Long John's switches strategy, wants to 'sea you' satisfied

Nation's Restaurant News, March 7, 1988 by Marilyn Alva

Long John's switches strategy, wants to 'sea you' satisified

In the past year Long John Silver's core product, cod, was battered by supply and pricing problems. As a result, the chain passed along price increases to customers.

It was not a good year. Sales were soft for most of 1987, and in the second quarter, which ended Dec. 30, real sales for comparable company-operated shoppes dropped 4 percent.

Clearly, something had to be done.

The Long John's chain recently abandoned its three-year-old "Sounds Good To Me" advertising campaign for a new umbrella one, "We Wanna Sea You Happy," which emphasizes attributes other than fish, namely "seafood" like shrimp and service that is superior.

"We have oysters, claims, chicken, shrimp, and several kinds of fish. Yet we're known as a battered fried-fish chain," said Robert M. McDevitt, senior vice president of marketing for Long John's. At a time when fish was battered by supply shortages and high prices, the battered chain did not want to be known for its battered fish.

McDevitt said the new campaign would make it easier to market products other than fish and show, from a service perspective, the chain "putting our best foot forward," McDevitt said.

Through April 3 television advertising will focus on shrimp: four shrimp meals for $3.99. Shrimp happens to be readily available and well-priced now, and McDevitt said, "It is a happy case of consumers buying more of it and having more of it."

McDevitt is new to Long John Silver's, which had its top marketing post empty for a long time. He comes from Pizza Hut, where he was vice president of marketing development, a job that involved field marketing, sales promotion, and media planning.

He is getting used to what he calls the "giggest difference" between marketing pizza and marketing fish--which is that marketing plans for fish are affected more by product availability and price.

Media weights for the "We Wanna Sea You Happy" commercials by Foote, Cone & Belding, Chicago, are being increased about 15 percent. The overall advertising budget for the year will be about $30 million.

Meanwhile, Long John Silver's broiled seafood test continues, supported by new television commercials with an Oriental bent and a low-calorie health theme. The broiled seafood line of halibut, flounder, shrimp, and cod is in more than 100 units.

Nasty Noid: After having a mere cameo role in January's "Here's the Deal" price promotional commercials for Domino's Pizza, the nasty Noid is back on center stage again, cuter than ever before. We wonder why we had reservations about him back in his early days.

New commercials feature the Noid as the "wicked wizard" who is adept at making pizzas "old and cold." His greatest challenge is about to come: breaking the "magic" of Domino's "hot and fresh" pizza.

From his storybooklike castle, the Noid is transposed into the kitchen of an American household, where a steaming-hot Domino's pizza has just been delivered. Even with his magic wand, the Noid is unable to freeze the pizza, as he has done so many times with other pizzas back at the castle. In fact, his attempt backfires: He ends up covered with icicles, having grown "old and cold" himself.

For these new commercials Group 243 Inc. and the Claymation production house, Will Vinton Productions, put the Noid in a more understandable environment rather than in his previous abstract settings.

Also, the spots stress the "hot and fresh" qualities of Domino's because of the 30-minute delivery guarantee. In the past 30-minute delivery was the main theme.

The new wicked-wizard Noid commercials with the hot-and-fresh slant will run on network television through the spring.