Mark Vandegrift 
Welcome to another episode of the Brand Shorthand Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Vandegrift, and with me today is the purest of positionists, Lorraine Kessler. Lorraine, welcome.

Lorraine Kessler 
Hey, welcome Mark. I'm glad I'm pure at something. Instead of pure I won't finish the sentence, but other people can.

Mark Vandegrift 
Ha ha. Well, before we get into today's topic, I want to give you an update because we have some brand news and we haven't had a lot of that this year. It's been a little slow on the brand news front. But this one caught my eye. It is one of my all-time favorites, not just because of advertising, but I think it's created more dad jokes and office talk than pretty much anything, any commercial that ever has. And that is the well-known Hump Day Camel is back for the NFL kickoff. So I don't know if you liked the camel, but I kind of was a fan. What are your thoughts?

Lorraine Kessler 
Oh my gosh, this is such a wonderful commercial. It's terrifically done. brilliantly scripted. The voices are great. The voice for the camel's great and you know, look, as we wax all the time about branding and advertising, the experts, right? So called. We forget that a brand is not what we create or what we think we created. It's what people say we created. So in this game fame trumps everything and the camel is famous it is a the people embraced it no doubt that Geico who originated it in 2000 I think I think it was around thirteen. They created a fitting commercial for their brand, but moreover, an idea, and this is so important, that has proven to be contagious and ingenious enough to be adapted and I think this is the key culturally. I mean it's a cultural phenomenon. What look at our agency. What we how do you celebrate hump day, Mark?

Mark Vandegrift 
Well, we have donuts.

Lorraine Kessler 
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're not from the camel. I they're not some not some deposits from.

Mark Vandegrift 
Not those kind of donuts, no.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, no, not those kind of donuts. The kind that regular people can eat. Yeah, you celebrate hump day. You celebrate it. So I think it's pure gravitas that Geico, apparently I don't know, I didn't read into this, but allowed the NFL to usurp this idea, and it's extremely fitting to the message because everybody's thinking about what? Thursday night football, and all of a sudden there's a kind of a left Louis where it's going to be Wednesday and it's going to be hump day. So it's actually a perfect fit for the message and it delivers the message in a way that is both powerfully creative and highly relevant to what they're trying to get across. And, you know, I was also surprised by, you know, I even though these are announcers and they're used to, you know, being on TV and all that, but they're not Mike Tirico, Cris Collinsworth, and Mike Tomlin, they are not actors and they're fantastic in this spot. So I would say kudos all the way around. I give it an A plus. I think I think it was really worth the investment that the NFL made.

Mark Vandegrift 
Well, we've usurped an idea or two, maybe. 

Lorraine Kessler 
No yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Don't yeah. And don't assume the position. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Mark Vandegrift 
Quiet Van advertisement. Well, Jack gave it to us, so we're allowed to we're allowed to usurp it. Just like Geico gave it to the NFL. So well, your made-up title today was not without purpose, calling you the purest of positionists, because it leads into our topic for the day. you sent me a couple of YouTube videos made by Michael Gridley about brands who lost their way and what went wrong. And so I figured what we'd do today, Lindsey will throw the video and the link and everything into the episode. But I figure we could follow along with his video, and it's called The Rise and Fall of Wendy's. If you want to just look it up now, it's The Rise and Fall of Wendy's by Michael Gridley. And we'll discuss why what you said positioning is everything until it isn't. Which coming from the purest of positionists is quite the statement, right? But there's a reason for that. So you and I are diehard positionists. So nobody fear, we're not going away from our position. but it's hard for us to say this, and that yet being business owners and in business for so long and being married to people in business and et cetera, et cetera. You're the daughter of a businessman, you know there's many more factors that decide a brand's fate besides their position. And I think Wendy's is a good example of that. They've experienced a great rise of a brand that, because of their position, it was a great move, but yet they've seen now what, 30 years, 25, 30 years of some tough times based on moves that had absolutely nothing to do with positioning. So I guess to kick us off, since you shared the video originally, any initial thoughts that you want to give our listeners as we get into this Wendy's story?

Lorraine Kessler 
Well, yeah, I think the and we can talk more about it, but you know, let's just talk about what positioning should do and why it is everything. Positioning and many people get confused by this or they are just I don't know if they're confused but they're wrong headed about it. They think that having a strategic difference that's highly relevant against competition to define your brand, is only about advertising. And the first thing I would say is that is absolutely dead wrong. Positioning is upstream from branding. It's the first idea, and certainly it informs advertising and all branding, but it's radical in the sense of a in the medical sense in that it informs everything about the organization, not just the advertising. I mean it provides the true north for informing you know, your behaviors, your culture, what you believe, what you put emphasis on. And always, always, and when we do positioning, we always ask, you know, the four C's, one of those C's is about the company and what's the one question we always ask? we always ask that question about what matters to you beyond making money. Right? What that's the key. So profit is only seeing you need obviously profit's essential for a business to survive. I'm not anti-profit or anti-capitalist, but I realize that profit is a byproduct, so when profit overtakes positioning in terms of the focus, it and it becomes the only end game and not the byproduct of doing the right things in the right way, big brands like Wendy's and others, like GM over the years, GE over the years, they make really big mistakes.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah, I like how you said that where the profit dries everything. And one of the questions, and I know we haven't been in ADs together for a while, but I've when the founder's around, one of the questions I've added is why did you get into business the first place? And it's usually interesting they'll go, Well, because I just noticed that no one did this. And that this, whatever that is, was the thing that differentiated them. And if it was still applicable, you know, it would it would make sense. You know, you remember you remember why Chuck Innis came home one day and said to Dick, there's just no one that designs well. He was in the printing business and he said, I just don't see anybody that designs well. So the reason that Chuck got in was because no one else was doing a thing, right? Now we've since usurped that into positioning because he realized the importance of that. But if the founder is there and you can ask that question, you usually get some pretty good insights. And speaking of founders, that's what we're talking about here with Wendy's, because all these moves that were done well are a result of Dave Thomas. And once Dave passed from, you know, being involved because he passed, that's when things kind of went awry. So, let's explain the video for Michael Gridley in a few words and graphics. So here's where he starts. Dave Thomas, the founder, started off working with Colonel Sanders at KFC. I don't think many people knew that. And he actually had a big impact on the Colonel. He told him to simplify the menu, add the rotating chicken bucket sign, if you remember that, for those of us old enough to remember that and he told the colonel to be the face of the commercials, ironically, because that's what Dave ended up doing. So these are some of the key moves that started off. You know, it initially helped the KFC brand, but how do you think that formed maybe Dave Thomas's later moves? How it paid off at KFC and you know, changed Dave's course of life?

Lorraine Kessler 
Well, and I think Michael makes this point in the video that Dave was an ultimate salesman and I've always said, positioning grew out of my desperate salesmanship, and need to have something different to say, and being a great merchandiser, like figuring out what can get attention. So the spinning bucket is one way. He was a great merchandiser, he's a great salesman. But I would say that his other advice the I advise to simplify is about focus. And according to Al Reese, the other half of the Jack Trout positioning father of positioning duo is that creating a successful business isn't determined by size, but by focus. And the more intense the focus, the stronger the company gets. When a company gets too big, it devolves. It's trying to do too many things and you can't be all things to all people. And I think the really deadly question that works its way into corporate boardrooms is what else can we be selling? Right? And that's a trap because the more product you handle, the more likely you are to lose focus. So the answer to that question should be what else can we be selling that fits who we are and really goes along and doesn't take us off track. So again, it's the simple principle that you can't be all things to all people and it's better to be strong somewhere than weak everywhere and I really wholeheartedly believe in that principle. And I think that's where when you read Jack Trout's book, Big Brands, Big Trouble, you'll see that a lot of these brands go off the rails. They've just start trying to do everything like GE doing finances financial services, right? I mean, it just got to be big too big. The second thing he said and or that he recommended was that the colonel be the spokesperson. And it fits because while the differentiator for the product is Kentucky fried chicken. It's a what we call a destination position. You know, we all know that wines from France are great or California. And so there's this kind of connection to geography. And so what really and and sometimes we overlook this when we're thinking on the strategy side of a positioning idea like we're going to be the smartest or the fastest or the lightest or whatever it is. That's the strategy. We forget the creative side of differentiation. And this is where something we call personification comes into play. That's a big branding word. But you grab on to an icon that people connect with the brand and the brand difference. And you do that through the creative, how you do your commercials and whatever. So the kernel was a perfect personification for Kentucky. And you know, what it what we were, we did the erasable man, right, for a fabric that you could wipe off Sharpie. You could clean it with just a wet rag. So Tony the Tiger, Flo from Progressive, Betty Crocker. I mean you could go on and on. And this personification's a very powerful thing to incorporate and it fits. Here's the other thing, it really does fit. I don't understand again Liberty Mutual and now they have this liberty bibberty thing. I don't get that at all. I don't know how that fits with their difference at all. But in this case it's it the two are seamless. And so that's brilliant. And there's also sonic personification for branding. Like you know, if I just say the beginning of Law and Order, a TV show, most people can do that sonic in their head.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah. Intel inside.

Lorraine Kessler 
Yeah, yeah. Or 48 hours, or even McDonald's, right? And also jingles like safe light, safe light repair, safe light replace. These are all creative parts that add differentiation. And so I think that was a great suggestion by Dave and it certainly worked.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah, good. Well, continuing through the video, not long after his time with KFC, Dave Thomas then founded the first Wendy's in Columbus, Ohio, nearby us. O-H-I-O, that was in November of 69. 1969, sorry for the Gen Zers on here. And this was the start of Wendy's

Lorraine Kessler 
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they'll think it's eighteen sixty nine. 

Mark Vandegrift 
Versus 1869. 1969, 1860. Right. So this was the this is the start of Wendy's, and it only took him a hundred months after Wendy's was founded to get to a thousand locations. So that's literally 10 locations per month that was that was added to the

Lorraine Kessler 
Wow. Yeah, that's incredible. Good. I'm glad you could do that math. I know. 

Mark Vandegrift 
Dick's gonna give you a test soon, Lorraine. Don't worry. He'll he'll visit you in your nightmares.

Lorraine Kessler
It's I you know what? I always did well on his test, which is really bizarre. I don't know why. I think I think it was a bad thing.

Mark Vandegrift
Well what differentiated Wendy's was that they had the fresh, never frozen beef. That was, you know, their very that was their position. They dramatized it that way, et cetera. And that positioned them very well against fast food competitors who couldn't upset their existing supply chain and the process that had been installed over decades. So the other thing. As you mentioned, the simplify. Dave offered a simple five item menu. It was a burger, fries, frosties, drinks, and chili. And the chili was made from the leftover burger meat. So it was a natural use everything from the kitchen. So explain why you think Wendy's took off so quickly from a positionist perspective.

Lorraine Kessler 
Well, I think they were very mid west. I think very Ohio. I mean, I came from New Jersey. I never knew any burger place that had chili and I thought Ohio was crazy for chili. I never had chili in my entire life. I don't know, maybe just other people, we were Italian, we didn't eat chili. It just wasn't something we made. So I go to Bowling Green, Western Ohio, and it's like, oh my gosh, there's this fast food place. I think the main thing that they and We'll talk a little bit about the fresh, you know, never frozen. But I think quality was always their magic ingredient. Fast food kind of didn't have there was kind of a sacrifice you understood, because there was McDonald's and Burger King and it was kind of understood that you're sacrificing some quality for fast and inexpensive. And the problem with quality is it's very it's relative. It's relative to what I consider to be quality. I remember we had someone who made chairs for casinos and the peep the casino's idea of quality was a really soft cushion so gamblers would sit in their chair forever. They wanted it soft. The client wanted a chair and sold a chair that lasts forever. Well, that's not what casinos wanted. So are both quality? Yes, but they're very different attributes. So I think that when we get to fresh, never frozen, that was a differentiator based on a feature that supported quality. Nothing wrong with that, but it's a feature and features can be easily, and I think Mike makes this in his video point, features can be trumped. Someone can finally say, hey, we can do fresh too, and now you're kind of screwed if everything has been based on that. So I think that there what happened to them, they also had another feature that they promoted pretty heavily, and that was the square burger, which meant you got more meat than the round, small kind of burger. So but these are both features. So laddering up to quality. I think part of their problem is a lack of focus they as they geographically. I don't think Wendy's was as successful outside of its mid Atlantic, Midwest kind of place geographically. It just seemed to lose something as it got too geographically dispersed. And that that's a part that can happen with as your focus gets stretched.

Mark Vandegrift 
I think to tag on to your I mean it leads right through the video to tag on to what you're saying about quality. The January 1984 ad Where's the Beef? Which people still to this day they use that line, right? And they may not even know where it came from. That was a quality statement, meaning no one else has the beef, the quality of beef that we have. We don't even know what's in those other burgers. So it was a good competitive repositioning that was going on. And that drove sales up one third in just one year. So I mean, you know, you take a a billion dollar company and drive it up 31%. and the ad became a cultural phenomenon. They were actually selling merch, you know, with where's the beef on it, and that old lady that was saying it. So it you don't you don't get that very often when it comes to to advertising. I gotta ask you this question. Do you remember where you were when you first viewed the Where's the Beef ad?

Lorraine Kessler 
Are you kidding me?

Mark Vandegrift 
I can ask you like where were you when the World Trade Center was hit, right? And you probably remember, was the where's the beef really a cultural phenomenon that you remember where you were?

Lorraine Kessler
Mark, it was the eighties. I had two children. I had a hundred and fifty year old house. I had an over an acre of yard and I was working nights and days in my beginning advertising career. I don't rem my kids always kid me, it was the eighties. Mom won't remember anything. So I do remember the ad. And that's great. It's up there with Hump Day, it's up there with drink the Kool-Aid, you know. Which my son didn't know what that was in reference to. He's 41. He was like

Mark Vandegrift 
with Bob Jones.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, he yeah, he was like, I had no idea that came from Jim Jones.

Mark Vandegrift 
Or Jim Jones, Bob Jones. Different, different person. Sorry for all my Bob Jones friends out there.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah. But no, that that campaign, I mean culturally was it was perfect and it was perfect in expressing how you get more of a meaty hamburger from Wendy's as a statement of quality, just as fresh, not frozen, all good because they're trying to define quality in terms of really what Papa John's had. Better ingredients, better you know, better food, better quality. So yeah, that's where that was but the eighties. Oh my god.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah. Well, let's talk about the spokesperson of Wendy's, which became Dave. And it's funny you talk about him being a great salespeople. I think most people envision Dave Thomas in his older years being kind of soft spoken in his commercials and such. And he was one of the first companies to do that founder led, founder on screen marketing. And according to the video, and hopefully not just urban legends, so I gotta defer to Michael Gridley here. At one point, Dave had higher brand recognition than the president of the United States, with over 90% of people recognizing Dave Thomas. 

Lorraine Kessler
Well, was that George Bush Senior at that time?

Mark Vandegrift
So well, 84 would have been Reagan. 

Lorraine Kessler
Would it be Reagan? Oh my god. Yeah.

Mark Vandegrift
Very popular president, you know. Of course, Dave came later, so maybe that would have been like 88, but that that would be hard to believe. But I could see it happening with George Bush Sr. Well.

Lorraine Kessler 
Yeah. Yeah, I could tell but Yeah.

Mark Vandegrift 
He was boring.

Lorraine Kessler
He was pretty un he was pretty forgettable

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah. Well, explain the move a little bit around using Dave and becoming the face of the brand and maybe later what ended up resulting in the undoing of Wendy's.

Lorraine Kessler 
Yeah, well, I mean, Dave was a sustaining idea for the brand. I mean, people connected and he I think what he had going for them was it was a tremendous amount of integrity and trust. People trusted him, right? And when he talked about the burgers and what he was doing, you had a reason to believe the quality was better. So again he becomes a support or a proof point to this quality through a personification of the brand and so while Clara Peller was became famous for Where's the Beef, again, that was not a sustaining idea. That was about a feature. So it's really i it's kind of like Betty White for Snickers, right? Great idea. I just where do you go after that? So I think what I like and I think I've never talked about this, I love having a sustaining idea like Dave, who you see most of the time, and then pulsing with something like Clara or whatever, the hump day kind of things, to hit on a specific feature or that supports the overall. I love that. I think the two running together is absolutely brand genius.

Mark Vandegrift 
I think that's what Geico does with their Geico and then they hit with other stuff.

Lorraine Kessler 
Yeah, and I think I think that's really brilliant. If you have the money to do it, we have a lot of clients who don't have the money to do that, but if you have the money to do that, and with all the stores Wendy's at, you need that sustaining idea that's always building the idea, the main idea, and then you're punctuating it with reasons to believe or benefit advertising that says this is why this is important or reminds people why it's important.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah. Okay, so we have twenty twenty hindsight now. And Dave, as we all do, or will, he passes away. You think that triggers the beginning of the end for Wendy's, or was it a mere correlation and not causation? So T us up for part two of our episode, which will be the downfall of Wendy's. This is all about the uplift of Wendy's right now.

Lorraine Kessler 
Yeah, I think certainly I think it's hard to say correlation or causation. I think it was a correlation, but I say that with with lack of evidence in some directions, but what what I'm meaning to say is obviously when you set up the founder who has an expiration date, as we all do, as the spokesman in the sustaining idea you should be planning for what happens next before what happens next. And right. And so that's where it could be correlation or causation. So you lose a big part. Just the same thing if you have a great celebrity who hawks your brand and something they do something really negative or bad and they end up going to jail or prison or whatever that's really gonna hurt you. But in this you should be able to plan for what's the transition. There was a short time when his daughter did some ads, but she just lacked she just didn't have the either they didn't stick with it long enough or whatever. I don't know.

Mark Vandegrift 
She didn't have on the on camera charisma that Dave did.

Lorraine Kessler 
Yeah, yeah. So I think that at the same time other people got involved in Wendy's because it was so successful and these are what I call the profiteers. And what happens with the profiteers who are outsiders who come in is again they put profit over positioning. They put profit over as the end game, the only end game. And rather than seeing profit as a byproduct of doing the right things in the right way, it becomes the holy grail. I think that's a problem and I think that's what happened to Wendy's. But we'll learn more when we go into session two. Yeah.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah. Well, if you're on the edge of the seat, join us in two weeks as we discuss the fall of Wendy's. Some people like the carnage better than the blessing. So we'll talk about what went wrong and our assessment of why. So let's wrap up today's episode of the Brand Shorthand Podcast. Thank you, Lorraine, for joining us. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in this week. Don't forget to like, share with a friend, and subscribe. Hit that subscribe button. And until next time. Have an amazing day.