Inside A&W Restaurants’ recipe for survival
Once quite literally left for dead, A&W has fought back behind clever and efficient campaigns, and is now turning toward scientific solutions, Liz Bazner, senior marketing director, tells the Marketer’s Brief podcast.
JaneWalter
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It’s been a little more than 10 years since Atlantic Magazine pegged A&W Restaurants among its list of “10 Brands That Will Die in 2012.”
Needless to say, reports of A&W’s death have been greatly exaggerated.
Liz Bazner, senior marketing director of the franchisee-owned fast-food chain, said she keeps a framed copy of the article at her home office, reminding her of a mission to defy expectations and prove naysayers wrong. Even still, she admitted The Atlantic—which cited scale and marketing deficits against a universe of much larger and higher-spending companies—had a case.
“When we were sold by Yum Brands [in 2011] we had been neglected for a while, and our franchisees had had a really tough time of things,” Bazner recounts in this week’s episode of Marketers’ Brief, Ad Age’s weekly marketing news and strategy podcast. “I’m happy to say 11 years later, our same-store sales are up by 67% from when the brand was sold.”
For this, Bazner cites industrious franchisee-owners, A&W's 100-plus-year heritage, an ongoing supply partnership with Yum, and marketing that’s been efficient, clever, and newsworthy. One recent example from agency Cornett playfully addressed A&W’s own marketing fails while taking a daring shot at the intelligence of consumers.
Other marketing has addressed business and branding imperatives at once—such as the “Anti-Celeb Meal” campaign that lampooned the trend among large competitors to align with celebrity endorsers A&W could never afford—while beating them in a more winnable toe-to-toe fight to attract and retain staffing talent.
Now with enough momentum to grow the brand through new franchises again, A&W is also looking at sophisticated ways to stand out and boost sales, such as an ongoing menu board test using data science to highlight profitable items and encourage customer trade-ups.
“I think we’re certainly thankful to have been around as long as we have, and recognize the history and nostalgia that’s inherent in the brand,” Bazner said. “But it’s 2022, and we’re looking forward to the next century of growth.”
