Quiznos: Three Days, a Million Free Subs and One Online Success
In this economy, you can’t go wrong giving away free food. The Denny’s restaurant chain hit an apparent home run with its Super Bowl ad touting a free Grand Slam breakfast on the Tuesday after the big game. Two million customers showed up on Feb. 3 for a meal on the house–which CEO Nelson Marchioli characterized to analysts the next day as “a very encouraging lift in guest traffic,” hopefully including many of the “light and lapsed” customers Denny’s was targeting.
But you don’t need to spend the estimated $5 million Denny’s dropped on creative and media buys during the Super Bowl to run a successful giveaway. Sandwich chain Quiznos achieved almost the same strong results with an online promotion offering a downloadable coupon for a free sub. The coupons were available from http://www.millionsubs.com/ starting Feb. 23 and lasting until the millionth sandwich was given away.
As it turned out, reaching that ceiling took less than three days.
“We caught a tiger by the tail with this one,” says Rebecca Steinfort, CMO of the 5,000 unit chain. “For me personally, [the promotion] went a lot faster than I thought it would. I thought it would take a matter of maybe a month. There was a ton of power in this.”
As with the Denny’s giveaway, one tactical aim of the Quiznos promotion was to build market share; the chain is in a tight race with Subway to stake a claim on value with a number of subs under $5. But more strategically, Quiznos wanted to get new customers into its stores to sample a revamped value menu rolled out in January that includes lower prices on 37 different items, including the 20 $5 sandwiches.
“Our strategy during the first quarter is simply to drive more traffic,” Steinfort says. “For people who are already Quiznos customers, we want them to realize that we are now more affordable, and they can eat here regularly. Plus we want to bring in new people who’ve never tried a Quiznos sub.”
For all the seriousness of the intent in giving away free sub, the company didn’t do much formally to get the offer out: some PR, some banner advertising on a broad range of Web sites, and “those of us who are on Facebook got on and told our friends about it,” Steinfort says.
“We did do a little value-added TV, but that was a few days into the campaign and quite frankly the genie was out of the bottle by that time,” she says. The company also runs a “Q-Club” loyalty group and could have promoted the offer with an e-mail blast, but that wouldn’t have targeted the first-time customers Quiznos was really trying to reach.
The offer did get some viral spread, both on the www.millionsubs.com microsite and on the Quiznos company profile in Facebook Users could send information about the coupon offer to their friends or volunteer their friends’ e-mail addresses and have Quiznos contact them. Steinfort says about 200,000 visitors who registered and downloaded the coupon also passed information along to at least one friend. It’s too early for more metrics about how many pass-alongs the average visitor, or the average referrer, notched up during the promotion, Steinfort says.
“I think a lot of the passing was just people telling friends informally, whether verbally or in e-mail or talking about it in Twitter,” she says.
With big time-limited online stunts, it’s becoming more and more necessary to make sure that the Web site can withstand the expected traffic spikes. Quiznos was careful to load-test its millionsubs.com site before throwing the doors open.
“We thought a lot about Dr Pepper and making sure we didn’t repeat their case example,” Steinfort says, referring to the customer debacle that occurred when Dr Pepper’s offer of a coupon for a free soda upon the release of the new Guns N’ Roses album was disrupted by a Web site not up to the thousands of visitors it received. “And the site performed very well.”
Things may have gone smoothly for Quiznos on the tech side, but the campaign encountered unanticipated problems of another sort. The Quiznos chain is almost entirely franchised, and complaints began to appear rather quickly on consumer Web sites that customers were having trouble redeeming their free-sub coupons with specific franchisees. Anecdotes were flying about customers who were told that the offer applied only to a limited number of the small-sandwich menu—a stipulation nowhere made on the Web site—or only provided for a $2 discount on the regular sandwich price. Some bloggers reported being told that in order to take advantage of the offer, they had to purchase a drink and chips.
Photos went up on the Web of Quiznos franchises that had posted homemade signs saying the “Coupons are not valid on our ‘everyday value’ subs (they are already promotional items)”, when the printed coupon stated that the offer was applicable to both the everyday value and the signature subs. Other consumers chimed in with stories of operators who went to great lengths to check that the coupons matched the IDs of the presenters.
Some of the commenters pointed out that the problem seemed to be that Quiznos corporate was capping the rate at which it was reimbursing its store operators for coupon redemption.
Steinfort agrees that the corporate reimbursement rate caused some issue early on with the campaign. “It’s not standard industry practice to subsidize coupons at all,” Steinfort says. “But in January we set up a program to do that for our franchisees during the first quarter, because we knew we would be couponing pretty heavily to get people in to see the new menu board and new pricing. We set up a program that would reimburse each store for 400 of any kind of coupons that would come in, including these free sub coupons.”
But once the “Million Subs” promotion showed signs of being such a runaway success, Steinfort says, the company moved quickly to revise its subsidy policies. Reports from the Web say the first move was to raise the cap to 700 reimbursed coupons per store; according to Steinfort, the company ultimately wound up removing the cap entirely on paying store operators back for the sandwiches they gave away.
One problem with capping the reimbursement rate, she points out, was that redemption rates varied greatly among stores, so that outlets near college campuses, for example, saw far more than the average number of free-sub coupons presented.
Still, those redemption issues have now got Quiznos involved in what’s becoming another standard part of online promotions these days: repairing customer relations in order to defuse the bad word of mouth that even a small contingent of frustrated consumers can create.
“We’re committed to satisfying every customer out there, even if they didn’t get to redeem their coupon,” Steinfort says. “We’re urging people to e-mail us at MillionSubs@Quiznos.com, and we will definitely try to make things right with every customer out there. In the full marketing operational life cycle, you have to handle these issues.”
March 4th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
The Quiznos promotion was a cluster f. I was a victim of it. I took my printed coupon to my local store adn they would not except it because there was some kind of authentication markings that didnt show on my coupon. I was accused of attempting to scam them with a photocopy. I was outraged at the lack of respect and insult. Quiznos actually lost a customer with this promotion. I plan to tell everyone I can and post it everywhere I can on the internet. I contacted Quiznos about this and the response was useless - no compensation was offered.
March 4th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
The date on my printed coupon was 3-7-09 when I went to redeem it today 3-5-09 in Arlington Ma. I was told that the promotion ended on Monday. A manager came out and told me he would give me a free coke or a bag of chips. I told him I was in the promotions business. I ordered 2 subs and the manager rang me up not offering anything at time of checkout. I asked what could he do for me and he said “Are you really in the promotions industry and what do you specifically do” I told him he then offered to give me one sub at no charge.
He said two local stores had closed one in Cambridge near MIT and one in Medford so they had been swamped with coupons since the promotion started last week.
March 5th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
The Quiznos near me refused the coupon even though I went to another one nearby and recieved my free sandwich. I know it says at participating stores but what a stupid move by the franchisee. I will now will never step in their store again. I hope they enjoy the $4 and the loss of all future biz from me and anyone else who went there.
March 5th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
I was treated quite well at my franchise. There were signs all over the place stating that photo id was required and that the code on the coupon would be verified online. These signs were highlighted in yellow and very intimidating to me as I would not want to cause a scene in the line and be embarrased. The clerk took our coupons (both in my name but with different code numbers) and pleasantly redeemed them after running the codes.
It was a great sandwich and I left there a happy customer. My whole party was pleased with their particular sandwiches and will be going back in the near future.
March 5th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Well, as these comments show, how a promotion works down at the ground level can vary pretty wildly from the view back in the head office. They also suggest that promotions run on a variant of Gresham’s Law: Bad PR may not drive out good, but it sure comes across louder.
The issue of reimbursement to store operators for value or freebie promotions is turning out to be as crucial as the online worries about load-testing the Web site. McDonald’s and other quick-service operators have had some well-publicized disputes with franchisors about their value pricing policies, although of course the questoin of not going along with those price promotoins does not come up with companies like that.
In Quiznos case, in at least a few instances like those described here, the company seems to have neglected to get a strong buy-in from the people actually giving out the free subs. And while the promotion may have exceeded their response expectations, it looks like the consumer complaints may also have outstripped projections. I’d expect that the next freebie coupon won’t appera until those internal issues have been ironed out.
March 5th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Big deal Quiznos — Jersey Mike’s Subs gives away free subs at every store opening.
March 5th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
No problem at all redeeming a coupon in Columbus Ohio… once we found an open Quiznos. The one Quiznos we’d been to previously went belly up and until we drove up we had no clue. Quick check to see where the next closes Quiznos was on the trusty cell phone. I never thought of them NOT accepting the coupon, although I know they are franchises.
I made sure I had my ID although I was ordering a salad and giving the free sub to my dinner companion. I think I must have found the coupon on Twitter, did not forward it on to anyone though. They did not check my drivers license. They were not swamped but it was the middle of the afternoon.
March 5th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
I had already given up on Quizno’s although I had been a regular customer for the Prime Rib & Peppercorn. I had a very akward and actually insulting customer service experience my last time at Q’s, found the webpage and submitted all the details while fresh in my mind along with the exact time, date and location. I got no response of any kind - nothing. So I’m with the person who commented above; I have written Quizno’s out of my universe and I don’t care if they give away food or if they offer to pay me to eat it.
March 5th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
While visiting Texas, took my Free Coupon, told I had to make a purchase in order to get Free Sub. Purchased small soup (ugh- $1.99- old/stale with little to no taste as did not resemble their normally available Brocolli Cream soup.) Then coupon deducted was more than value of small sub purchased- thus Corporate reimbursed more than I received. The sub was NOT prepared the same as I usually get EVERY week from a different Quizno’s location as it contained far less of the sandwich menu contents.
Glad this was NOT my first Quizno’s sub or it probably would have been my last.
A promotion to invite and attract new customers may have done more harm than good with loyal customers.
March 5th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
I imagine the promotion was a success if you imagine you gave away 1,000,000 subs. We were told no franchise locations in southern texas were participating, only corporate stores. When asked where corporate stores were, the locations did not know. I know of 13 other people who ran into the same situation. I will never, ever eat a Quiznos sub the rest of my lifetime. What a snow job.
March 14th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
I tried to redeem my coupon it was rejected ! I am very diappointed with the way my problem with a free coupon was handled. I live about 45 minutes away from Quizno’s Since I was out of town for shopping I bought along my free coupon Upon entering and prior to ordering I presented my coupon for a free small sub from my sign up to Quizno’s Million Sub Giveaway. A friend with me also had a free coupon I asked if they needed to be rang up separately we were told it one per person but they could ring up both together so we were good to go I ordered another sub and other items ,upon paying the lady who totaled my order told me the codes came back invalid. I told her I showed her my coupon prior to ordering and she/they said we could use them. She then said go ahead and eat she would re-enter the codes, after she finised with the person behind me, she had me pay the total minus the free coupons, we proceeed to eat I went back to the register to see if everything was ok before leaving she told me she ran the codes thru 3 times and both codes were invalid she told me I had to pay the difference This was extermely aggrivating since I presented the coupons prior to ordering. I told her I was very unhappy about being told I could use the coupons then being told after eatting I was obilagated to pay for the 2 free subs, she told me so many people were using multiples of the same coupons at different locations and that the codes may have been used at another location,
I felt like I was being accused of something I did not do, I dont even know where another Quiznos is had stopped at that location previously when shopping out of town This again upset me. I had no reason to lie nor did I have time to go to different locations or know where different location were. My coupon said it could only be printed once. I told her I printed ours this morning prior to leaving for our trip and there was no other Quizno’s location between where I live and her store, she said they have no way to verifiy that becuase of the coupon being printed online, This implied I was lying, I did not feel it right for me to pay for the item that was supposed to be free, she then offered to call “Bob” she explained to him, he told her to have me call Quiznos about the problem. I was given a napkin with the phone number. While I understand she handled the situation as she was directed by Bob. I felt the situation was poorly handled by her management. My friend and I are extremely insulted and disappointed
after reporting our problems both by email and online 2/28/09 we have yet to receive a response from Quiznos as of 3/14/09
March 16th, 2009 at 9:36 am
I plan to picket the Waldorf, MD stopre for accusing me of making a photocopy of a coupon and treating me liek a criminal.
March 31st, 2009 at 10:32 am
I feel bad for the franchisees. Due to Quiznos Corporate’s screw-up, they’re suffering a negative perception by the ignorant masses (Ignorant here meaning that you folks aren’t aware of certain details involved in this debacle…), who don’t know why a franchisee might have been reluctant to take these coupons. Quiznos Corporate really screwed the pooch here, and the franchisees are suffering for it.
I suggest reading the following page to be enlightened. http://www.unhappyfranchisee.com/quiznos-exec-explains-sub-giveaway-debacle-what-do-franchisees-say/
You might not be any more inclined to eat at Quiznos after reading this than you were beforehand, but at least you’ll have an understanding of why this happened. Maybe that will make it easier to accept why this ordeal turned out to be more a nightmare than a blessing…
March 31st, 2009 at 11:10 am
Um…Of course the CMO will say the promotion was a success - that’s her job. I can’t believe THIS is what you chose to write about this promotion - one that is roundly considered to have been a giant screw up. Why not simply call this an interview with Ms. Steinfort? I don’t see much else in this post and i certainly don’t see any sort of critical analysis of how the promotion actually went down.
March 31st, 2009 at 11:19 am
Darrell Hinkle — Glad you are knowledgeable and understand this whole debacle! Hopefully others will gain more information and not totally blame the franchisees who were not prepared, properly compensated, and pretty much forced to participate in an activity that would cost them money. Many don’t know how franchises work and the legal problems that can result if one disagrees or questions something.
For the record, the franchisees were not compensated for the amount of the sandwich: they received a small portion of the cost and only up to a certain amount. So many lost money because the franchisor decided to run this promotion.