Subway CMO on the Brand’s “Commit to Fit” Sweepstakes (Take Two): Q&A

Most of us know Jared Fogle, the long-time Subway spokesperson who lost 245 pounds eating the brand’s sandwiches and exercising. He is credited with increasing sales and bringing in lots of new customers. And when he pounded the pavement for 26.2 miles during the 2010 ING New York City Marathon as a fit and trim “everyman,” his presence helped increase the number of participants in the first run of Subway’s “Commit to Fit” sweepstakes promotion.

About 100,000 people registered to set, share and adhere to fitness goals. This year, Apolo Anton Ohno, the gold-medal decorated Olympic short-track speed skater takes the baton from Jared to run the Nov. 6 race and set the pace for the second iteration of “Commit to Fit” sweepstakes. The sweeps offers a variety of prizes from Subway gift cards to up to $25,000.

Tony Pace, the chief marketing officer at Subway, talks about Take Two of the program and the health of sweepstakes in general.

PROMO: How do sweepstakes like “Commit to Fit” fit into your overall marketing program?
PACE: Sweepstakes are a tactic that we’ll use when appropriate to engage consumers. They are tried and true, but clearly not the only tactic we use. But when consumers are asked to do something and get something in return, the question is always what kind of stimulus is the consumer going to respond to and a sweepstakes is a very familiar one. (Four tips to make your next sweeps a winner.)

PROMO: How often do you run sweepstakes?
PACE: We like using tactics that incent consumers to interact with our brand and sweepstakes are a good way to do that. We’ve come back to those programs again and again. If you do them in concert with a property you can get a deeper interaction with the consumer and that benefits the brand. And consumers wouldn’t participate it if they didn’t get something out of it, too. (Don’t make these mistakes.)

PROMO: What is your broad goal for sweepstakes programs?
PACE: You’re always looking for engagement, getting consumers to sign up to get information. One thing that’s changed over time is that consumers are more willing to accept communications from brands if you’re upfront with them. As a brand you like having the ability to contact consumers directly. That’s one of the big benefits, you know that when that consumer raises his or her hand that they’re interested in your brand.

PROMO: Have the ways in which you execute sweepstakes changed over the last few years?
PACE: Everything is going to much more of a digital model versus a let’s distribute paper things through the restaurants, which is better because you don’t have all the issues about how many to print or all those inventory questions about how many (Scrabble) game pieces you need. Moving toward electronically generated sweepstakes is quite helpful.

PROMO: What metrics do you use to measure sweepstakes?
PACE: For most of the sweeps we know how many people signed up, how many times they return and for how long. Sometimes we follow up with questions, but the numbers will change based on the size and the scope of the program.

PROMO: What about “Commit to Fit”?
PACE: It’s interesting, the actual number of participates in “Commit to Fit” is around 100,000 but the social media extensions off of it were pretty big. We saw a tremendous pick up in terms of activity in all of our social spaces that was more an extension of Jared being out there. So while all of that was not tied to the “Commit to Fit” promotion watching Jared run was a way for consumers to think about being healthy and active and if they wanted to do something about it “Commit to Fit” was the manifestation of that.

PROMO: Do you think people will recognize the program again?
PACE: We wouldn’t be doing “Commit to Fit” again now if we didn’t think that was a good proposition for us. We like building assets that we can deploy multiple times. There are probably people who heard about “Commit to Fit” last year but didn’t get around to it. So the second or third time around people might say, Hey I heard about that, maybe I should do it this time.

PROMO: How will Apolo Ohno be perceived since he’s not an “everyman”?
PACE: He is an elite athlete, but it’s a different level of training for him, he’s doing something new so there’s a dimension to this program also where people can see that this will be a challenge for him and be encouraged to do something for themselves.