‘Eat Well Go’: Subway repositions and launches Australia’s ‘biggest ever’ influencer campaign
Sandwich chain Subway is looking to create a deeper emotional connection with consumers with a new brand position of ‘Eat Well Go’, as it looks to move itself away from fast-food competitors and position itself as a healthier alternative.
As part of the strategy created by Ripe Solutions the brand is launching what its content agency Emotive has described as the “biggest” influencer campaign Australia has yet seen, which will span five weeks using five different social media influencers.
There will also be a substantial above the line presence for the campaign which has been created by agency Ripe Solutions.
The influencer strand of the campaign launches today with a video made with Australian basketball trickshot specialists How Ridiculous showing them playing basketball on the giant satellite dish at the CSIRO facility at Parkes Observatory in NSW with the theme of ‘Go Higher’.
Emotive strategy director Jamie Crick told Mumbrella: “We went through an ideation process with them [How Ridiculous] and they came out with some pretty outlandish stuff, and one we loved but never thought we could pull off was the CSIRO disk in Parkes. We got the CSIRO to agree to it and a couple of weeks ago got them out there and did a series of trick shots around the disk.”
He said the challenge was keeping it “on brand for them and also with Subway”.
Joyce
Emotive CEO Simon Joyce said there were real metric targets behind the campaign, adding: “All this will track back to brand consideration, affinity, love and redemption action. Whilst it’s a brand led campaign there’s no lack of success matrix modelling behind it.”
Brand integration in this piece comes from the players eating Subway while stopping for breaks, which Crick described as “naturalistic” and fitting with the brand.
The campaign is targeting a more male-skewed audience, with influencers over the next five weeks spanning auto, music, gaming and travel.
Content lives on the influencer’s own channel, with Subway putting up a highlights package on its own YouTube channel after the final one has gone live. There will also be amplification via more influencers to push contextually relevant content to their followers, and “narrowly targeted social boosters”, as well as a publisher syndication program.
Videos range from 2-3 minutes to 20 minutes, which Crick said was to fit in with what the audiences of an influencer were used to seeing.
He added: “Part of its collaborating with the creators and taking what they’ve learned about their audience and what works best for them. If an influencer’s audience has an appetite for 20-minute content then so be it.”
Future executions will cover channels including Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and social gaming platform Twitch.
Asked whether influencer campaigns were merely seen by many marketers as an add on after the above the line work, Joyce said the reach of the influencers was such that they do have very considerable audiences.
Joyce: “Scale through their channels is significant. Five influencers with real audiences and there’s a clever amplification schedule, and the numbers we guarantee we’re getting out of this they will certainly turn the dial.”
Flagging the Ricky Gervais work for Optus around it’s Netflix promotion he said it created “significant awareness” off the back of a base awareness campaign from the more traditional brand campaign for the telco.
The above the line campaign was created by Ripe Solutions and aims to show how it helps people go higher and better and features outdoor, digital, radio and PR, which feeds off work already happening in other parts of the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DOKvj2Gtp0
“Research reinforced that consumers perceive Subway as a source of eating well to help them achieve the most out of life in their day, and feel good, not guilty,” regional marketing director, Gina Kahler said.
Ripe client service director Jude Johannesen said Eat Well Go was designed to forge a deeper emotional connection between customers and the brand.
Johannesen added: “Eat Well Go shows the wide appeal of Subway and the role the brand plays in allowing people to go further, go harder, go longer and go do more of the things they love”.
The TVC was shot in parts of Australia and New Zealand and filmed by award-winning Play TV Director Frazer Bailey and Director of Photography Ben Nott.
Alex Hayes
