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If Wendy's has been the innovator, these days it's not above some copycat tactics either. Taco Bell started tiered pricing for its lower-priced menu, and Wendy's will soon do the same, introducing some new value-menu items at $1.29 to help boost its margins. Taking a page from McDonald's marketing playbook, Wendy's has just launched a new advertising campaign that combines some youth-oriented national commercials with targeted radio, print and Internet ads. McDonald's has relied on that strategy for the past two years, using cable-television networks like Lifetime and print ads in women's magazines to promote its salads while running a separate national campaign.
Schuessler says he wants to appeal to the "MTV generation" with the national spots, which feature twentysomethings on the move--racing for a train, riding a skateboard, cavorting in a Laundromat--with a Wendy's product in hand. Having tried and failed with the anonymous "Mr. Wendy" as a spokesperson (Wendy's beloved founder Dave Thomas died in 2002), Schuessler says the company is going for something a "little edgier." The new spots are not above using talking rodents or gross-out humor--in one of them, a woman drinks from a fish tank to tame the spiciness of a chicken sandwich. Another ad cleverly spoofs The Bachelorette.
Wendy's has done some targeted marketing in the past, but "this is the first time we've gotten this deep into it," Schuessler says. He wants to remind consumers that Wendy's has exactly what its competitors have been pushing lately: salads, like a new Mediterranean chicken salad, and extra-large burgers.
Harry Balzer, a vice president of the consumer-marketing research firm NPD Group, says every fast-food company has to find a way to attract young consumers. People in college and in their 20s are the most frequent consumers of fast food, he says. But he is skeptical about the marketing aimed at women. Hamburgers, not salads, are the most popular entrée ordered in restaurants by both men and women, he says. "Where is the burger that's directed at women?"
A well-executed marketing campaign may be enough to re-energize Wendy's sales even if it doesn't join the health bandwagon. Balzer, who has spent 25 years monitoring restaurant habits in the U.S., has become cynical about whether Americans will ever really eat healthily. In the early 1980s, he notes, the big chains were in the same position they are today. "The fast-food industry was beaten up by Americans' desire to eat healthy," he says. "What Americans say they want and what they actually do are two different things." Wendy's put salad bars into the stores and then took them out a few years later. McDonald's introduced its McLean burger to great fanfare. "That was hailed as a breakthrough," Balzer quips. "And then someone ate one."
So why did those efforts fail? Balzer suspects that every generation goes through a healthy-eating craze, but it never lasts long. Schuessler was a Wendy's regional manager in Atlanta when the chain first introduced salad bars, and he remembers how much customers loved them, at least at first. "Their eyes were just wide open," he says. That doesn't mean fast-food chains should ignore the trend. They have to give consumers enough options to avoid the "veto vote"--people who won't eat somewhere because they perceive it as unhealthy, Balzer says.