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:
Keep reading...

Yay Club Monaco

I recently received this email from Club Monaco, which in the past couple years has become my favorite place to shop for clothes. This, due to their rich color palette, nice fabrics, and reasonable prices (especially on sale), as well as the clean, modern design of the brand and store. I joined their email list several months ago, and I have found it to be one of the most well-managed company-customer relationships I have ever experienced.

The emails come occasionally, but with enough frequency to stay on my radar. Usually they are announcing sales, or, in the case of this one, a whole suite of services. To do something like this in an economic atmosphere that is wreaking havoc on apparel retailers is a wise move indeed. Customers want to save money, of course, but also to find brands that treat them as people, not wallets. Services like extended shopping hours, stylists, free alterations, and event hosting are great ways of endearing customers in this difficult time.

Yay Club Monaco. Keep reading...

Cool Internet Things

Recently I've enjoyed two very different sites online:

Durchzug.info is a collection of hundreds of German/Swiss/Austrian Bahn (train) announcements. As a Europhile and someone who is eager to return to the land of pretzels and beer houses, I loved how easy it was to close my eyes and imagine myself pulling up to Berlin Hauptbahnhof. Whoever put all the time and effort into compiling this collection, thank you!



This site is much more well known. Sponsored by Burger King (and produced by the bete noire of advertising, CPB), Whopper Sacrifice is a Facebook application with a simple premise: defriend 10 of your "friends," and get a coupon for a free Whopper. It's funny, it's viral, and it's a great use of social networks. Keep reading...

My First Aphorism

I came up with what I hope is a witty, insightful aphorism. Hopefully it will one day appear in Bartlett's Quotations:

"A page is easily bent, but hard to make flat again." Keep reading...