Marketing
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CHAPTER
Advertising, Publicity, and Sales Promotion
In the summer of 1965, 17-year-old Fred DeLuca was trying to figure out how to pay for college. A family friend suggested that Fred open a sandwich shop—and then the friend invested $1,000 to help get it started. Within a month, they opened their first sandwich shop. From that humble start grew the Subway franchise chain with more than 33,000 outlets in 91 countries. Targeted advertising, timely publicity, and sales promotion have been important to Subway’s growth. For more than 10 years, memorable Subway ads featured Jared Fogle, a college student who was overweight but lost 245 pounds by only eating Subway’s low-fat sandwiches like the “Veggie Delite.” Jared says it was a fluke that he ended up in Subway’s ads. After all, he was recruited to do the ads because of good publicity that Subway got after national media picked up a story that Jared’s friend wrote about him in a college newspaper. Subway’s strategy at that time focused on its line of seven different sandwiches with under 6 grams of fat. The objective was to set Subway fare apart from other fast food, position it to appeal to health-conscious eaters, and spark new sales growth. Jared already knew he liked Subway sandwiches, but the “7 under 6” promotion inspired him to incorporate them into his diet. As soon as Jared’s ads began to run, word of his inspiring story spread and consumer awareness of Subway and its healthy fare increased. It’s always hard to isolate the exact impact of ads on sales, but sales grew more than 18 percent that year. The ads also attracted attention from potential franchisees. Many of them followed up by requesting the franchise brochure, which explains how Subway’s strategy works and why Subway is a profitable small business opportunity. For instance, it describes how franchisees elect a group to help advertising managers at Subway headquarters with advertising and media buying decisions—so that Subway outlets get
CHAPTER
Advertising, Publicity, and Sales Promotion
In the summer of 1965, 17-year-old Fred DeLuca was trying to figure out how to pay for college. A family friend suggested that Fred open a sandwich shop—and then the friend invested $1,000 to help get it started. Within a month, they opened their first sandwich shop. From that humble start grew the Subway franchise chain with more than 33,000 outlets in 91 countries. Targeted advertising, timely publicity, and sales promotion have been important to Subway’s growth. For more than 10 years, memorable Subway ads featured Jared Fogle, a college student who was overweight but lost 245 pounds by only eating Subway’s low-fat sandwiches like the “Veggie Delite.” Jared says it was a fluke that he ended up in Subway’s ads. After all, he was recruited to do the ads because of good publicity that Subway got after national media picked up a story that Jared’s friend wrote about him in a college newspaper. Subway’s strategy at that time focused on its line of seven different sandwiches with under 6 grams of fat. The objective was to set Subway fare apart from other fast food, position it to appeal to health-conscious eaters, and spark new sales growth. Jared already knew he liked Subway sandwiches, but the “7 under 6” promotion inspired him to incorporate them into his diet. As soon as Jared’s ads began to run, word of his inspiring story spread and consumer awareness of Subway and its healthy fare increased. It’s always hard to isolate the exact impact of ads on sales, but sales grew more than 18 percent that year. The ads also attracted attention from potential franchisees. Many of them followed up by requesting the franchise brochure, which explains how Subway’s strategy works and why Subway is a profitable small business opportunity. For instance, it describes how franchisees elect a group to help advertising managers at Subway headquarters with advertising and media buying decisions—so that Subway outlets get