Wendy's: Still Mourning the Passing of Uncle Dave?

For 20 years or so Wendy’s rocked along at Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising, a confident player in the fast food stakes, behind McDonald’s and Burger King, safe in the knowledge that its fare was fresher tasting and sometimes cheaper. So all the advertising had to do was deliver an appealing message to keep Wendy’s “top of mind. That it did, built on the shoulders of a genuine celebrity, founder Dave Thomas who even well into his 80s gave us a reason to want a non-frozen, freshly grilled, square burger, with plenty of fixings.

Then Dave died in 2002. And Wendy’s has been lost in the wilderness ever since. Someone came up with the idea of building the brand around the iconic red-haired, pigtailed woman in its logo. Not a bad idea, but by itself neither a marketing nor an advertising strategy, as the people trying to make this character come alive quickly learned.

So they tried jokes and added some new lines. “3conomics” for three sandwiches for 99 cents, and “It’s Waaay Better than Fast Food.” Then they had a red-haired, pigtail-wig wearing white man walking in a forest, crying out “I deserve a hot juicy burger!” And later a red-haired, pig-tailed black man sitting next to a white guy eating a less than appealing “air supply” burger.

None of this really worked. While McDonald’s menu outdistanced the other two for innovation and breadth and Burger King tested a line of new sandwiches, Wendy’s pretty much limped along at the back of the pack.

Now investors Nelson Peltz and partners, who bought Wendy’s and Arby’s from the Thomas family to form the Wendy’s Arby’s Group (NYSE symbol: WEN), have called for a review and moved the $300 million advertising account from Kirschenbaum & Bond across town in New York to the Kaplan Thaler Group, an agency known for building Aflac from nowhere with an intrusive, quaking duck.

Kaplan Thaler beat out an impressive list of finalists: the Martin Agency, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, California’s Venables Bell & Partners and the incumbent. That’s because Linda Kaplan-Thaler’s people not only know how to entertain with the sensibilities of musical comedy, they are smart, strategic thinkers.

I predict that Linda Kaplan and her gnomes will figure how to crack this brief. I expect they will build red-haired, pig-tailed Wendy into an icon that delivers a smart, memorable message, not a sense of “What was that about?” irritation. You only have to look on YouTube for all the riffs on what’s been wrong with Wendy’s to realize that the under-30 crowd really doesn’t like the advertising, but is still intrigued with red-haired icon and just about anything from the fast-food chain named after Melinda Thomas’s nickname. So there’s still a lot of heritage to build on.

All fast food today still tastes like cardboard to me. But some of it is more appealing than others. And all of it is fast and cheap. You just have to pull a few aces here to strike a winning hand.