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Buzzworthy ... or just "buzzare"?

August 3, 2010 by Lori Walderich — CMO, Top That! Pizza

A friend of mine owns cats. She says they’ve never made any noise as horrible as that emitting from the creatures she calls Quiznos Kitties of the Damned: “That spot makes me want to kill my TV, which I’ve never wanted to do to my cats.”

No debate, the Quiznos spot is nails-on-chalkboard irritating. But is it effective? As auto dealerships everywhere have proven, it is entirely possible for a campaign to be both. But in this case … not so much.

Unfortunately for Quiznos, their new spot is gibberish. In the handful of times I’ve seen it, I’ve been so distracted by the sheer, screeching weirdness of the creative, I’ve not been able to focus on the offer itself. As for brand message, don’t even try. There’s no correlation to the restaurant concept, the product or even the tag line. The ad just hangs out there like a lost scene from “Eraserhead.”

You may remember Quiznos’ 2004 commercial featuring singing spongemonkeys. If so, you may also remember the chain’s justification for its jarring marketing approach: Quiznos has a smaller ad budget than its competitors, so it has to promote the brand in an especially memorable way.

Mission accomplished, in ads featuring rat-like creatures with disturbingly bad teeth, a businessman suckling from a she-wolf, and now, the kreepy kitties. If you buy the notion that any buzz is good buzz, the chain’s hitting nothing but net.

The same would be true of KFC, which got mad buzz with promos for its Grilled Chicken and Double Down bunless sandwich intros. There’s just the little problem that neither product has registered more than a blip on the chain’s flat stateside performance chart.

A couple years after Quiznos’ spongemonkey campaign, the company was in sickly enough straits to hire a corporate turnaround specialist. Since then, the chain has shrunk some 20 percent, losing 1000 franchise locations in three years.

It would be easy, but unfair, to hang either chain’s problems on bad marketing campaigns. They’re simply the easiest scapegoat for a larger issue of brand confusion.

KFC clearly is trying to reposition itself, but with whom? The chain’s grilled chicken promotion seemed to be pitching to age 25–40 fast food consumers who want healthier alternatives. But the Double Down campaign seemed to be vying for Burger King’s not-terribly-food-pyramid-conscious 18–25 year-old male demo, using an audacious protein bomb. Both promotions wore the “Unthink KFC,” tag, which was ditched faster than you can say “WTF?” for the new “So good” tag that apparently got the nod from a focus group of first-graders.

As for Quiznos, the brand that hangs their hat on “Mmm, mmm toasty!” is now running a campaign that only glancingly talks about food. As weird as they were, the spongemonkeys at least praised the subs.

The antidote to Quiznos and KFC’s branding troubles actually lives outside the restaurant world in two recent ad campaigns that have generated positive, brand-building buzz.

Snickers combined attitude and effective advertising in a campaign that paired Betty White and Ben Gazarra, Aretha Franklin and Liza Minelli in spots built around the concept that “you aren't yourself when you’re hungry.” The commercials were unexpected, brilliantly funny and spot-on with the consistent message that drives every ad for this brand: Snickers is the cure for hunger.

For rebranding, you can’t beat P&G’s campaign for its octagenarian Old Spice brand. Nobody wants to smell like his granddad, but who doesn’t want to smell like an awesomely ripped, tongue-in-cheek-witty chick magnet like Old Spice Man, Isaiah Mustafa?

P&G has turned the tables on consumer perceptions with a self-confident rebranding campaign that reaches out to a well-defined 20-something male audience and their purchase-influencing significant others (“So, ladies, should your man smell like an Old Spice Man?“). It also takes a nicely targeted swipe at “lady scented” competitors like millennial-man favorite, Axe (“Smell like a man, man.”)

Should there be any remaining doubt about their intended audience, P&G conducted an unprecedented two-day live social media event inviting queries to Old Spice Man, which he “personally” (and humorously) addressed via Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. The buzz was phenomenal.

So were the results. Old Spice body wash sales were up 55 percent last quarter and 107 percent last month.

Which means that somewhere, some Quiznos agency creative must be thinking, “A horse. We’ve gotta put those kittens on a horse.”

About Lori Walderich

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