Economy's Innocent Victims: Weird Ads

Hamilton Nolan — Fri, 09 May 2008 09:42:05 EDT

Sure, the current dicey economic climate has reduced America to nation of terrified food hoarders. But more importantly, it has cost us some of our annoying and unnecessarily strange advertising icons: Applebee's Wanda Sykes-voiced talking apple, and a bunch of guys running around in bizarre red pigtail wigs on behalf of Wendy's. Take a moment to mourn them. "Both campaigns were meant to attract younger diners," the Times reports. But they failed, because kids aren't doing as many drugs these days, I guess. The companies' new advertising strategy? "Hey, look at our food."

Advertising and restaurant executives point to several reasons that neither campaign was a hit. The bizarre red wig commercials were too much of a departure from Wendy's folksy brand; the apple was not a strong enough image to represent Applebee's. It is unlikely, though, that either one would have been ended so quickly in better economic times.
Instead, both marketers have opted for a more recession-proof approach: glamour shots of food that are intended to make mouths water and prompt consumers to reach for their wallets.

THEY WILL BE MISSED. Wait; no.

[NYT; disclosure: I once worked with Doug Quenqua, author of this article.]

Wendy's: The New Algonquin Round Table

Chris Mohney — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 12:30:58 EDT

The Village Voice runs an article focused on Ronald Hoeflin, a Hell's Kitchen-dwelling intelligence nerd who's founded four different societies to further subdivide and celebrate those in the most lofty ranks of the IQ scale. (Mensa? Fine, if you're a retard.) Apparently there's plenty of inter-society feuding and melodrama ("it's our Brangelina" says one society member of the theatrics). However, what caught our eye was this:

Every afternoon, he goes to Wendy's in Hell's Kitchen and reads for several hours with a magnifying glass—he's legally blind—as preparation for his three-volume treatise, The Encyclopedia of Categories: A Theory of Categories and Unifying Paradigm for Philosophy With Over 1,000 Examples.

What is it with Wendy's always lurking in unexpected corners of the zeitgeist? Just some time ago we were all afflicted with the iconic image of Courtney Love enjoying a bag o' square burgers and a nip-suck, a moment later immortalized in song. More recently, waifmodel Isobella Jade has extolled the virtues of the Wendy's dollar menu. And now it seems the burger joint is perceived as an ideal venue for crafting a three-volume treatise on intelligence. Bring on the colon clogs.

The Intelligencer [VV] [via Boing Boing]

[Photo: novon]

Gawker: Wendy's

Economy's Innocent Victims: Weird Ads

Wendy's: The New Algonquin Round Table