Wendy’s Boosts Brand With New Campaign, Characters

Wendy’s is launching a new campaign that asks consumers to “Do What Tastes Right” and is getting a little help with a new brand character and his friends.

Wendy’s breaks with a new ad campaign featuring the smart square and ‘beadies’

The new campaign, which launches during top, primetime TV finales this week, targets older consumers and males 18 to 34 – the prime fast food audience – and challenges them to choose the QSR as their first choice for fast food.

Wendy’s has designed 11 TV spots as part of the campaign, which will begin debuting Wednesday on the season-finales of three popular TV programs, including
American Idol, Lost and
Alias. The ads will tout Wendy’s late-night hours, the brand’s spicy chicken sandwich and its combo meal choices.

As part of the campaign, the QSR will introduce a new character for the brand called the smart square, which serves as the leader of the pack characters called “beadies.” The smart square character is a play off Wendy’s square hamburger, said Wendy’s spokesperson Bob Bertini.

Consumers can get a sneak peak of smart square and his friends at
www.goodtobesquare.com until ads carrying the character break this week. While the characters now aren’t branded with the Wendy’s logo, consumers will soon associate them with the chain, Bertini said.

The QSR typically spends on average $300 million a year on advertising, Bertini said. The QSR plans to spend increase its ad spent this year to accommodate the new campaign, he said.

Unlike past years, Wendy’s is stepping back from having a traditional spokesperson for the brand, and instead is building loyalty with new characters and some familiar faces via the late-night raccoons.

“The food is the hero of our ads,” Bertini said.

To build a greater affinity toward the beadies, consumers can download the characters on their home computers. Each character will soon emerge with a name and a personality, Bertini said.

For now, Wendy’s has to rely on word of mouth to build buzz about the characters and its new. “It’s a fun, engaging way to talk about hamburgers using the Internet medium,” Bertini said of the brand characters. “We wanted to do something that stood out.”