Quiznos: We Do It Better.

Quiznos [link to Quiznos Singapore’s Facebook page] is a quick service restaurant specialising in submarine sandwiches or “subs” which was brought into Singapore in 2009 by Kitchen Language, a subsidiary of the Far East Organization. Quiznos seeks to target today’s busy consumers with a delicious yet easy-to-eat solution.

In my Advertising Strategies module in university, my team analysed how the brand is doing in Singapore and market opportunities that it could capitalize on, and created a new advertising campaign for it based on the slogan, “We Do It Better”.  Check it out.

Quiznos’ Strengths and Weaknesses
Quiznos believes strongly that food should taste great and uses only the high quality ingredients to create their subs together with artisanal bread. This emphasis in quality and their unique toasting process at the point of purchase makes Quiznos different from its closest competitors.

On top of this, Quiznos adopts a distinct localisation strategy in each market that it enters to ensure high popularity of its subs among the locals. In Singapore, Quiznos has local offerings such as the Kung Pow Chicken Sub that is offered currently, and other local delights such as the Satay Chicken Sub or Bak Kwa Fortune Sub offered in the past.

However, Quiznos faces challenges in the form of a strong perceptual similarity to its closest competitor, Subway, in the eyes of its target customers since both fast food chains offer submarine sandwiches. Quiznos is also a very new player in a saturated fast food market that is only seeing a 0.3% CAGR in 2011, making it even more difficult to establish itself in Singapore.

This is compounded by the fact that there is a general lack of any form of advertising by Quiznos Singapore, choosing instead to spread the word about their delicious subs through word-of-mouth and the location of their outlets. Collaterals are limited to product displays and flyers that are given out near outlets. The only form of publicity is their Facebook page.

With so many good qualities to shout about, Quiznos Singapore needs to increase consumer awareness about its subs, but simply isn’t doing so.

Opportunities and Threats
Some of the trends that are working in Quiznos’ favour are Singaporean’s increasing want for quality in their food and their increasing appetite for artisanal bread. By offering a fast food option that tastes better, Quiznos stands to grab market share from current dominant players where the emphasis is more on price or on convenience rather than taste.

With that said, many consumers do not see a real difference between Quiznos’ offerings and that of its competitors. The growth potential of the fast-food market is also limited because of Singaporeans’ increasing health awareness and avoidance of fast food. This might be mitigated by the prevalent impression that subs are ‘healthy’ from the advertising efforts of Subway.

Campaign Execution
With these factors in mind, we set out to create a promotional campaign that would increase the brand awareness of Quiznos among its target customers around the big idea of “We Do It Better”.  This alludes to the higher quality of food that Quiznos offers and emphasizes on its unique selling proposition of better tasting food.  There is also a subtle comparison in the campaign with Quiznos’ most dominant competitor, Subway.

Print Ads

Print Ads were created to emphasize on the localization strategy that Quiznos Singapore adopts. The ad uses the respective local foods as the hero image as opposed to competitors’ ads which tend to use the subs as the hero image. This is meant to cause consumers to create an affective link between the local food and subs through the header, “Imagine This In A Sub”. The reader would then be enticed to read more about the subs in the body copy, finally ending off with a call-to-action to get a sub from Quiznos.

Other IMC Efforts

Other integrated marketing efforts include guerrilla marketing efforts by setting up pop-up Quiznos stalls near strategic hawker centres to further establish a perceptual link between local food and the Quiznos local subs.  Mini-subs would be given out to promote the local subs, leading to greater awareness for the subs and the brand.

Well, that’s about all I shall write about our project.   Kudos to my team-mates, Feng Chang, Zhi Han, Vebi and Jacinth!

What did you think of our project?  Write your comments below!