Storyboard: Sportsmanlike Conduct at Cousins Subs

Cousins Subs signs a sports anchor to give color commentary about its product line.

By Margaret Littman, Contributing Editor -- Chain Leader, 2/1/2006

Larry Weissman had already accomplished a lot since he joined Menomonee Falls, Wis.-based Cousins Subs three years ago. As vice president of marketing, he helped freshen the QSR concept, revamping everything from store design and menu boards to service initiatives.

“This was a chain in dire need of some attention,” Weissman remembers. “For a long time, it was the only player in town, but then other competitors came in, and they were newer and sharper and taking business away.”

His efforts did spice up the stores, the menu and the staff, but they didn’t seem to reach customers. When the chain began surveying lapsed users, Weissman was disappointed to hear them retelling tales of experiences from more than four years prior, things that wouldn’t—and didn’t—happen at the new and improved Cousins Subs. “We had these messages in-store, but no one was listening,” Weissman explains. “How do you tell people? That’s where we started to run into problems.”

So the company launched a new ad campaign last fall to convey that Cousins’ sandwiches were stacked with more protein than those of their competitors and frequently beat those from Quiznos, Subway and elsewhere in taste tests.

“We needed to find a way to meld those two messages. We decided we needed to find somebody to be our outside sub expert because people weren’t listening to us. We needed to create a personality for the brand,” Weissman says. “But we could not afford an A-list celeb.” Chain Leader estimates Cousins’ 2005 ad budget at $1.7 million.

Talent Search
Weissman turned to Noble & Associates, the Chicago-based ad agency that had been working on the Cousins account since Weissman joined the company.

“We needed to be deliberate with our spending and needed to build credibility,” says Kevin Beauseigneur, senior vice president and creative director at Noble & Associates.

Cousins wanted a pitchman who would convey how “serious” the chain is about its sandwiches. The team deemed ESPN anchor and reporter Dan Patrick as the right face for the brand.

“Dan was the perfect fit because Dan’s brand resonates very well with Cousins’ target audience,” Beauseigneur says. “Dan brought that credibility. He is very serious, and his brand is very serious.”

Before having him sign on the dotted line, Noble tested Patrick’s recognition among Cousins’ 18-to-49-year-old demographic. He tested well with the entire group and, surprisingly, had the same recall for female customers as for male customers and franchisees. Patrick has a radio call-in show that airs in the Milwaukee area, among other markets, helping his awareness in Cousins’ geographic markets. The chain is focusing its growth on the 400-mile radius of its Milwaukee home base, which includes Detroit, Chicago and St. Louis. (The exception is Arizona, where the concept has 17 units.)

While Patrick wasn’t initially familiar with the Cousins brand, Beauseigneur says that he and his four kids quickly became hooked: “He was a great sport. He brought a lot of energy to the shoot,” which was held on a weekend because of Patrick’s ESPN schedule.

Serious Differences
In the TV spots, which began airing in October, Patrick maintains his professional composure as he highlights what the chain considers the serious differences between Cousins and other sandwiches, while also talking about the fictitious, less serious tasks the ad agency had asked him to do like wearing a chicken costume.

Since fall, Patrick has appeared in freestanding insert coupons in newspapers, on the Cousins Web site, in stores and on the radio, as well as in the television commercials. The company will add at least three new TV spots with Patrick this year, including one in February hawking limited-time offers. The creative is designed in a modular way so it is easy to expand. The contract Patrick signed is for several years, and Cousins intends to use him in all its communications efforts during that period.

The Patrick campaign is still new enough that Weissman hasn’t been able to calculate results, but he says early feedback suggests sales are up single-digits since the ads began airing. All told, December 2005 was the 12th consecutive month of positive comps for the $70 million chain, progress Weissman attributes to all the efforts over the past three years, not just the advertising.

Such stats have allowed Cousins to move forward, albeit cautiously. The chain may add as many as 20 units in 2006, all within that radius of Milwaukee. “We are not looking to be the next McDonald’s,” Weissman says.

“Serious Subs” Length: 30 seconds
1. Dan Patrick: When Cousins Subs asked me to talk about their subs, the ad agency had some pretty strange ideas.	2. I am not getting in that thing.
3. I can’t say that word on TV.	4. This somebody’s fowl joke?
5. Let’s be serious. Because Cousins is a serious sub. Look at these guys. They’re huge.	6. And that bread, baked fresh right in the store. Piled high with the finest meats and cheeses.
7. Cousins is the best, so let’s be serious.	8. Cousins Subs: Better bread. Better subs.