Quiznos Fail

I hadn't been to Quiznos in a very long time, but their 1 Million Sub Giveaway promotion recently enticed me to return. I went to the site, signed up to get my free sub coupon, and printed it off. It was only valid for about a week, and I remembered on the second to last day to try to use it.

I went to the nearest Quiznos, where I found a 5-person line and one employee (both making food an ringing customers up). I also found a crude, hand-written sign stating they were no longer accepting the free sub coupons. No apology, no explanation.

Sure, I understand that Quiznos restaurants are franchised, and a large portion of this location's customers that week had probably been redeeming coupons. But it is the parent company's responsibility to ensure consistency across all franchisees, to prevent people like me (and surely many others) from becoming disappointed and alienated customers. Keep reading...

Creepy Quaker Man Poster

I have been a blog-slacker the past month. I'm going to get things going again gradually, with a post about this interesting bus poster I came across. Bus poster advertising continues to confound me; I believe I've posted a disproportionate amount about this ubiquitous, yet often ignored form of advertising.

This particular poster is for Quaker, yet the brand name is nowhere to be found. The only visual is a large, off-center picture of the Quaker Man, one of the most recognizable brand icons in America. Stranger still is the copy: "Go humans go". It's not a tagline, it says nothing about oatmeal, and it sounds like something an alien would say as he looks down mischievously over Planet Earth.

To an ad geek like me it's a very memorable poster, but I cannot imagine it's selling much oatmeal to the general public.

UPDATE: The New York Times has a story published March 9 about the campaign:
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