Radio advertising draws fast-casual customers

In its target-marketing efforts, Miami Subs Grill restaurants in Jacksonville, Fla., faced a stiff challenge: each location had different marketing needs.

One store was located in the heart of a business district, did a big lunch business, but wanted a larger dinner crowd. Another was across the street from a major shopping center and was building a play area to attract families with young children.

 

Not only were the Miami Subs Grills' stores diversified, but menus bore tremendous variety: party platters, salads, wings, beer, wine and champagne in some locations, and ice cream at others.

 

The solution? Radio advertising. After a six-month test, the company was sold on the medium.

 

Saladworks, a 79-unit chain based in Conshohocken, Penn., has wrapped its arms around radio since its founding 20 years ago. As the company grew, its use of the ether increased proportionately.

 

"The million-dollar question is, 'Who's your core customer?' If you have a good sense of that, you can target specifically and get the best bang for your buck when you're doing radio campaigns," said Saladworks chief executive John Scardapane. "It gives you the opportunity to interest the consumer and get them to listen to what you're talking about."

 

According to the Radio Advertising Bureau, a non-profit trade association with 5,000 member radio stations, the total weekly radio audience in 2005 was nearly 229 million listeners, or 94 percent of the American population. That's as good as it gets from a saturation standpoint, and it proves ideal for brand-building strategies.

"The usefulness of radio is that it's got a broad reach," said Scott Hughes, vice president of marketing for Bruegger's Bagel Bakeries, a 250-unit chain based in Burlington, Vt. "We're essentially a breakfast and lunch day part concept  centered around bagels as the core menu item. Our charge has been to grow out the menu line, and we have used radio to help us do that."

 

Branding efforts have occupied much of the company's marketing time after the focus switched to becoming a recognized fast-casual concept about three years ago. Besides bagels, Bruegger's offers gourmet sandwiches, "softwiches" ("sort of like a bagel, only bigger, softer and square"), tossed salads, gourmet soups and desserts.

"Radio can either provide a key role or a supportive role," Scardapane said. "It really helps identify the brand and gets the brand at the top of mind with consumers that we're trying to target."

 

Hitting that target is what makes radio work for Saladworks.

"We can target a specific market and go as large or as small as we want, only targeting that demographic," Scardapane said. "It's much more pinpointed marketing than doing a complete blanket of print ad or billboard."

 

And it's more affordable than TV. Rates for radio spots vary greatly by market, ad length, creative fees and frequency. But for every radio "buy" Saladworks purchases for a duration of eight to 10 weeks, $180,000 to $250,000 is usually spent.

 

"We're always experimenting, so we'll do the morning rush hour for two weeks, then we might do the news-time period for two weeks, then we'll do the drive home for a couple of weeks," Scardapane said. "Although it sounds like a lot of money, it's small in overall marketing. Even that amount doesn't get you the penetration to capture all of those times throughout the day, so we concentrate on just one day part for a while, then switch to another."

 

There are other favorable attributes for a radio presence. The Radio Ad Effectiveness Lab, a radio-industry funded organization, released a 2004 report demonstrating how radio advertising affects consumers in ways TV and newspapers don't. Among the key findings in this study, which was a two-phase survey of adults 18 to 54, was radio listening is a one-on-one and emotion-driven experience, and listeners believe that both the medium and its advertising are more relevant to them.

 

For the media buyer, the study found the replacement of one television or newspaper exposure with two radio exposures resulted in equal or better effectiveness. Also, the use of radio added 15 percent of total brand recall compared to television alone. What's more, the average daily share of time spent with radio (44 percent) beats out TV (41 percent) during the 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. day part.

 

There's even a place for ads on the airwaves for a generation not raised on radio. Research in 2005 by Taco Bell and its PR agency Cohn & Wolfe showed younger target audiences were more influenced by radio than other media.

 

Dallas-based Dickey's Barbecue Pit, a 64-unit fast-casual chain, recently dropped TV from its marketing mix for the first time in nearly 15 years. Instead, the chain is banking on a billboard campaign backed with radio ads to increase customer counts and promote products. Of the reasons for dropping TV, the company raised the issue of new technologies, like digital video recorders, that eliminate or decrease the effectiveness of such spots.

 

 

Since the initial campaign in 1996, Jacksonville-area Miami Subs Grills have hit their stride on the airwaves with a regular commercial schedule and live remote broadcasts at each of five stores. The stores feature on-air gift certificate giveaways to stimulate sampling of the variety of menu items, tie-ins with localized events and feature sponsorships.

"A really effective ad is something that addresses a fast casual's target consumer and conveys why that person would come to that restaurant," said advertising and marketing consultant Don Zihlman, founder of StreetSmartSelling.com. "For a lot of fast casuals, that might be a price point. It may be a special on certain types of food. It takes something as strong as a two-for-one special, certain times of the day or certain days of the week. But the advertiser has to cut through all the clutter and drill the message home."

 

Not only can branding be effective, but corporate values can also be communicated via radio. For Saladworks, that means explaining the beliefs under-girding operations — that a quick meal can be both nutritious and delicious — giving customers a reason for visiting its stores. The current campaign features female speakers stating that they are "salad divas." There is a hint of humor in the ads, which Scardapane says is an important part of advertising on the airwaves.

 

"After we meet with our creative marketing team at The Star Group and talk about what our customer-driven values and company beliefs are, we think the ad has to be humorous, and it can't be a hard sell," Scardapane said. "We don't get good results when it's just a hard sell. We want the ads to be interesting with different layers, not just a commercial that you want to end so you can get back to your music."

 

In spring 2005, Bruegger's launched a radio campaign consisting of four radio spots created by Mason Inc. to promote its "build your own salad" program. The aim was to build lunch awareness, and it appears that was achieved. Measuring its true impact accurately, however, proved elusive.

 

"The goal was actually two-fold," Hughes said. "We wanted to promote awareness of the brand and repositioning of the brand, but secondly it was to get trial. We didn't feel like we were seeing the return on investment to the level that we were seeking. Consequently, at the end of that campaign, we diverted almost all of our radio dollars into print."

 

Zihlman notes that many advertisers make the "traditional mistake" of using radio strictly for branding and print strictly for couponing.

 

"It's almost an apples-and-oranges mentality," Zihlman said, "but there's no reason why you can't offer discounts or specials on radio as well. The key is to say the right things in your ad and really selling that motivational device to get people to respond."

Despite the lack of sales increases with radio, Bruegger's still values radio's effectiveness.

 

Hughes is "now looking at radio again, with a little twist in how we've done it before, to see if it might make more sense for us given our current situation."

 

At Saladworks, response is tracked by which radio station gives certain spots, which run during various day parts. One example was when Saladworks customers mentioned a program called 'The Noon-time Workout,' which the company sponsored on a local station. Another example is a contest that recently ran on various stations in Saladworks markets. The only way the masses could know of the contest was from the radio ad, which directed listeners to a Web site. The Web site was designed just for the campaign, so success was measured by number of visits.

 

"There's no crystal ball that says this radio campaign or that one works better or stronger," Scardapane said. "We're not looking for that immediate spike, or if we received more coupons with one radio campaign over another."

 

Saladworks averages 5-percent comparable-store sales increases annually. Scardapane believes that metric can be maintained while increasing customer counts, which is "results enough for us. We are much more comfortable with radio because it's part of our overall plan of building brand awareness, the long-term results."