Top chains stay in game by playing up strengths - restaurant chains

Top chains stay in game by playing up strengths

I was watching a baseball telecast the other day. One of the teams was the Kansas City Royals, and the batter was Bo Jackson.

The play-by-play announcer said, "Bo has all the tools to be a great one." Then, to the analyst, "Do you think he'll be in the Hall of Fame someday?"

"If," came the analyst's interesting answer, "he learns to play within himself."

The mark of all the great athletes, the analyst pointed out, is that they learn to capitalize on their strengths and avoid their weaknesses.

Early in his career Babe Ruth had a weakness for low, outside pitches. Pete Rose occasionally fancied himself a home-run hitter. But both players learned to avoid those weaknesses and capitalize on their strengths -- home runs and singles.

The result: The Babe is in history as the most prolific power hitter, and Pete has more hits than it is believed will ever be equaled.

Why all the baseball talk? Because I found it ironic that the next thing on the screen was David Thomas of Wendy's telling me that he and his daughter, Wendy, had the best salads in the business.

Yo, David, get in the game! Aren't you the best burgers in the business? Later I read in Nation's Restaurant News that Rax is "returning to its base business of sandwiches with the introduction of six new menu items."

Now, I'm really confused.

I have watched Rax go through the potato craze, the salad bar craze, and, ultimately, the food bar "round up the fatties and bring them into our trough" craze. You can imagine the special pain that last one gave me, since I headed marketing at Ponderosa!

But now, when Rax' president, Pat Ross, apparently wised up, he makes his return to basics on several sandwiches. Dear Pat:

Since you were the original Rax guy, don't you remember you built this thing on a roast beef sandwich? A good one, I might add.

If you are going to focus your marketing, and that you must, why not reinforce your original strength: roast beef sandwiches? Tim

Imagine being the guys at McDonald's, with all the incredible temptations they've had to splinter their focus. Sometimes I think they could introduce an avocado sandwich with peanut butter, and it would sell for a while by sheer consumer momentum.

Why don't they? In fact, why are they inevitably late on items like the McChicken sandwich, which their chicken-starved consumers have long awaited?

Two reasons, I think: 1. They don't want to go system-wide with anything except what their customers love, so they test it to the maximum.

2. They don't want to ever lose sight of their marketing strengths; that is, burgers and fries and "lifestyle."

So as boring as it may seem to the "creative" folks, they keep advertising over and over and over about the Big Mac and the "special place" that McDonald's is.

I might add that this doesn't mean that they don't do Monopoly and Scrabble and McDLT and McChicken. Just that they do them deliberately, in the context of their primary focus.

That's another example of good, consistent marketing focus.

In 1984 I was at Marschalk, and the Bob Evans restaurant account was transferred to our office. Early in the relationship, I remember that we were frustrated because it took really compelling rationale and lots of facts and testing to get the Evans folks to do anything that was news.

It was only later, when I was working on the account directly, that I started to understand.

Bob Evans Farms Inc. knew that it had very carefully and deliberately, over many years, built a consumer franchise. That is, a brand image and a set of expectations with their consumers and themselves as to what they -- and only they -- did best: sausage, homemade biscuits, and down-on-the-farm goodness.

And while the Bob Evans folks knew they had to grow into things like the dinner daypart -- and later, lower price menu items -- they always were, and are, attentive to the impact those changes will have on the image they've so carefully nurtured with their customers.

It is unlikely you'll find pizza pockets at Bob Evans. Not because they wouldn't sell, because during any particular craze you can get sales. Instead, I don't think the chain will sell them because they don't fit the brand image Bob Evans attempts to promote.

In the long term the people there realize that's what matters. As with McDonald's, then, they try to play within their game, focusing on their strengths and their consumer franchise and keeping the distractions to a minimum.

Timothy McCarthy, former marketing vice president of Ponderosa, is president of Contract Marketing, Inc., Willoughby, Ohio.

COPYRIGHT 1989 Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group