I like how the young people pitch ideas to the old people of how to target young people and the old guys shoot all their ideas down. I actually thought some of their ideas were good, like the sandwich match maker or the mafia guys burying a body. Certainly better than the Youtube rapper that they went with.
shareAgreed. That's a problem you run into with any industry, however. :/
shareI learned it doesn't take much creativity to be in advertising after watching the first episode.
"What?" - Don Draper
Neither were big time agencies.
shareBoth agencies have pretty well known clients. And I don't think age necessarily means you don't know how to market to another age demographic. Part of the job is getting to know the consumer no matter who they are....there's no way you're going to ALWAYS be able to market to people who are exactly like you. And yes, it takes A LOT to be creative. Just because the idea seems simple doesn't mean it is easy to come by. The most simple ideas that make the most sense are sometimes the most difficult to come by.
shareI'm in advertising, the way this went down was lame. Subway not giving them input is ridiculous, good clients give good agencies lots of input. On the east coast, tri state area where Subway is, there are probably 100 or more top advertising agencies, and several dozen world famous agencies that Subway could have called but didn't. Guess why?
Also, I know several small agencies, much smaller than the two they picked who would have handled the pitch much better, for one thing they would have done a hell of a lot more research and spent more money. This show made it look like amateur hour.
nick-1036 is 100% correct. This was really an amateur hour. I hated the "winning" agency. I didn't like their meetings and their top management was uninspiring and not supportive. Any bozo can say they don't like something, but it takes someone with vision and leadership to be able to guide an employee in the right direction. But bad managers like this always blame the employee. Finally, they run out of time and just go with anything. There two conflicting ideas made no sense. A rap guy doing an ad like that would perhaps get some attention like 10-15 years when rap was a novelty. It isn't anymore. 18-24 year olds are either in college or working, so there had to be a much better reason to get them to go out of their way to get breakfast.
There was a media buy for Subway on that episode, and the ad wasn't anything talked about by either agency. Has anyone actually seen this rap ad in big rotation? I think in the end, Subway was lame to work with and picked the wrong agency and campaign. The rap guy would have been a novelty at a company off-campus re-treat for employee entertainment. Clients for get that customer are customer, but quasi-employees. They aren't inspired by the company being a cheer leader for itself.
What should have been done? They served breakfast, and this wasn't in the future, they were doing it now. The entire team should have showed up for breakfast the next morning at Subway and truly had a feel for what they were dealing with.
People watching the show with no knowledge of the business don't understand that there is nothing to get too excited about being selected, you didn't really "win" long-term. You win, if the client uses the campaign long enough that it shows return on investment. In other words, the sales actually increased and hopefully gained more market share. Before any of that takes place, it's little more than everyone patting themselves on the back for a job well done which has not actually occurred.
Eastcoastguyz, you're absolutely right. This really wasn't about the "winning" ad concept, but the product placement. I doubt Subway had any intention of actually running the "commercial," although I'm sure it is available on YouTube, if people want to look for it. Like The Apprentice, this show is more about the products that are featured on the program, rather than the actual tasks, creative or otherwise, that go into making "the pitch."
That being said, I wonder if the agencies receive a fee for their participation? I'm sure the featured brands have paid some sort of product placement fee, but I wonder if the ad agencies get some sort of compensation, or if they're just doing it for the "buzz?" Does anyone know?
Ha ha, made you look.
I feel like I'm watching the apprentice or something, with a bunch of people who were randomly assigned an advertising job, and they just wing their way through it. I can't imagine real world ad businesses run like this. It should be a bunch of amateurs competing for a real advertising job, because that's what it seems like.
shareNo mention of focus groups or even showing it to simply friends in the target age group who didn't work at the agency.
This reminds me of many sit-coms, here they would have background music as an example of what young people listen to. The music is generally lame and already outdated.
Another odd thing, the guy's first name handle was "Mac"...what do you think of for breakfast if someone hawking a product at you had a first name of Mac? ;-)
Am I the only one who thought it was kind of lame that they kept on trying to sell the idea that Subway was fresh and healthy? That's been done before, and it's not even true. None of them even tried to sell the food as tasting good. Who the hell is going to get out of bed and drive to Subway to eat healthy when they can just eat a bowl of oatmeal and a protein shake at home?
shareYes, I agree. The concept is using it as a place to meet a single was their best idea, and it was shot down by that terrible manager who did the lame presentation. Because if someone thought it was some popular thing to do was meet with friends and hopefully meet new people for breakfast at Subway it would have gone a lot further. After all, what that serve in bars isn't healthy, but it's still used to meet other people. That would have been about their only hope because you are correct, few people have time for breakfast in the morning and it's a lot easier to eat healthy in the morning.
Subway said it launched Breakfast in April, 2010, if I have the date right. No mentioned of why they started serving breakfast. No discuss of other fast food places serving breakfast and losing big time on it, like Wendy's has done in the past. The other thing, sure they would like 18 to 24 year olds because they think they will spend money easily, but who was really already going to Subway? Most people I see who get breakfast at fast-food places are blue-collar workers. Of course this could change from different locations. In New York City's Midtown it might be more of an office crowd, but out in the suburbs where many of the Subways seems to be, it's going to be blue-collar workers who go to McDonalds, Donut places, and coffee shops.
I think it was Subway's fantasy to appeal to 18-24 year olds for breakfast. Their overall best bet with the other agency with the zAMbie idea because it had humor and showing up to work with a take-out of zAMbie would have been fun.
Where I live, burbs of nyc, Subway is slamming with white collar types at lunch. I've never seen breakfast but i can tell you just by looking at the signage and layout and vibe of the place it's 99% lunch/sandwich focused and if you didn't already know you wouldn't know they even serve breakfast.
Their breakfast looks like a fail right now so whoever they hired and whatever they tried to do, it didn't work. Forget about 18 to 24, try to get anybody in there for breakfast. Take a look at Dunkin, they score big for the breakfast crowd.
Do you see any Subway breakfast promotions or commercials on TV, I don't.
I see ads for breakfast all the time. I think the problem is that the food just isn't very good. Their eggs taste like they're microwaved. It's kind of false advertising to advertise the food as fresh when it's clearly not.
Another problem I see is that they really don't advertise the right products. They keep on advertising this sunrise melt that as far as I can tell is just eggs, cheese, peppers, and onions on an English muffin. Who wants to eat a breakfast sandwich without meat? When I went to Subway for breakfast I tried their sausage, egg, and cheese muffin, but I don't think I've even seen this sandwich on their ads. Furthermore, they advertise their breakfast combos but apparently, their breakfast combos only include a sandwich and a drink and don't even include has browns with them. They sell hash browns at Subway, so why on earth aren't the hash browns included in the breakfast combo?
Breakfast at Subway is just poorly handled all around. It's a shame that none of these problems were explored in this show, but then again, I would imagine Subway wouldn't agree to appear on this show if they were to be shown in a negative light.
getting back to the OPs observation...the concept is that the "old" people have a high level viewpoint on the situation as they should understand the full picture of how an idea is taken from concept to production.
just coming up with an idea is easy. being able to move that idea threw the entire pipeline to a finished product is what takes experience and vision.
did you think it should be the other way around? old ppl making pitches to the young inexperienced?
either way, their ideas about the youtube rapper and the talking food was not interesting and not original. it will be interesting to see the final product though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GpWV1oKH0w
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