QSR Advertising Starts Strong as Competition Heats Up in 2017

2016 marked the year that QSRs ran wild with healthier choices faster delivery greater convenience and product diversification The industry also started facing increased competition from the casual dining segment as it began to target millennials with quotfastcasualquot diningamp160Sensing this increased competition and in a move to fortify and diversify its customer base McDonald39s kicked off the year with bold marketing activity focused on the Big Mac 100 coffee and a limited edition Big Mac special sauce giveaway By bolstering its core franchise of Big Mac loyalists and attracting new customers through the 100 coffee promotion it appears that McDonald39s may be resetting milestones for competitors as the industry transforms The company also recently announced it will switch to fresh beef in its quarter poundersamp160in an attempt to lure customers who are looking for more pure offerings It The announcement comes with a large ad campaign which we39ll be watching in the coming monthsThe big uptick in QSR ad spend in January and February 2017 highlights the reality that 2017 is a big one for the industryamp160and presents a challenge for some media types to demonstrate relevancy and share of the media mixamp160 In January specifically outofhome topped the charts with 1379 growth among QSR advertisers demonstrating that its technological transformation has influenced decisions made quoton the goquotamp160amp160February had a much more modest 4 increase but compared to the industry39s overall 106 decline on OOH spend in February it39s clear how important the medium is to the QSR industry Newspaper spend was also up dramaticallyThis increase supports that location and contextual relevance matter Think newspapers andamp160coffee in the morningamp160 National television followed with a healthy 243 increase in spend followed by digital atamp160156While it39s interesting to see how QSR is taking advantage of the full media mix to reach their audience with these increases in OOH and newspaper we also wanted to take a deep dive into the role of television in the mix for the QSR industry as it still accounts for the biggest spend by volume We specifically dove into Domino39s and Subwayamp160as samples of the industry at largeWe selected Subway to see how its rebrand which kicked off during the Summer Olympics on NBC was being supported and if the company was staying on mission to transition media from TV to digital amp160It39s also an outlier within the QSR industry so we wanted to compare it to the restDomino39s on the other hand is a good example of what much of the industry is doing amp160it39s following the path of most QSR companies while representing the highly competitive pizza categoryamp160 Domino39s commitment to technology including emojis on Twitter and a partnership with Google Home announced late last year has helped to set this pizza chain apart from the competitionTV CloseUpWhile we reported earlier that national TV spend was up for the industry our findings also reveal that cable TV was 325 for the QSR industry at large While Domino39s was up in both cable and broadcast more than half of its TV budget went to cable with 576 of total national TV spend in the first two months of the year While Domino39s spent the majority of its money on entertainment shows 571 it increased its spend on sports programming by 394 Much of that additional spend went to the NFL on CBS and Fox amp160Subway was down yearoveryear in both media typesamp160which suggests that it39s transition to digital is well underwayamp160Next we looked at spend by program genre and saw that spend was up across the QSR sector in sports entertainment and news programming Domino39s mirrored the industry with an increased presence in all categories yearoveryear while Subway only increased spend on news programmingWith many marketers recognizing the need for more diverse advertising we looked to see whether QSR spend on television was targeting ethnic cultural andor multicultural audiencesamp160 We looked specifically at Univision BET Telemundo Galavision ESPN Deportes Estrella TV and UniMasamp160We found that spend was up 137 yearoveryear for the QSR category across those identified networks and that Domino39s delivered a 269 increase yearoveryear across the same setamp160 Subway also saw a sizable increase of 301 with most of that increase coming in February around entertainment programming on Univision and TelemundoWhile television continues to play an important role in QSR advertising yeartodate it will be interesting to see whether this commitment continues throughout the yearamp160 If Subway continues to stay on mission to shift focus and dollars to mobile and loyalty programs we would expect to see a continued deceleration in its television spendamp160 On the other hand Domino39s commitment to cutting edge technological advancements and speed of delivery is a message best delivered by television to the massesClick the social buttons above or below to share this story with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this article are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated bloggers

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QSR Advertising Starts Strong as Competition Heats Up in 2017

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