REAL ‘UNDERTHOUGHT’

Of all the traditional fast food places, I probably like Wendy’s the best. But man their marketing is awful. Sometimes, I wish they’d dig up Dave Thomas and reanimate him. Because at least then they’d have some consistency. I’ve never seen a brand go through agencies like Wilt Chamberlain ran through women until Dave Thomas died.

I think current agency, Kaplan Thayer, has had one of the longest runs, which isn’t saying much. But here’s the problem with a lot of their stuff—it’s all jingles and gimmicks. I mean, this entire site is built around a jingle. And a bad one at that. Putting that aside, if you were going to build a site around a jingle, at least make it sing.

Here’s what I would’ve done:

1) Beefed up the viral. Take this page for instance. Shooting for something to go viral isn’t as simple as creating content. You have to create something compelling. And this promo fails for two reasons.

FAIL #1: the tweets make no mention of the promotion. So people who see their friends’ tweets don’t know there’s something in it for them, they just get mildly annoyed at yet another marketing scheme. FAIL #2: when people are given the option to share through Facebook, the actual promo is buried in the copy. The headline of the shared message is the page’s headline, which really isn’t that actionable.

Here’s the thing: when you’re running a promotion, it’s not a crime to be promotional. It’s actually encouraged. Because neither of these shallow attempts at viral offer people enough of a reason to spread the word. They’re not even fun. Again, for something to be spread, it has to be interesting. And I would’ve worked hard to make sure it was, telling people they could win free food in a way they’d want to tell others.

2) Offered people a reason to return. I’ve seen inflatable kiddie pools less shallow than this site. And that leads me to believe that the content gets refreshed fairly frequently. But nothing in the copy invites people to return for new games, promos, etc. Seeing as people can blow through this site in a matter of minutes, I probably would’ve added something to the site’s main copy that called this out.

3) Given full disclosure. Again, on another page, Wendy’s tries to hijack visitors’ Facebook and Twitter accounts, but they don’t provide a reason why you should give their data over. Sure, there’s the promise of finding out how “real you are,” but I probably would’ve conveyed in visuals and copy exactly what you get. Show me something cool and I’ll give you my information. Ask for it without delivering something of value and I’ll keep it to myself.

4) Stopped half-assing it. As if all of the above wasn’t enough, the agency actually botches the single semi-cool thing about the site: it’s lifestream. On one of the pages, there’s a continually updating feed of content related to Wendy’s: tweets, YouTube videos, Flickr pics, etc. But here’s the thing: their filters suck. For instance, instead of bringing in tweets about the Baconator, it pulls in everything that mentions bacon. And there’s a lot of bacon of Twitter. So really what you get is a lot of random thoughts on bacon…and not much else. Cool idea, bad execution. Personally, I would’ve thought this out more before the launch…and checked back afterwards to make any necessary tweaks. Maybe the agency’s guys are just too busy writing jingles to care.