Dear Customers, You are retarded. Love, Wendy's

You're an idiot. Did you know that? You don't understand polysyllabic words or subtlety or anything outside of beef and beer. You're an undereducated, blue collar Joe Sixpack with just enough brains to navigate the local fast food drive-thru. Here, just check out this Wendy's commercial:


On-screen: "The reviews are in:", classical music plays in the background

Welder: Garlic sauteed portobello mushroom caress the taste buds.

On-screen: I love a good mushroom. - Rick, welder

See? This is why you're stupid. Because Wendy's has to translate things for you. You can't comprehend words like "sautee" or "portobello" or "caress" -- just one-, maybe two-syllable words is all your can wrap your tiny heads around. Especially if you're some shit-for-brains welder.

Security Guard: Punctuated by the boundless possibility of hickory-smoked bacon

On-screen: Bacon tastes good. - Stanley, parking security

Oh man, security guards are so stupid! Just like you. Doesn't the phrase "punctuated by the boundless possibility of" just sound awesome? Like Shakespeare wrote it or something? Don't you wish you could understand it? Ah, that's okay, Wendy's translated it again for you. "BACON=GOOD" -- can you at least grasp that? Maybe it would have been better if Wendy's had just shown a 30-second shot of sizzling bacon, then cut to a fat guy giving the camera a "thumbs up," then, boom, Wendy's logo. You know, in case you're completely illiterate.

Office Admin: Fresh beef is the canvas on which this hot and juicy masterpiece is painted.

On-screen: I like fresh beef. - Sonya, administrator

Hahaha. See, it's funny! Just the idea of a secretary being able to talk like that is hilarious. Of course, this woman isn't actually a secretary. She's an actress with two Rhodes Scholarship and eight Fields Medals. Wendy's paid her a lot of money to dress up like a stupid secretary and deliver that line of sheer fucking poetry.

Voiceover: There's a little gourmet in all of us.

Haha. This is another joke, actually. There's not really a gourmet in all of you. Wendy's just wants you to pretend like you have a brain because maybe that would make it easier to buy this burger. Anyway, stop being offended already, and get your fat, stupid ass down to your local Wendy's! Or, as you would say, "ME LIKEY BACON!" Haha. Moron!

Square one

Oh, Wendy's. When you mercifully abandoned the red wig campaign, I was right there with you. And when you introduced your new ad campaign and some people didn't like it, I backed you up. But here you are, backsliding into the realm of lazy comedy. If you can even call what follows "comedy."



[Wendy sticks an "I *heart* BACON" button on the screen]

Is anyone else sensing the crushing irony here?

Woman: "This salad is really good, you want a bite?"

All right! Score a point for Wendy's. They have salads, which are actually pretty decent alternatives from a health standpoint if you find yourself with little more than fast food options for lunch. In fact, the healthy-living site SparkPeople recently posted an article about healthy choices at the major fast-food joints and specifically cited Wendy's Mandarin Chicken Salad. But I'm confused - why the bacon button to lead a commercial about healthy salads? Uh oh.

Man: "No, no, thank you, I'm a meatatarian."

This isn't The OED Wizards, so I'm going to ignore the improper etymological construction of that fake word (except to note it here so everyone can see how smart I am) and focus more on the fact that Wendy's thinks this is funny. What a concept! A guy who - I'm going to presume before even transcribing any more of the ad - only eats meat, and consequently rejects vegetables. Wendy's: We may have really good salads... if you're some kind of girl. By the way, if this concept seems a bit familiar, that's because it kind of is.

Woman: [extremely long pause, during which she isn't sure whether to be incredulous or disgusted and opts instead for near-total blankness]: "A what?"
Man: "A meatatarian? I only eat meat - beef, bacon? You know, meatatarian?"

I hate you. What is it with Wendy's and these horrible smug pitchmen? Really, I hate the entire trope - recognizable from those appalling Comcast ads - of pretending that a word you just made up is actually a common English word and that the person in the ad who doesn't recognize it is a moron. It's a lazy joke and insults the intelligence of the audience. Plus the dialogue here isn't tremendously logical - the guy clearly eats cheese and wheat, two things that are not meat products. And when he says "I only eat meat - beef, bacon," is it because those are the only two meats he eats, because he thinks those are the only two meats in existence, or because he thinks the woman is so stupid that she needs examples of meat listed off for her? For that matter, why don't they just have the guy say he's a Baconatarian if they're going to do it this way? For that matter, this guy is a fucking jerkoff.

Woman: "...oh."
Man: "It's a personal choice. You have to commit to it, you know?"

Yeah, by all means, commit to eating 830 calories in sandwich form at every meal. We can also see that he has fries and a drink on the table (two other things that are not meat). Assuming that's a medium fries and a medium Sprite, he has 1450 calories in front of him, 71 grams of fat (26 saturated), 142 grams of carbohydrates and 2,290 milligrams of sodium. Recommended intakes vary, but that's around 100% of your fat (and saturated fat) and sodium, and between 60 and 70 percent of your calories. In one sitting. Then, of course, you have to have dinner. The meatatarian's dinner? Another Baconator, presumably. I guess this is all right if you're Don Gorske, but that's 2900 calories from two square-burger meals (haw!), far too much for the average adult.

Other things that this guy should commit to:

* An exercise program
* Saving up for quintuple-bypass surgery
* Making out his will

Wendy: "The Wendy's Baconator. Six strips of hickory smoked bacon, on two quarter-pound patties of fresh, never frozen beef. It's waaaay better than fast food. It's Wendy's."

I guess if you're going to be eating this horribly, you might as well do it at Wendy's. That's not exactly an endorsement.

Wendy: "Have a way better shake way later. Enjoy a hand-spun Frosty shake late at night."

Top off that Baconator with a chocolate shake! Even the small is another 410 calories. I know that railing against how bad fast food is for you is pretty old at this point, and not exactly the mission of this site, but even the stupidest ads that are just stupid aren't as offensive as the kind that pitch 1500-calorie meals as a "lifestyle choice," even if it's intended as humor. (It's not like Wendy's doesn't want you eating at Wendy's all the time. "What are you, here for another Baconator? I don't think so, pal. Go home and have some fresh fruit." And given that they effectively mocked their own healthier choices within this ad... well, it makes you wonder, doesn't it?)

To get back to straight ad criticism, the animated Wendy's hand reaching for the for-real shake really creeps me the fuck out, especially because she's wearing an outfit that today is only seen on circus clowns.

Sanity makes a comeback

Here at The Ad Wizards, we're not usually about reasoned, objective critique of every major ad campaign that comes down the pike. We find ads we think suck, and we dick on them to expected degrees. (Occasionally, just to mix it up, we do praise ads we like, but that's accounted for roughly three percent of our posting output so far.) But we're not exactly, I don't know, Ad Age or anything.

Well, recently, I posted about Wendy's finally admitting that their "red wig" campaign was just not doing it. In that post, I mentioned the new Wendy's campaign and wished them luck on it being an improvement. The campaign just hit YouTube and I have to say, it's definitely an improvement.



It's a little slow-moving, and I find it odd that it seems like the cartoon Wendy is supposed to be talking to us but we never see her mouth move. But other than that, I like this ad - it focuses on good things, has nice folksy music and mannerisms, has a slogan that's fairly distinguishing if a little dopey, and, most importantly, it doesn't try to blast your face off with its "coolness." Wendy's senior VP of marketing strategy admitted in a conference call - as reported by AdAge - that trying to be cool was not really working for Wendy's.

Wendy's has decided that it shouldn't base its strategy on cool, and said food-buying decisions are based more on taste than the hip factor. "People don't go to Wendy's because it's a cool place," said Paul Kershisnik, senior VP-marketing strategy and innovation. "They'll never go to Wendy's because it's a cool place."

Bra-fucking-vo. Seriously. Usually that indicates sarcasm, but I am dead serious here. Given that a lot of advertising aimed at the coveted 18-to-34 set has devolved into a contest to see who can do the most random "funny" shit, it is incredibly refreshing to see a company of Wendy's stature decide that it should get back to basics, and then do so with a classy ad that gets its point across and actually advertises its product without being incredibly obnoxious.

Here's what I don't get: people who get paid to analyze ads - in particular, Teressa Iezzi over on AdAge - seem to have liked the "red wig" series and hate this new series.

Love it or hate it, the red-wig campaign was a step forward for forgettable Wendy's. The new spots? It feels wrong to blame the agency for this silliness, as it's clear that the ads are the sole responsibility of the client. But the effort is so spectacularly terrible that it warrants some discussion. Where to begin? The anodyne tone; the insipid voice-over uttering lines such as "If hamburgers were meant to be frozen, wouldn't cows come from Antarctica?"; the empty chatter about "authenticity" and "honesty" surrounding the campaign. The food shots aren't even that great.

I close with an earnest question for the marketers out there: Does this kind of advertising work?

Um, didn't we already see that the red wig ads didn't work? The voice-over for this one could probably be better and yes, the "Antarctica" line (in the other ad I didn't post) is cringe-inducingly homespun. But I liked the food shots and overall tone and, while I don't get paid for this, I think I'm probably closer to the average consumer than someone who actually works in advertising is. I suppose if your only concern is people recognizing the commercials, then the red wig ads worked like a charm. By virtue of their stripped-down nature, the new ads are never going to do that. But where's the proof that ads like the red wig campaign actually get people in the door? Weren't Wendy's sales down under that campaign?

In the earliest days of television advertising, it was pretty much just a bald-faced pitch - frequently the host of a show would step aside in the middle of a program, hold a product up to the camera, and give a little spiel about it. While this may not be the ideal scenario, it seems to me like we've gone to pretty much the exact opposite end of the spectrum - many commercials these days are just 30-second movies with product placement, and what the product is isn't always even important. Take a look at virtually any Bud Light ad - you could replace the Bud Light with any other beer, or in a few cases just about any other object in creation, and the commercials would run exactly the same. Sure, Bud Light doesn't really need to sell itself at this point, but that's merely one example. This blog is littered with ads whose first concerns are "Do something funny or potentially memorable" and whose product pitches lag way behind in terms of importance; the Sobe Life Water Super Bowl ad that we lambasted is a good recent example. Does it have anything to do with Life Water? Does it tell you anything about Life Water? Of course not. It's 60 seconds of insane dancing lizards designed to do nothing more than get people to notice the dancing lizards. I wonder how many people could even tell you exactly what product that ad was for, two days after it aired.

The thing is, McDonald's makes friendly, folksy commercials all the time. When are they ever criticized for doing so? Is Wendy's somehow obligated to make distinctively annoying ads just because they're running third in the burger race? Since when does that make a difference? Just look at the cola wars. Pepsi has spent significant chunks of its time attacking Coke in the last 25 years or so; in 1987, Pepsi had gained 32% of the overall beverage market, while Coke was barely a point ahead. In 20 years since then, Pepsi has made it all the way to... 31.2% in 2006, with Coke now almost 12 points ahead. How did 20 years of negative advertising work out for you, Pepsi? And Pepsi's commercials haven't exactly been unrecognizable - everyone knew who Hallie Kate Eisenberg was back in 1999-2000, and the "Joy of Cola" jingle was quite familiar. On the other hand, if you're like me, you hated ads like this one. As I often say on here, is that kind of smug-ass pitch really selling anyone on your product? The answer, according to market share, is: no. (And yes, I know that encompasses all brands. So here: in 1996, Pepsi-Cola trailed Coca-Cola by about six points in market share, 20.8 to 14.9; in 2006, it was 15.9 to 10.2, a difference of 5.7 instead of 5.9. Clearly all those "Joy of Cola" ads really moved the ol' needle.)

I should probably wrap this up, so let me close with this: I don't run focus groups, but I see little evidence from my perusal of articles on the subject that "hilarious" ads like the red wig campaign do much for sales. Brand recognition is all well and good, but there's positive recognition and negative recognition, and it sure seems to me like Wendy's felt it was getting way too much of the latter. So why are we - by which I mean a lot of people who aren't me - firing on Wendy's for trying to fix the problem? They've had marketing issues ever since Dave Thomas died; in lieu of ghoulishly propping him up like Orville Redenbacher, maybe it makes sense for Wendy's to return to the homey style he brought to the proceedings, rather than new-school junk like Mr. Wendy and the red wigs. I say, good thinking.

Hate to say I told you so

Usually, we here at The Ad Wizards don't talk much about the results of particular campaigns we've mocked, unless there's a specific impetus to do so in the comments section. We see an ad that we don't like, we hate it, we make fun of it, and we move on. However, given that I personally wrote about Wendy's "red wig" campaign on three separate occasions, I figured I might as well pass along the good news - Wendy's is giving up the fight.

The change comes after the chain reported this month that sales at stores opened at least a year — considered a key indicator of a retailer's strength — fell 0.8% at U.S. company restaurants in the fourth quarter compared with a 3.1% increase in the fourth quarter of 2006. At franchise restaurants, same-store sales were up 0.2% for the quarter, compared with a 2.7% increase the year before.

For the year, same-store sales rose 0.9% for company stores and 1.9% for franchise stores compared with a 0.8% increase in U.S. company stores and a 0.6% increase at U.S. franchise stores in 2006.

After reaching a high of $44.22 last summer, Wendy's stock price has been cut nearly in half, with trading Monday morning at $23.54, just above its 52-week low of $22.48.

We've said it all along - bad ads don't drive sales. People were aware of the Wendy's campaign, but they were aware of it in that "Hey, did you see that crazy ad with the wig dudes?" sense, not in the "Let's all go to Wendy's and get some burgers" sense, which is the one that you're more interested in if you're Wendy's. Ads like the infamous "Air Supply burger" spot (click the "occasions" link above) are too reliant on gimmick - even as the pitchman in that spot rattles off what is ostensibly a list of enticing ingredients, we're distracted by his stupid hair, douchetacular tone, and the confounding use of the singing burger just seconds later. Ultimately, you can barely even tell what it's an ad for; at least one person who read my post on the ad found it by Googling "burger king air supply ad," which I think tells you pretty much everything you need to know on the subject.

Wendy's replacement campaign, as announced at their convention Monday, is based around a cartoon Wendy and the slogan, "It's waaaay better than fast food. It's Wendy's." Personally, I find that slogan a little stupid, but it's at least an improvement - "That's right" is one of the worst slogans in modern times, in large part because it's so crushingly vague. ("That's right! We are called Wendy's!") And the animated character seems likely to indicate that the ads are going to be a lot more straightforward, making them much more inoffensive, which can only be a good thing. Although I was sort of hoping that Wendy's was going to choose my idea for the campaign, a digitally-altered Clara Peller dancing with a vacuum cleaner.

So, yeah. Not to toot our own horn too much - after all, we've cited Burger King four times since starting this blog, and they haven't had any problem with sales - but, well, we told you so, Wendy's. Best of luck with an improved campaign in 2008.

Dressing up is hard to do

Wendy's is really starting to piss me off.



I don't think it's even worth addressing how fucking stupid the Wendy's hair is at this point. It's stupid, we all know it's stupid, I'm sure even Wendy's knows it's stupid but is willing to stay the course for branding purposes. Whatever. What annoys me about this one is it's a classic example of that brilliant logical fallacy, the false dichotomy. Wendy's presents two options - their burger, and this ridiculous, nonexistent other burger. Because the other burger is ridiculous, Wendy's must be great, right? Right?

This actually goes beyond the false dichotomy, because it starts from a stupid premise. A burger that sings Air Supply songs is retarded and an obvious ploy ("Hey, remember Air Supply? They sucked, right? Burger King fucking loves Air Supply!"), but it's not what's stupid here, since we can all recognize it as a joke, if a terrible one. (Surprise.) What's stupid is that Wendy's is making fun of other chains for "dressing up" their burgers. Two questions:

(1) What does that even mean? Pickles?
(2) What could it possibly mean that wouldn't encompass the act of "dressing up" a burger with bacon and jalapeños as well? Answer: nothing. Note to Wendy's: if you're going to set up your commercial as an attack on your competitors, do us all a favor and attack in a way that makes a lick of sense.

One last thing: why does Wendy's have to make their spokesperson such a douchebag? First he names the burger (smugly), then describes all the ingredients - in that way no one does - and then puts the cherry on top by sticking the burger into his friend/coworker's face in apparent gloating fashion. If someone did that to me with their lunch I'd fucking spit on it. They'd probably be mad now, but later, when they're not dying of a heart attack, they'd thank me.

Arteriopsychosis

This commercial makes me ill.



No, what makes me ill is not the opening twelve seconds, featuring middle-aged men's heads pasted onto young women's bodies, shrieking at an unseen celebrity. That's pretty awful, don't get me wrong, but it's where things go from there.

Announcer: "Obsessing over celebrity, that's wrong. Unless that celebrity is bacon."

First of all, bacon is not a person, therefore it's not a "celebrity." Second of all, while there are many people with unhealthy obsessions with celebrities, few of them are so literally unhealthly as an obsession with bacon would be. But do continue.

Announcer: "Introducing the Baconator from Wendy's! Six strips of bacon-"

All right, just stop right there. Six strips of bacon. Six motherfucking strips of greasy fried pork, dumped on top of what is already a two-patty hamburger with cheese. I can't believe there's a place that has the nerve to sell this. Ready for some nutrition facts?

Baconator: 276 g weight; 830 calories; 51 g fat; 170 mg cholesterol; 1920 mg sodium.

Sweet Jesus. Well, who can compete with that? The worst burger on McDonalds' standard menu, the double Quarter Pounder with cheese, has nearly 100 fewer calories, 9 fewer grams of fat, less cholesterol, and more than 500 fewer mg of sodium. Burger King has Wendy's beat if you get a Triple Whopper, but the Triple Whopper also weighs almost 200 grams more than the Baconator. In other words, there's really no other way to get something so horrible in such a small package.

Obsess over bacon? That's really how they're going to promote this? Obsess. Obsess over a horrible, fat-laden, salted meat product that will fucking kill you if you eat it like a pig. Why is this okay? They can't run cigarette ads on TV, and even alcohol ads have to pay lip service to personal responsibility by encouraging the viewer to "drink responsibly." So how do fast food chains keep getting away with stuff like this? Haven't we reached a point yet where people should be forcing Wendy's to stick a graphic on the screen saying how many calories their Fibrillator - sorry, Baconator - contains?

I'm all for personal responsibility, but a commercial like this is the food equivalent of a commercial showing a guy chugging four cans of beer and then going, "Ahh, Budweiser!" You'd never see that on television, so what's Wendys' excuse? I'm getting a tiny tongue-in-cheek vibe, but it's not nearly evident enough. And anyway, they're selling this monstrosity, so it's not like they don't want you to consume hideous amounts of bacon. They want you to cram bacon and beef and cheese into your face, and they would love it if you did so on a daily basis, or even more frequently. They know how bad this shit is for you, but they don't care. They've posted the nutrition facts, so they've done their job - never mind that merely offering such a product is completely disgusting. The "this is why Americans are fat" tag has never been so aptly deployed.

Where's the non-crap?

The fact that this commercial is a minute long offends my sensibilities.



I assume that most iterations of this ad airing on TV are only 30 seconds, but even so. This is a full minute that no one is getting back. Let's break it down:

0:00 - 0:08: Tree kicking

No wonder this isn't a 30-second ad; it would already be more than a quarter over and all we've seen so far is... well, whatever this is supposed to be. Certainly the tree-kicking is supposed to be a metaphor for "routine" or something like that, but... tree-kicking? Really? We couldn't think of anything even slightly less inane to fill this time?

Guy with Wendy's Hair: "Wait a minute... this feels all wrong."

Okay, this guy has Wendy's hair. The accidental implication here is that Wendy's used to use frozen beef and now doesn't, even though that's not the case. But if the guy represents someone who is "thinking Wendy's," to co-opt a competitor's slogan, why is he kicking trees in the first place? Even aside from the "fresh, never frozen" deal, I think Wendy's already has a pretty good claim to being the fast food chain with the best overall quality. Given the ubiquity of McDonald's, of course, they're going to want to talk up their differences. But I have to think there was a better way to do it than what follows.

[fully fifteen fucking seconds of voice-over that add about three seconds of information to the ad]

That's how you pad a commercial out, kids. Learn from the best. The only salient point in there: "Why eat a hamburger made from frozen beef? It'll be all dry." Everything else in that bit is either said or shown elsewhere in the ad.

Guy: "I deserve a hot juicy burger! That's right, you heard me!"

I don't know, dude. I don't think we heard you. Could you say it, like, a hundred more times?

Guy: "I deserve a hot juicy burger!"

There's one.

Guy: "And not because I can tear a phone book with my bare hands, no!"

Yeah, uh, what? Did that have anything to do with anything, or was it just two more seconds you had to fill? Jesus, why is this ad a minute long???

Guy: "I deserve a hot juicy burger..."

Two.

Guy: "...because I have a mouth. And it wants one."

Well, I guess you can't attack the message any more simply than that. Wendy's: Cram one in your face!

Guy: "And so do you. And so do you!"

Is there anything this guy won't repeat?

Guy: "Hot juicy burger! Hot juicy burger! Hot juicy burger!" et fucking cetera

Well, maybe it wasn't a hundred. But it might as well have been. Have we really been reduced to this point as a culture, where the most effective method of advertising is just to scream some buzzwords over and over again?

Guy: "That's right!"

And here we are, dumbing it down even more. The previous Wendy's slogan, you may recall, was "Do what tastes right." This is like that slogan for three-year-olds. It's not quite "Yay!", but it's right up there. Wendy's apparently went to the new slogan because recent ad campaigns failed to connect: everyone hated Mr. Wendy (try and guess why) and "Do what tastes right" was not "emotional" enough. So is that why this guy practically chokes up while stating how badly he wants a hamburger? If this is the direction things are going, allow me to suggest the next Wendy's ad campaign:

[Quick fade up on the dining room of a Wendy's restaurant. A man is sitting at a table, holding a Wendy's hamburger. He takes a bite, chews, swallows, and begins to cry.]

Man: [sobbing]

[Other people in the restaurant begin to look at him. He takes another bite and sobs even harder.]

Man: [continued sobbing]

[The above two paragraphs repeat approximately nineteen times. Finally, a Wendy's employee approaches.]

Employee: Is everything okay, sir?
Man [through tears, of course]: This burger... [sniffles] ...was it made with fresh, not frozen, beef?
Employee: Of course, sir. That's how we do it at Wendy's.
Man [starts to cry even harder, but chokes out the following]: So great.

[Wendy's logo slaps on the screen, followed by the slogan as it is spoken.]

Commanding Male Voice-over: Wendy's! So great!

Ah, feel the emotion. That one's for free, Wendy's.