SITUATION

Subway has been serving up classic deli sandwiches for the past 60 years. But, those subs have gotten a bit stale and didn’t stack up to the competition. Which is why in 2022 Subway launched an entirely new menu “The Subway Series”. 12 of the most delicious subs they’ve ever made.

BRIEF

Prove to the world that Subway’s new lineup of Sandwiches are not just a remix of old ingredients but rather the most delicious, sauciest, and crave-able sandwiches they’ve ever made.

OBJECTIVE

Show people how Subway finally has subs that are truly worth craving and not just a last minute fast food option.

Every year, Subway (and every fast food brand) hires the world's biggest celebrities to promote their food. But there’s a problem… they don’t actually eat the food. They take a bite, smile and spit out the food. So Subway hired notoriously picky eater and NBA All-Star Stephen Curry to see if he’d take a bite AND swallow one of the new Subway sandwiches. Well, when it came time for the bite and smile, something unexpected happened… he ate the whole thing.

He was so into this sandwich, he was using the custom jersey we made as a napkin, wiping marinara and bits of real meatball into the threads. He finished it in just a few minutes, but in that time he’d created a piece of sports and sandwich history: The Game-Stained Jersey. A jersey that was proof of how good these sandwiches actually were.

Pro Athlete partnerships have been a proven part of Subway’s marketing strategy for years. But in 2022 Gen Z took to social to call out Subway for quote "selling sandwiches their athletes probably don't even eat". That skepticism drove negative sentiment on every athlete-featured post from the brand. We found our Gen Z demo

We saw Gen Z target audience overlap with NBA & Stephen Curry fandoms on these social platforms: this was where the problem was happening, so we met it head on, leveraging short form video to tell the story.

We captured Steph eating the sandwich in it’s entirety. No cuts, all one take. He truly loved it. No spit bucket. He used the custom Subway jersey he was wearing as a napkin and in the end, the white jersey was now stained with all the sauces, melted cheese and meatball from the sandwich. The jersey and video were now PROOF of how amazing the sandwiches were.

The campaign ran for two weeks on Subway and Stephen Curry’s social channels. The social posts of the video directed fans to the EBAY page where they could bid for the jersey. Thousands of bids poured in and in the end, a man from Singapore paid $6,300 for “The Game Stained jersey."

There were 13,563,083 impressions (almost all organic) just between Subways and Stephen Curry’s Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and Facebook.

There were also 298K shares and posts that drove people to the EBAY auction. In combination with the larger campaign, we helped drive +8.6% lift in sales beating sales targets by 358% with Subway.

And most importantly, the sale of the jersey raised $6,300 for the Stephen and Ayesha Curry's Eat. Learn. Play. foundation.