When Subway was seeking ways to increase weekend traffic and draw families in to increase check sizes, it found a teammate in Little League squads for national and local promotional punch.
Subway signed a three-year sponsorship deal with Little League, the national non-profit umbrella organization in 2006. Promoting fitness and good eating habits, the tagline was “Play Hard, Eat Fresh,” and it employed Jared, its all-purpose poster boy for eating healthfully at Subway, Kristin Carroll, vice president of client services and strategy for Active Marketing Group, which planned strategy and creative elements, said yesterday
Boasting 3 million players on 200,000 teams playing games on weekends and 12 million family and fans in support, Little League seemed a natural ally to boost Subway’s weekend business.
Subway also brought Philadelphia Phillies slugger Ryan Howard into the picture for its national campaign and a local tie-in for a promotion with the Phillies and Coca-Cola in Philadelphia. Howard’s presence gave the campaign an “aspirational” element, Carroll said.
Howard appeared with Jared in ads promoting “fresh fit” meals at Subway. But the localization of the campaign was crucial to its impact.
“It wasn’t enough to have a national relationship with Subway and baseball. We had to go deeper,” Carroll said.
So Active Marketing plotted a five-mile radius for each Subway location, to determine the Little League teams playing in their shadows. It started pushing the Subway sponsorship during the fall, first with a Triple Play program that gave kids on local teams coupons for a free cookie at Subways. Sample Sandwich Fundraising booklets were distributed to the teams, which enabled them to solicit contribution by selling coupons that offered 50-cent or $1 discounts on Subway sandwiches.
Active Marketing also created a microsite to explain the program to the local Subway managers and the Little League teams.
The campaign peaked during the Little League World Series with Subway providing food for an opening day event at the tournament in Williamsport, PA. Subway also sponsored a family appreciation day at the tourney this year, with Ryan Howard and Jared in attendance. Subway T-shirts and fans bearing Jared’s familiar face were part of the event.
ESPN and SI.com, Sports Illustrated’s site, covered the family event. And ESPN interviewed Howard during a rain delay that ultimately postponed the championship game. The World Series segment of the campaign generated 3.6 million household impressions, according to Carroll.
The campaign is still evolving with no reliable way to gauge local results as yet. That’s “challenging” because of all the concurrent Subway ads and promotions, according to Tim Graves, Active Marketing account manager, who says it’s also “a process” to get all of the Subway restaurants to participate.
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