Subway CMO on Jared’s Marathon Run
Over the last few years, Subway has jumped from the No. 5 brand in the quick service restaurant category to No. 2 thanks in large part to the popularity of its spokesperson Jared Fogle. He’s the guy who lost 245 pounds eating Subway sandwiches and exercising and has become a role model for many of the millions trying to slim down.
On Nov. 7 he takes on another enormous challenge, running the 26.2-mile ING New York City Marathon.
Since Oct. 4, much of Subway’s promotional marketing has been around Jared’s participation in the marathon and Subway’s sponsorship as the Official Training Restaurant. Franchisees are on board with P-O-P featuring Jared and one of his favorite sandwiches, the Subway Club, which will be featured as a $5 Footlong during the promotion, which ends Nov. 14. TV spots are running and all signs point to Jared crossing the finish line.
Subway chief marketing officer, Tony Pace, explains how it all unfolded.
PROMO: How did Jared’s participation in the race come to be?
PACE: Running in a marathon was on his bucket list. A year ago we were talking about the next thing for Jared and we said maybe he runs the marathon and that’s an enormous undertaking.
PROMO: What was his reaction?
PACE: He was a little bit astonished, but intrigued. He took it on as a challenge and he’s attacked it.
PROMO: How has he been training?
PACE: We had a whole plan for training and he started working with the people at St.Vincent Sports Performance right after last year’s marathon. They put together a program that Jared has done a great job following. In June he ran a half marathon in Minneapolis. He’s been running 20 miles in a single day. He’s training very, very hard.
PROMO: How will he be branded during the race?
PACE: He’s wearing three logos: our brand, his foundation, The Jared Foundation, and St. Vincents.
PROMO: Is he involved in any promotional activities?
PACE: He’s going to have activities in New York prior to the race. We have a long-standing relationship with CBS and the post game show after NFL games. The week before the marathon he’ll make an appearance on the show. But the real focus that day is the marathon.
PROMO: How is social media playing a role in the sponsorship?
PACE: We’ve got our famous fans sending out social media messages, which they have been doing pretty regularly, so this is a natural extension of that. (Some famous fans include, CC Sabathia, Michael Phelps, Nastia Liukin, Laila Ali and Blake Griffin).
PROMO: How do you determine the value of social media?
PACE: The difficulty is there are so many different variables it’s hard to measure that one variable by itself. We track what happens when things get out in the social media space and we’ve seen good attentiveness to our messaging and we’ve seen a number of metrics improved. So we’re happy with the basic metrics in terms of what we’re getting in the social media space, but in terms of ROI that’s hard to show. You can show that people are paying more attention in the social media space but showing sales is the harder part.
PROMO: What has Jared contributed to Subway?
PACE: Jared’s been an unbelievable part of the success of the Subway brand so we’re all for him doing this. It’s consistent with who he is and reflects positively on him and we think that’s good for the Subway brand.
PROMO: Will you be at the marathon?
PACE: We’ll be there, but I’m not going to run. (He laughs).
