After 5 Short-lived Campaigns, Wendy's Will Focus On Freshness

(Thursday, October 08, 2009) - After five marketing campaigns in almost as many years, hamburger chain Wendy's on Friday is launching a high-stakes ad blitz aimed at reviving its brand by stressing freshness and quality—the pitch du jour for many companies in the food business.

Wendy's says the new campaign, its biggest in years, includes 25 TV and 23 radio spots, 16 billboard ads and a slew of online promotions. The chain plans to spend about $75 million on the effort in the fourth quarter, according to people familiar with the matter. Wendy's, part of Wendy's/Arby's Group, of Atlanta, will use the slogan "You know when it's real" to tout the freshness of its food and poke fun at competitors.

One TV ad shows vignettes of fakes, including a man in a bad toupee and a woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty, nestled between images of Wendy's food. A jingle asserts: "We never freeze 'em like a hockey puck, or keep 'em stuck in a warming tray, like some others may."

Fast-food retailers, hit by the economic slump, are trying to get consumers to spend more. With chains heavily advertising their value menus, many consumers have gotten used to price breaks. While continuing to publicize its cheaper offerings for much of the fourth quarter, Wendy's says it will be running the new campaign, which will include ads promoting its new premium burger, the Bacon Deluxe.

Wendy's—the country's third-largest burger chain by sales, after McDonald's and Burger King—has struggled to define itself since the death in 2002 of Dave Thomas, its founder and former pitchman.

"The brand is not where it needs to be," says Ken Calwell, Wendy's chief marketing officer.

It's still unclear to me what Wendy's stands for," says Ron Paul, president of Technomic, a restaurant consulting firm in Chicago.

Over the past few years, Wendy's has gone through several different ad agencies, ad slogans and marketing campaigns. Its irreverent Red Wig campaign in 2007, which featured men wearing flame-red wigs, was dumped after franchises balked. (Wendy's ad icon is a redhead, a stylized image of Mr. Thomas's daughter Wendy.)

Looking for the right recipe, Wendy's says, it conducted the "most extensive consumer research in its history," talking to 10,000 consumers.

The new push will highlight the Bacon Deluxe burger, touting the product's applewood-smoked bacon, which is cooked in Wendy's stores. The Bacon Deluxe is the latest salvo in the premium-burger wars, which pit McDonald's Angus burger and Burger King's Steakhouse XT, among others. Ads will boast that Wendy's uses "fresh, never frozen, North American beef."

Burger King "mainly sources its beef from the U.S. and Canada," says a company spokeswoman, adding that it also uses some beef from Australia and New Zealand. McDonald's ads include a line that says it uses "100% pure USDA inspected beef."

A McDonald's spokeswoman says a small percentage of its beef is also imported from Australia and New Zealand.

Wendy's is the latest food retailer to talk up the source and quality of its products to appeal to more health-conscious consumers. General Mills' Haagen-Dazs is currently promoting Five, a new line of ice creams made with just five ingredients.

"There is a backlash against synthesized foods," says Linda Kaplan, chief executive of New York ad firm Kaplan Thaler, creator of the Wendy's campaign.

"Nowadays, consumers are really concerned about food safety and food sourcing," says Mr. Paul.

Wendy's also says it will spend less money promoting its value menu over the next few months. Food-industry experts say that dialing back on value advertising is risky amid the recession, and that fast-food operators need to tout both value and quality.

But straddling the two messages is difficult and expensive, and could give McDonald's a leg up because of its heavier ad spending. Wendy's spent $305 million on ad time and space in the U.S. last year, while McDonald's spent $820 million, according to TNS Media Intelligence, an ad-tracking unit of WPP.

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