Storyboard: Fresh Face

Baja Fresh partners with Olympic gold medalist Mia Hamm to underscore its active, healthy side.

By Margaret Littman, Contributing Editor -- Chain Leader, 7/1/2006

Two strong women, one directly, one indirectly, are helping Baja Fresh Mexican Grill revitalize its brand. Mia Hamm and Oprah Winfrey, both women who know how to live life to the fullest, are players in the Thousand Oaks, Calif.-based chain’s current campaign.

When Baja Fresh was founded 16 years ago, the term “fresh Mex” wasn’t commonplace, if even coined. Certainly, there were not as many national competitors—such as Rubio’s and Chipotle—as there are today.

“The brand had been under a lot of competitive pressure, because the category had gotten a lot of players,” explains Dan Santy, president of Santy Advertising, the Phoenix-based ad agency that began working on the Baja Fresh account in December 2005.

Santy Advertising, new Chief Marketing Strategist Mark Chmiel and an outside consulting firm developed the “Live Fresh” campaign, emphasizing Baja Fresh’s no-freezers, no-can openers, no-microwaves method of making Mexican.

“We had a lot of lapsed users who had tried the concept, but we lost the connection,” Chmiel says. “Subway has ‘eat fresh.’ But we thought, ‘No, we’re bigger than that.’ Who else can really say ‘live fresh’? Can McDonald’s? No. Wendy’s? No. We live that life.”

The tagline redefines the company, the brand and, in effect, what fresh means, he explains.

“We were doing the agency review, and one of the agencies said, ‘We are going to help you fix this brand.’ One of our executives said, ‘Wait a minute. The brand isn’t broken. The business has an issue,’” Chmiel remembers. “The brand has strong acceptance, but we were not as penetrated in some markets as we should be.”

Mom Power
Live Fresh also positions Baja Fresh as an advocate for healthier lifestyles. The company turned to soccer star and Olympic gold medalist Mia Hamm, through her eponymous foundation, to help underscore its effort to encourage kids to be active. Chmiel says Hamm was already familiar with the brand, as she and her husband frequent one of the Manhattan Beach, Calif., restaurants.

The chain launched the campaign in early May with the Live Fresh tagline and a contest for kids ages 5 to 17 to win the chance to play soccer with Hamm in Los Angeles, with one parent along for the ride. The 30-second TV spots are heavy on food photography, emphasizing the fresh ingredients, and end with images of Hamm playing soccer.

Hamm, Santy emphasizes, is not a spokesperson. But she does help the brand reach out to young mothers in particular, women who are interested in engaging their kids in athletic activities and who acknowledge that fast food is a way of life for many families.

“The sweepstakes are skewed toward mom as gatekeeper,” Chmiel explains. “We targeted moms because they are the influencers.”

Playing the Oprah Card
To reach the educated, suburban young moms, who comprise a slightly higher-income demographic than the diners at many QSRs, Baja Fresh spent its under $10 million ad budget on media buys that other small chains eschew, such as during The Oprah Winfrey Show and CBS This Morning. Spending is up between 5 percent and 10 percent over 2005. It includes ads on dry-cleaner bags and in salons within a 5-mile radius of its stores; the ads are text-only messages, with no images of the food or Hamm. Online spending includes banners on iVillage, a powerhouse Internet site targeted to women, and Disney Web sites. The banner ads feature an image of Hamm playing soccer.

“We could have been like the previous agency and just suggested buying cable one more different way. But we said, ‘We have to be relevant to this audience,’ and Oprah and salons are the way to do that,” Santy says. “[Baja Fresh] embraced this rather than just doing the same thing over and over.”

The ads are scheduled to run for three months, but the contract with Hamm is a multiyear one. Santy and Baja Fresh are working with her to decide how her involvement in the brand will evolve. Possibilities include “Mia meals,” designed to give kids the right balance of protein and carbohydrates.

Because parent company Wendy’s is putting its non-burger businesses on the block, Baja Fresh is in a quiet period and not releasing current sales numbers. However, Chmiel says the first month of the Live Fresh campaign netted a 5.2 percent increase in systemwide sales. It is too early to know whether that is a sustainable uptick or a marketing blip. But given that same-store sales declined 3.7 percent in 2005 and 6.3 percent in 2004, the numbers are impressive.

“We’re really excited,” Chmiel says. “Not only from a business perspective, but we’re also very enthusiastic because we have a real social conscious as a company. We have a real opportunity here to get people to eat better.”

“Mia: the Brand” Length: 30 seconds
1. Voice-over: At Baja Fresh we use only freshly grated cheese.	2. Guacamole made fresh all day.
3. Fresh meat grilled over an open flame.	4. It’s the only way to make a Baja burrito this good.
5. Now, at Baja Fresh, Mia Hamm wants you to get active.	6. Baja Fresh is giving you a chance to play soccer with Mia Hamm.
7. Eat fresh. Live fresh. Now, with Mia Hamm.	8. Enter today, only at Baja Fresh.