A Consumer’s Experience Into Eighteen Separate Opportunities,” available as an ebook for Kindle, Nook and iPad; or as a book-book on Amazon).
But that ad. That ad, that ad. It’s insulting. It’s an unnecessarily blunt instrument and utterly ignorable, almost impossible, in fact, to pay attention to—one’s eyes gloss as the mind wanders. Their point is excellent: do they really chop those onions every morning that I’m ordering in the afternoon? Cool. But Good God, that’s hammy, horrible, stiff, fake, fake, fake spokesmodel casting and directing, and the cheesiest, cheapest-looking production this side of your local Pub ’n Grub. Good God, Largest Chain in The World.
Look. If you would just stay focussed for a minute. Let’s say your current strategy is right (I think it is). If you trusted creative duties to truly discriminating people—people who didn’t strand you with a funny ad that doesn’t appeal to large swaths of your base, but who were able to help you deliver an engaging ad that reflects modern sensibilities and is part of a larger effort to establish, uphold, and extend your brand—your company would be like Asian carp in the great lakes. You could eat up almost anything you came across.
