Learn how Subway’s clever pivot to niche sports boosted brand relevance

If Subway were to turn the tide on sales, they needed to make themselves relevant outside of their heartland of lunch. But where would that opportunity present itself? Sandwiches are a tough sell at dinner time, and it was also a competitive daypart with every brand in QSR fighting to be people’s indulgent dinner treat. We needed to identify an unmet need for a fresher, more permissible QSR choice. From a deep dive into audience data, that opportunity lay in sport.

There was untapped potential in people looking for a more permissible food option pre and post sport, with 21.5 million people participating in sport in the UK and 25 million occasional moments per year that Subway could steal an unfair share of.

The challenge was, Subway had no existing associations in the space. So finding a pertinent moment to establish a credible foothold around sports and active living was needed. That moment was on the horizon, with a 2024 summer packed full of sport.

The 2024 summer of sport was an opportunity, yes, but it also presented a problem in and of itself. The Men’s UEFA European Championships, the Paris Olympics and Paralympics are among global sport’s premier events, with official sponsorships commanding similarly premier rights fees. With one of the longest-standing sponsors being our biggest competitor - McDonald’s.

Expecting Subway to out shout the long-term sporting associations McDonald’s had built with the Olympic movement and men’s football in one summer was clearly unrealistic. Also unrealistic was simply taking up the tried and tested ‘guerilla’ approach to marketing around major sporting events, because we expected every other brand out there to do the same.

With the McDonald’s top-down big money sponsorship approach to building associations with sport out of reach, and no desire to follow other brands’ ambush tactics, we had to “zag” away from this well-worn playbook pulled on by brand when entering sports.

The Solution

If we couldn’t go big around sport, and we couldn’t go guerilla, we had to go up and coming.

The opportunity lay in a generational shift in sporting interest. In 2024, 52% of younger sports fans (aged 13-21) spent more time following non-traditional sports than traditional sports [Whistle Sports], with further research suggesting that early involvement with these sports could help earn “endemic status” or “define the lifestyles connected with emerging sports” [Whistle Sports].

What’s more, some of these sports were due a rare spotlight in the upcoming Olympic Games, with skateboarding and basketball showing increased popularity when the games were on, and break dancing getting its Olympic debut - something that will no doubt make headlines.

Owning the conversation around the niche and growing sports during the Olympic Games was the white space Subway could occupy, and became the foundation for a programme of bottom-up investment in niche and growing sports under a new long-term cultural platform.

‘Fresh Moves’ provided an entry point to non-traditional sports that were about to be given a rare spotlight in Paris through three credible partners: British Basketball, Skateboard GB & Breaking GB.

All three would be participating in Paris, yes, but they also offered three crucial ingredients:

• A young, diverse, and growing audience base (70% of the British Basketball League audience are aged 13-34, with viewership up 217% YoY)
• Community connections (1,700 skateparks across the UK)
• Cultural crossover, with the likes of fashion, music, and lifestyle

This gave us a strong foundation to build a bold, credible, celebratory ATL campaign across 2024’s summer of sport. Supported by a new product line up, “The All-Star Series”, to feed a hungry nation of sports fans. And fronted by the up and coming athletes of the summer’s soon to be most talked about sports via our Fresh Moves partnerships.

Execution

The resulting campaign spanned the entire summer of sport, with the moniker ‘The Footlongest Summer’ continuing to build equity into Subway’s most iconic product. Our activity spanned partnerships, PR, social, CRM (incl. in-app), POS, OOH, AV - and more. However, the key pillars of the campaign were:

• AV

Whilst competitors used global icons to give their comms reach and recognition, Subway used its comms to hero potential Olympic athlete hopefuls from up and coming sports, including the likes of breakdancer Sunni Brummitt and Basketballer Jamell Anderson. The work ran between 10th June - 26th August 2024.

• OOH

Our OOH was used to celebrate our new All Star Menu around the theme of sport, giving our products a platform that builds associations within sport while also driving the craveability of our food.

Results

Subway’s big play into up and coming sports helped us strike gold.

Our sporting comms and Fresh Moves activations got noticed, with the campaign increasing brand buzz among 18-34-year-olds by 67% during the period the campaign ran.

Beyond comms, the campaign helped drive longer-term brand reappraisal. We saw +6pp increase in perceptions that Subway “has a range of healthier options”, a notoriously difficult image statement for a QSR brand to increase by even a single percentage point. At the same time, associations between Subway and the category’s two most important drivers - “serves food I crave” and “worth what you pay for it” - also spiked, increasing by +4pp and +5pp respectively.

From a business perspective, we’ve seen these effects translate into an increase in light buyers and an increase in weekly average volume sales (both YoY).

Beyond the key objectives, a lasting result of the campaign came in it giving Subway a framework for successfully activating sports & active living in markets beyond the UK & Ireland. As green shoots of our work’s success began to show in early July, we packaged up the strategy and creative vehicle and exported them to other Subway markets.