Is there anything more bizarre in the history of advertising than the Jared arc with Subway Restaurants?
Jared is the guy who lost 240 pounds, ostensibly by eating nothing but low-fat Subway sandwiches. He got some press attention, Subway initially disclaimed it (not wanting to promote themselves as a diet fad), eventually put Jared in commercials, replaced him in 2005 with remarkably putrid ads, then brought him back, culminating in the current campaign in which celebrities pay tribute to the great man in extolling his 10 years of keeping the weight off.
And Jared is not particularly attractive or charismatic. He's a fairly normal seeming guy, which may be the attraction, but he seems totally unlikely to be the focus of a decade-long ad strategy. Are there really people who say, "Hey, that's Subway, where Jared eats - let's go there!"? There must be.
I don't have a larger point, except that I doubt that anyone at Subway saw this lasting into 2008 and, probably, beyond. All the self-promoting businesspeople who like to portray their success as based on skill and hard work, luck not playing a factor, are full of it; Jared may not prove that you can lose weight eating Subway, but he does prove the old adage that, "Nobody knows anything."
Jared is the guy who lost 240 pounds, ostensibly by eating nothing but low-fat Subway sandwiches. He got some press attention, Subway initially disclaimed it (not wanting to promote themselves as a diet fad), eventually put Jared in commercials, replaced him in 2005 with remarkably putrid ads, then brought him back, culminating in the current campaign in which celebrities pay tribute to the great man in extolling his 10 years of keeping the weight off.
And Jared is not particularly attractive or charismatic. He's a fairly normal seeming guy, which may be the attraction, but he seems totally unlikely to be the focus of a decade-long ad strategy. Are there really people who say, "Hey, that's Subway, where Jared eats - let's go there!"? There must be.
I don't have a larger point, except that I doubt that anyone at Subway saw this lasting into 2008 and, probably, beyond. All the self-promoting businesspeople who like to portray their success as based on skill and hard work, luck not playing a factor, are full of it; Jared may not prove that you can lose weight eating Subway, but he does prove the old adage that, "Nobody knows anything."
1 comment:
For what it's worth, I never cared for Jared and was glad to see him disappear for a while. I can't imagine why Subway is running their current series of ads. Now, whenever I think of Subway, I lose my appetite thinking about the "before" Jared picture.
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