The power of consistency in advertisingThe power of consistency in advertising

If you visit Gray’s Inn, a Tudor-style building with a lush quadrangle in London, you’ll see the greenest, thickest lawn of your life. The groundskeeper is quite free with advice on how to get your lawn looking just like his: “Water, roll, thatch, seed and fertilize. Keep doing that for 500 years, and your lawn will look just like this one.”

If a lawn can take 500 years, how long should it take to put an idea into consumers’ minds? Ten years? Twenty years?

“Better ingredients. Better pizza” is a slogan first used in May 1995 in tandem with marketing featuring Papa John’s spokesman and founder, John Schnatter. Eighteen years later, it continues to be the theme of the brand’s advertising.

That’s highly unusual. Most restaurant advertising programs come and go faster than the specials at your local diner.

Perhaps no other category possesses the same level of “idea turnover” as does the restaurant industry. And, in my opinion, this turnover is greatly undermining the effectiveness of most restaurant advertising programs.

Here’s the problem: Once an idea is strongly positioned in consumers’ minds, you can’t drop it and replace it with a new one.

Take this test. What idea do you associate with Grey Poupon mustard? If you’re like most people, the only idea that comes to mind is the famous commercial in which a Rolls-Royce pulls up alongside another Rolls-Royce, and a passenger in one asks, “Pardon me, would you have any Grey Poupon?”

Until the most recent Academy Awards gala in February, Kraft Foods had not run a “pardon me” spot for Grey Poupon for 16 years. Yet most people around my age and older still remember the ad.

Take this second test. Except for the “pardon me” ad, do you remember any of the advertising Grey Poupon has used in the past 16 years?

I thought so.

Not every idea rings the bell.

However, it’s a mistake to assume you can take any idea and run it for decades and become successful. On the contrary, most ideas are dead on arrival, and repetition is just throwing good money after bad.

But when the following two criteria are met, you should give serious consideration to running the same advertising idea for decades to come:

1. There must be an immediate connection with consumers. That’s not difficult to measure — Twitter chatter, Facebook mentions, a parody on a comedy show. Volkswagen’s Darth Vader ad from the 2011 Super Bowl is a good example.

2. The idea must contain a motivating reason for buying the brand. Some kid in a Darth Vader costume thinking he can start a car remotely is not a reason to buy a Volkswagen.

On the other hand, Grey Poupon is a high-end Dijon mustard made with white wine. The “pardon me” commercials with the twin Rolls-Royces dramatize the “high end” idea in a memorable way.

Perhaps the most famous fast-food slogan is, “You deserve a break today.” Why doesn’t the chain continue to use the idea, which contains a motivating reason to bring the family to McDonald’s?

With dual-income families at their highest level ever, it would seem like a perfect time to promote the joy of not cooking.

Where's the beef?

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Few fast-food commercials are remembered as well as the Wendy’s commercials featuring Clara Peller. What’s remarkable about these commercials is the fact that they ran for only two years some 19 years ago.

How many people will remember Wendy’s latest commercial featuring its Flatbread Grilled Chicken Sandwich? Or the slogan that ends the commercial, “Better food for everybody from Wendy’s,” followed by the punch line, “Now that’s better”?

When you plan your next television advertising campaign, keep in mind the average person watches nearly five hours of television a day, including some 75 minutes of advertising. That’s about 150 commercials a day.

Your single biggest problem is creating a commercial that consumers will remember. And it starts by asking a simple question: What is my brand known for?

Wendy’s is known for hamburgers. That’s one reason “Where’s the beef?” is still remembered today. But currently, Wendy’s is trying to change its reputation to include chicken and salads. Apparently, the strategy is to run chicken and salad commercials and let the consumer figure out that Wendy’s is the hamburger place that also sells great chicken and salad dishes.

That’s a waste of money, in my opinion. You can’t depend on consumers to sum up your position. You need to do it for them.

Consumers are not stupid. They put Wendy’s in the hamburger category along with Burger King, McDonald’s and a number of other chains. And they know these chains also sell chicken sandwiches and salads. So what’s the point of the advertising?

Why the constant change?

Why do restaurant chains change their advertising campaigns as often as they change their menus? Nothing works in advertising better than repetition, repetition, repetition.

Last month, Nike’s Philip H. Knight was inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame. What is Nike famous for? A slogan that is 24 years old: “Just do it.”

One reason restaurant chains keep changing their advertising slogans might be their advertising agencies. An agency can’t get famous unless it wins advertising awards. And an agency can’t win an advertising award if it uses an old slogan.

The creative director of one of South America’s leading agencies put it this way: “The trouble with clients is that when a campaign is successful they want to do exactly the same thing next year.”

Don’t fall for this line of baloney.

Laura Ries is president of Ries & Ries, a marketing consulting firm in Atlanta. She can be reached at [email protected].