SUBVERTING EXPECTATIONS

This campaign represented the largest brand refresh in Subway’s nearly 60-year history with unprecedented updates to the menu, the food, and beyond.

But with so much to announce, we needed a media approach as refreshed as the brand itself. So we built a surround sound media strategy that communicated the volume of improvements and helped the message break through the media clutter.

With “So much new, we can’t fit it all in one ad”, we broke from the limits of usual video tropes and constructs to surround consumers across screens in ways that hijacked their regularly scheduled programming.

A STALE SITUATION

Moving into 2021, the Subway business was stale. Traffic and sales were at a 7-year low, the press was questioning the quality of our ingredients and fast casual competitors were cutting into the entire fast food category. With losses mounting and traffic down, Subway needed to jumpstart the brand’s relevance – and announce it in the boldest way possible.

BIGGEST REFRESH EVER

To address this, Subway overhauled the brand by introducing new and improved ingredients, new sandwiches, and even updating the packaging and in-store experience. With so much new, it was the largest refresh in Subway’s nearly 60-year history.

Our brief was to showcase these changes. But since there were so many improvements to talk about, fitting everything into a traditional campaign structure simply wasn’t possible – and that became our creative and media idea.

SO MUCH NEW, WE COULDN’T FIT IT ALL IN

For the campaign idea, ‘There’s so much new, we couldn’t fit it all in’ – the task was simple: blur the lines of reality to show the brand refresh hijacking the real world.

To do this, we created anthemic television ads featuring the biggest names in sports. But when they couldn’t fit it all in – we sought out more time anywhere, and on any screen we could. We accomplished this by hijacking other ads and content no one ever had before - from hijacking a headphones ad, in influencer content feeds, intercepting in show promos, even hijacking weather reports on gas station TVs.

REIGNITE LATENT LOVE

Subway is committed to constant improvement but we had lost our momentum with guests. In order to shift perception, we needed to tell consumers about the multitude of updates Subway made to the ingredients, the sandwiches, and even the customer experience.

It was time to reignite the latent love – so with the “So Much New” campaign, our strategy needed to surround consumers with every aspect of the brand refresh.

SURROUND SOUND MEDIA STRATEGY

For our target audience, the pandemic prompted dramatic fragmentation of media consumption. So for the launch of Subway’s biggest brand refresh, we adopted a ‘surround sound’ approach – designed to intercept our audience throughout their day. We surrounded key cultural moments like the NBA finals and NFL football as well as worked creatively with media partners to make the ‘So much new’ campaign spill out of the ads to ‘hijack’ other media environments.

FIRST: ANNOUNCE THE REFRESH

In July, we launched high-profile, celebrity-led spots, served sequentially to tell the whole refresh story. There was so much new news it was too much for any one celebrity to tell without getting cut off. On launch day, we hijacked Good Morning America with our all-new Subway ingredients. In social, we hijacked American landmarks like Statue of Liberty with Snapchat’s AR experience.

THEN: SURROUND CULTURE

Beginning in August, we surrounded consumers throughout their day by hijacking other ads and content. From intercepting a headphones ad with Serena Williams to breaking into TV ads for local businesses, we used endemic video to allow the “So Much New” campaign to permeate culture. We even borrowed time in Tom Brady’s fragrance ad. Subway also surrounded on-the-go consumers by hijacking custom content in gas station TV. We even refreshed consumers’ social feeds by hijacking fashion, gaming, and sports influencer content.

The success of the ‘So Much New’ campaign has been unprecedented within Subway. Over the course of the campaign, the “So Much New” campaign garnered a total of over 3 Billion earned media impressions across 3,000 pieces of media coverage.

Within the first full month, Subway was already exceeding weekly sales records (and that sales impact continued to climb throughout the year). Their top 5,000 stores observed weekly sales lifts of over 33% – leading to the brand’s highest average weekly sales per restaurant since 2014.

But just as importantly, consumers are starting to see Subway in a refreshed light. This campaign has led Subway to be seen as more relevant with lifts in core brand attributes – Innovative - +43%, High quality - +29%. These shifts in perception have also led to a +58% lift in future visit consideration.