Restaurant brands that tout their product quality and value continued to get through to consumers last year, according to “buzz score” data compiled by marketing research firm BrandIndex.
BrandIndex senior vice president Ted Marzilli said Subway, which had the highest average buzz score of any restaurant brand in 2010, also took the top overall score for all companies, beating Ford, Google and Cheerios. A buzz score is calculated by surveying consumers and asking whether they’ve heard anything positive or negative about a brand, then subtracting unfavorable responses from favorable ones.
Marzilli said the restaurant brands with the highest average buzz scores last year advertise nationally and that many have benefited from being positioned in quick service at a time when value is still key.
“Two of the things people have been noticing over the last few year are value … and new products, either on the healthy side or the higher-end side, whether it’s QSRs coming out with steak burgers and salads, or more healthful options,” Marzilli said. “Value pricing and higher-end, healthier options is still the right balance for a lot of these chains.”
Subway, seemed to take advantage of not only its size — more than 24,000 locations in the United States — but also its value and menu innovation. The chain was on TV all year promoting its healthful positioning, its $5 foot-long sandwiches or new menu items like the Savory Chicken Caesar sub. Subway’s average buzz score for 2010 was 41.7.
The ratio of value and menu innovation will look different for each restaurant brand, Marzilli said. For example, The Cheesecake Factory, which had the No. 16 average buzz score of 19.7, would skew more toward product news driving its perceptions than another casual-dining chain on the list, Olive Garden, whose commercials advertised more price-value messaging and contributed to its 36.0 buzz score, good for No. 2 on the list.
McDonald’s has ridden its Dollar Menu and premium products like McCafe Frappes and Real Fruit Smoothies to sales gains over the past year, yet its buzz scores did not keep pace with many of its competitors. Marzilli said McDonald’s absence from the top 20 reflects the fact that it often gets singled out whenever negative attention comes to quick service, such as high-profile anti-obesity campaigns or the recent lawsuit in San Francisco that resulted in a ban on toys in many kids' meals.
“McDonald’s is the lightning rod for anything negative that happens or whatever gets debated in the industry, and that’s what’s suffered in these scores,” Marzilli said. “The company’s stock and same-store sales have been consistently up, and they’ve introduced lots of items from coffee to salads to smoothies, but all that gets drowned out by the lightning rod factor.”
Starbucks also absorbs the negative impact of its perception as “the $4-coffee shop” in its overall buzz scores, Marzilli added, although the coffeehouse chain was among the companies that improved their buzz scores the most in 2010. Starbucks’ 5.2-point gain from a buzz score of 7.6 in 2009 to 12.8 last year trailed only Domino’s in overall improvement.
Starbucks and Domino's also had the two highest-ranked restaurant commercials last year, according to Los Angeles-based firm Ace Metrix. (EARLIER: The 20 restaurant ads of 2010)
“Starbucks improved by introducing some new blends with Via and by emphasizing their retail a little more,” said Marzilli of BrandIndex. “They went through a bit of turmoil a year ago when they closed some stores and took a lot of heat, and now they’re starting to bounce back.”
Domino’s 6.4-point improvement in 2010 buzz score from 2009 made it and Starbucks “the true turnaround stories in people’s perceptions,” Marzilli said. While Domino’s earned significant increases in same-store sales in 2010 on the strength of its reformulated pizza and accompanying “Oh Yes We Did” marketing campaign, Marzilli cautioned that radical transparency may not pay off quite as handsomely for other brands as it did for Domino’s.
“Domino’s campaign was risky, and they stuck with it throughout the year and convinced the rest of us that its changes were meaningful,” he said. “That road is still open to other folks in the industry, but it gets challenging after the first big campaign’s been successful. Being a ‘me-too’ probably wouldn’t carry the same reward on the upside, but the downside is just as much even if you’re not the first. The opportunity [to gain through transparency] is still there, I just don’t know if it’ll have the same impact.”
New York-based BrandIndex conducts more than 1.2 million consumer surveys annually for brands across several industries.
Contact Mark Brandau at [email protected].