Subway is in a constant battle against a slew of competitors – some bigger, some newer, and many hipper. Against this competitive backdrop, the QSR category uses every leverage point to create excitement and reasons to visit. Many Subway markets around the world ran a one-day promotional event annually, at different times of the year and with different themes from ‘Customer Appreciation Day’ to ‘Brand Anniversary Day’ to individual shop milestones. In 2017, Subway wanted to bring this effort together globally and create one day of the year they had the right to own and that would drive significant sales uplift. To execute this, they needed an idea that was globally resonant and locally scalable across very different markets.

We created Subway's first World Sandwich Day; a global, one day only, activation campaign via a data centric idea with a humanitarian purpose at its heart: we called it Live Feed.

The idea combined two key mechanics: a live data feed of sales, teamed with a twist on a BOGOF (buy one get one free). Our idea made it a BOGOFGO: buy one, get one, give one …

The get one/ give one element meant that for every sub purchased, customers would get one free and Subway would give a meal to the hungry (via a range of charities by country). In Australia, for example, we partnered with food charity Food Bank. In other words, whilst feeding customers, we would also feed the hungry. This charity donation element was a strong expression of the brand purpose: Everyone deserves access to quality food.

Each sale was captured in real time via data scraping and added to the live feed (which was promoted through media) – giving people a clear tally of the good they were doing as the day wore on and creating a Mexican wave of conscious consumption on social and earned media as countries joined in around the world.

The campaign ran in 60 countries and across 40,000 stores and the results were spectacular; with many markets recording the best single sales day ever and sales increases of up to 365 indexed vs previous year. Importantly, the campaign didn’t just help the brand and walk the walk of the brand purpose, but led to the donation of over 13 million meals to the hungry via our charity partners.