Subway to Tackle the Ultimate Marketing Challenge

Subway is preparing to tackle what may be the ultimate marketing challenge: Getting kids to eat their veggies. The sandwich chain recently announced that it has joined First Lady Michelle Obama’s Partnership for a Healthier America and made a three-year commitment to promoting healthier eating choices for kids.

As part of the pledge, Subway will launch $41 million multi-platform marketing campaign aimed at increasing kids’ fruit and vegetable consumption, implement new marketing standards, and strengthen its children’s menu offerings.

The chain says the revamp will include only offering items on its kids’ menu that meet federal school lunch nutritional guidelines, such as apples as a side and low-fat or water as the default beverage.

The marketing plan is the company’s largest kid-focused branding campaign to date, and includes spends on general marketing, in-store merchandising, television advertising, digital and social media, and public relations.

Subway says the point of the marketing campaign is to fundamentally change the way kids think about certain foods: “Our goal is not to just increase veggie consumption,” Tony Pace, the CMO of Subway told AdAge. The point is “trying to get kids to want to order veggies. Our meals aren’t premade, so we’re going to try to get kid consumers to ask us to pile on the cucumbers or the spinach.”

Finding a way to get “kid consumers” to pile on veggies will be no easy task, but taking it on is a smart move by Subway. Not only does the marketing campaign help differentiate it from other fast-food chains, but it also brings Subway back to its healthy, Jared-diet roots. The undertaking is also a good reminder for all brands that consumers are (slowly but surely) becoming increasingly health conscious, especially when it comes to purchasing decisions related to their children.

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Written by Michael Del Gigante