Gus Carlson is a U.S.-based columnist for The Globe and Mail.
If you are of a certain age, you may remember Wendy’s iconic 1980s advertising slogan, “Where’s the beef?”, a dig at rivals for skimping on the meat in their hamburgers that became a popular crack about anything that came up short of expectations.
Forty years later, the question is being asked again in a proposed class-action lawsuit filed in New York against Subway, claiming there isn’t nearly as much meat in the sandwiches it sells at its restaurants compared with those depicted in its marketing and advertising.
The lead complainant, Anna Tollison, said the Steak & Cheese sandwich she got from a store in Queens looked nothing like the one she ordered on the app. She took a photo of the US$7.61 sandwich, which appeared to be mostly bread, with a paltry amount of meat inside.
Her suit, which is being held up as a stark example of inflationary gouging, contends that the product depicted on the app “contained well over 200 per cent more meat than what was in the actual sandwich” she received, and the company’s advertising is “grossly misleading.” Lawyers say it will likely be joined by thousands of other customers who feel the same way.
It’s not the first time the Connecticut-based chain with 37,000 stores in 100 countries has been called out. In 2017, the CBC reported that Subway’s chicken had only 50-per-cent chicken DNA, which prompted the chain to dispute the findings and file a lawsuit that was eventually dismissed.
A few years ago, Ireland declared the sugar content in Subway bread was so high it violated the country’s health standards. More recently, a California lawsuit alleged the company’s tuna salad contained things that weren’t tuna at all. And there have been claims the chain’s foot-long sandwiches are not, in fact, a foot long.
Whenever you see things like this, you wonder if marketing people ever get out of their brainstorming circles and actually go to see the products and retail processes for themselves.
Didn’t one of them ever go to a Subway restaurant to try the product at the customer face? And didn’t anyone ever say, hey, wait a minute, I think we have problem here? What we’re saying to customers is not what we’re giving them.
What makes these marketing flubs even more painful is that Subway has used the healthiness of its sandwiches – fresh ingredients, freshly made to order – a competitive differentiator from other fast-food options. A Subway sandwich is the healthier choice, the brand crows, especially compared with deep-fried, high-fat and high-calorie foods.
The chain even showcased the healthy value of its products in weight-loss regimes. Jared Fogle, the face of Subway advertising from 2000-2015, claimed to have lost 245 pounds on a weight-reduction plan and credited his regular diet of Subway’s products for helping him do it.
Subway is not alone. Burger King, for example, has come under fire for allegedly delivering Whoppers that weren’t so whopping in terms of meat content. McDonald’s and other chains have faced similar criticism calling out gaps between product marketing and reality.
Now, the elites will say, predictably, that people shouldn’t be eating fast-food anyway, so they get what they deserve. The reality is, not everyone can afford to shop at Whole Foods, especially those for whom stubborn inflation makes it difficult to make ends meet. For many people, fast food may be one of the few affordable choices.
Skeptics will look at the Subway suit and say it is simply another example of an increasingly litigious culture, where people will sue companies for anything – and lawyers will file even the most vacuous complaints if there’s a buck to be made.
The consumer landscape is littered with mindless consumer lawsuits. Just last month, for example, a JetBlue passenger sued the airline because she said her in-flight ice-cream sandwich was too cold and caused her tooth to crack.
In the race to the bottom of the sea of integrity, lawyers who file these claims and the marketers who prompt them are in a dead heat. For companies, it’s the cost of doing business, and in most cases, any settlements reached with disgruntled customers are mere rounding errors on their balance sheets.
The real losers are the customers. Agree with their choices of food or not, they are entitled to a fair deal. If Subway advertising and app marketing leads you to believe the sandwich you ordered will have a certain amount of meat, you should get it, no matter how much or how little it costs.
Marketers need to understand that aside from how these shortfalls reflect on their own professional integrity, people are paying attention to this stuff – perhaps more closely than ever at a time of high prices. Like meat in Subway sandwiches, there needs to be a bigger helping of truth in advertising.