← Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly
Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly
S11E24 - Arch Enemies
00:27:21
This week, we look at some of the biggest arch rivalries in the marketing business. We’ll tell a story about how Burger King figured out a way to offer Whoppers at McDonald’s, how Wendy’s threw a mix…
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:04]
A
Hey, we've got some big news. For the first time ever, both Apple and Android users can subscribe to our shows. Introducing our new expanded podcast subscription called Apostrophe All Ears. For just the cost of a single cup of coffee every month, you get a lot of goodies ad free listening across our entire archive. Tsk tsk. I won't judge early access to new episodes before anybody else hears them. You get bonus stories, deeper dives and more color. You get Ask me Anything sessions that we'll have a lot of fun with. You get first jump at our live podcast recording events, which always sell out immediately. And here's another huge bonus. You get access to all of our other Apostrophe shows, including We Regret to Inform you, and Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe and the Beatleology interviews. All ad free. All full of bonus fun. If you join In January, enjoy 20% off your first three months. Just head to the link in the description of this episode and follow the prompts. Not every sale happens at the register. Before AT&T business Wireless checking out customers on our mobile POS systems took too long. Basically a staring contest where everyone loses. It's crazy what people will say during an awkward silence. Now transactions are done before the silence takes hold. That means I can focus on the task at hand and make an extra sale or two. Sometimes I do miss the bonding time. Sometimes AT&T business Wireless connecting changes everything. We interrupt this program to bring you an important Wayfair message. Wayfair's got Style Tips for Every Home. This is Stiles Mackenzie helping you make those rooms sing. Today's Style Tip when it comes to making a statement, treat bold patterns like neutrals. Go wild like an untamed animal. Print area rug under a rustic farmhouse table. From wayfair.com fierce this has been your Wayfair style tip to keep those interiors superior. Wayfair Every Style Every Home ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. The Real Housewives is a guilty pleasure for most. But if you're looking to not feel guilty about that pleasure, tune in to Everything Iconic with me, Dani Pellegrino, where I break down all the messy moments and behind the scenes antics of Bravo's popular franchise. On Everything Iconic, I also interview celebrity guests like Kelly Ripa, Keke Palmer, Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and more about their guilty pleasures, their past work, and so much more. So if you're pop culture obsessed and find yourself watching way too much reality TV like me, tune in to Everything Iconic with Danny Pellegrino Wherever you listen to podcasts, ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com this is an apostrophe podcast production. You're soaking in it. Your teeth look whiter than. No, no, no, You're not you. When you're hungry, you're in good hands with all things. You're under the influence of Terry O'Reilly. Antonio Projias was born in Cuba in 1921. Early on, he showed an incredible flair for art. His father, who was a lawyer, didn't approve of his son's artistic ambitions. But Antonio was determined and worked at day jobs in order to buy art supplies so he could draw cartoons in the evenings. As he got older, several of his cartoons were published in Cuban newspapers and magazines. By the age of 25, Antonio Projas was named the top cartoonist in Cuba. But there was a lot of political turmoil in his home country. In the late 50s, Prohias was the editorial cartoonist for a newspaper in Havana and began to criticize Fidel Castro's communist policies. The government suspected he was working for the CIA. He was labeled a spy. So in 1960, Prohias fled Cuba to the United States. A few days later, Castro took over the last of Cuba's free press. Prohias knew no English when he arrived in New York. He worked a succession of blue collar jobs by day and worked on a new cartoon idea by night. That cartoon was titled Spy versus Spy. He wondered if Mad magazine might be interested, so he took his 14 year old daughter Marta along as a translator and walked into the Mad offices unannounced. He showed The Editor Spy vs Spy. Through his daughter, he told them that it was a satirical comment on the Cold War. Intelligence versus counterintelligence. Skulduggery versus Slapstick. One spy was dressed in black, the other in white. In each strip, the spies tried to annihilate each other in hilarious and ingenious ways. The editors hired him on the spot. The first Spy vs. Spy comic strip was published in Mad Magazine issue number 60 in January of 1961. The comedic combat provided endless laughs for Mad magazine readers, me included. Spy versus Spy was my favorite part of the magazine. First, the spies had a unique look. Beak like faces under pointy hats in identical outfits that only differed in color. Second, we never knew what the feud was all about. Prohias never explained. And we never knew who was good and who was evil. Black got the better of white, and white outfoxed black just as often. Both had the ability to build any weapon, trap or crazy contraption to defeat the other, which usually ended in humorous catastrophe. The cartoons themselves were masterful in their simplicity. One showed Black eavesdropping on White, who is apparently tapping out Morse code messages over the radio. So Black gets a pencil and paper and starts copying everything down. Except the message is so long and so fast that he becomes buried in paper. That's when White opens the door to reveal he had a woodpecker tapping on a log just to mess with Black. Simple and hilarious. Each cartoon strip was appropriately in black and white. And probably due to the fact Prohias didn't speak English, Spy versus Spy was always wordless, and therein lies its genius. Speaking of Morse code, Antonio Prohias put a subtle dot and dash Morse code under the Spy versus Spy title in every single cartoon deciphered, it said by Prohias. He drew the cartoon until health problems forced him to retire in 1987. It then carried on in the hands of other fine cartoonists. Antonio Prohias passed away in 1998. When asked about spy versus spy, he once said, the sweetest revenge has been to turn Fidel's accusation of me as a spy that into a money making venture. There are many archenemies in the world of marketing. In some categories, it's a flat out battle. Coke versus Pepsi, Burger King versus McDonald's. Apple versus IBM. The number two brand is always pecking away at number one. Many of those tactics are ingenious. It's intelligence versus counterintelligence, skullduggery versus slapstick. And it's a money making venture. You're under the influence. McDonald's versus Burger King. McD's is the 800 pound gorilla in the fast food category. And Burger King is particularly ingenious when it comes to sniping at McDonald's. Not long ago, Burger King was launching its new app. The main challenge was getting people to care about yet another fast food app. And Burger King didn't want to default to the usual food offers as an enticement to download the app. All the other fast food restaurants had done that already. So Burger King and its ad agency came up with a bold idea instead. The idea was dubbed the Whopper Detour. Burger King offered a $0.01 whopper to people who downloaded their app. But here's the kicker. That offer was only valid when a customer was in enemy territory, meaning you could only place the order for the $0.01 Whopper if you were at McDonald's. Utilizing geo fencing technology and real time data, the Burger King app was able to detect when a customer was at a McDonald's location. Once confirmed, the $0.01 Whopper offer would be unlocked. The customer could then order the Whopper through the app and make a detour to pick it up at the closest burger king. Offering $0.01 Whoppers to people at McDonald's was an incredibly bold idea. To promote the new app, Burger King created a video of people going through a McDonald's drive thru asking for their Whoppers. Hi, we're just here to order the Whoppers. Whopper. Whopper. It says buy a $0.01 Whopper at McDonald's. That's crazy. Sorry, I'm just trying to get my Whopper. Have you heard of the crazy Whopper deal? Yeah, everybody's been asking, but like, we never heard of it ever. Oh, that's Burger king. This is McDonald's, sweetie. Well, I pushed on here and it said, order a Whopper for a penny at McDonald's. That's a lie. That's a big thing. The $0.01 Whopper Detour campaign only lasted nine days, but it was a big success. The Burger King app was downloaded over 500,000 times in the first five hours alone and over 1.5 million times during the initial nine days. It has been downloaded over 6 million times since. The return on investment was 37 to 1, meaning the sales at Burger King were 37 times higher than the cost of giving out $0.01 Whoppers. As the 200% increase in sales continued to hold after the $0.01 Whopper campaign ended, which meant an additional $15 million worth of annual sales through the app. One of the most amusing aspects of the campaign was a print ad Burger King created to promote the Whopper Detour. It showed the famous McDonald's sign that said Billions served and changed it to say billions swerved. Stephen King's novel. It is about a murderous clown who spreads fear and terror. The film version would go on to become the second highest grossing horror movie of all time, earning over $120 million in its opening weekend alone. When the film version premiered in 2017, audiences were on the edge of their seats. It was classic Stephen King horror. But when it premiered in Germany, audiences were in for one more unexpected surprise. As the film ended, the screen suddenly went black. But just before the credits rolled, a white spotlight appeared on the screen. It said, the moral is, never trust a clown. Then a second spotlight appeared. It was the Burger King logo. Once the crowd caught the joke, they burst out laughing and applauded. Burger King had hijacked a Screening of it to troll Ronald McDonald and turned the record breaking film into the longest Burger King commercial of all time. Which played perfectly into a line Burger King often uses in its promotions. Never trust a clown. Sometimes a brand needs to create its own nemesis. Back when I was a writer at ad agency ddb in the mid-80s, the chairman of the agency was Keith Reinhard. Keith was a legendary creative director in our business. When his ad agency landed the McDonald's account in 1971, he had overseen the original you deserve a break today campaign that firmly established McDonald's once and for all. Keith eventually rose through the ranks to run DDB worldwide. But back in those early days, research revealed that the Ronald McDonald character needed to be strengthened. And Keith wanted to find a way to make Ronald more heroic. So he called up the legendary Chuck Jones for advice. Chuck Jones, of course, was one of the geniuses behind all the Warner Bros. Cartoons, including the Wile E. Coyote Roadrunner series. And Chuck gave Keith an insight. He said that in order to make Ronald McDonald heroic, he needed a nemesis, an archenemy. So Keith and his team sat down to brainstorm potential archenemies. They considered aliens, monsters and pirates. But nothing seemed just right. Then, early the next morning, Keith bolted upright in bed at 3am with a thought. The word burger sounded like burglar. So Keith waited until 6am Then called his art director Rudy Docterman and said, rudy, I've got it. Hamburglar. It was the perfect villainous name for an arch nemesis. By the time Keith got to the office, Doctorman had already sketched out the first iteration of the Hamburglar. Though it would go through a few updates over the years. The Hamburglar's main look consisted of black and white convict stripes, a black mask over his eyes, and a wide brimmed hat. That fun feud between Ronald McDonald and the Hamburglar would play out in dozens of commercials from that day forward. Good morning, class. Good morning, Ronald. Today's subject, the Hamburglar. The Hamburglar is very clever and very strong. The Hamburglar. And he loves taking McDonald's hamburgers. So what should you yell when you see it? Alfredo, sailor. That's right. Uh oh, Hamburglar. It's a good time for the crazy. You've got a lot to learn. The Hamburglar tried to steal hamburgers every chance he got, but was always captured by the now more heroic Ronald McDonald's. Which reminds me of that time Wendy's aimed a mixtape at their nemesis. Before we had ATT business wireless coverage, our delivery GPS wasn't the most reliable. Once our driver had to do a 14 point turn to get back on route. A 14 point turn. An influencer even livestream the whole thing. Not good for business. Now with AT&T business Wireless routes are updating on the fly and deliveries are on time. And the influencer did get us 53 new followers though. AT&T business Wireless connecting changes everything. Lunch was great but this traffic is awful. Can we stop at a bathroom? Are you alright? I keep having stomach issues after eating like diarrhea, gas and bloating, abdominal pain and sometimes oily stools. Sound familiar? Those stomach issues may actually be a pancreas issue called Exocrine Pancreatic insufficiency or epi. Creon may help manage epi. Creon is a prescription medicine used to treat people who can't digest food normally because their pancreas doesn't make enough enzymes. Creon may increase your chance of fibrosing colonopathy, a rare bowel disorder. Tell your doctor if you have a history of intestinal blockage or scarring or thickening of your bowel wall, if you are allergic to pork or if you have gout, kidney problems or worsening of painful swollen joints. Call your doctor if you have any unusual or severe gastrointestinal symptoms or allergic reactions. Take Creon as direct by your doctor and always with food. Do not chew capsules as this may cause mouth irritation. Other side effects may include blood sugar changes, gas, dizziness, sore throat and cough. These are not all the side effects of Creon. Call 800-633-9110 or visit creoninfo.com to learn more. That's C-E O N info.com I'm asking my doctor about EPI and if Creon could help. Wendy's vs McDonald's Back in March of 2018, Wendy's teased something on social media. The tweet said fresh never frozen beets. Two days later, Wendy's dropped a mixtape. Yep, a mixtape from a burger joint. But it wasn't just a collection of tunes. It was a collection of original songs aimed at its fast food arch enemies, especially McDonald's. The mixtape was titled We Beefin a double Entendre meaning burgers and the hip hop vernacular for a feud or calling someone out. It contained five tracks. One was titled Clownin' and took a shot at Ronald McDonald. My meals are great People lining up like every day leave you shame make you run back to circus so late that's cold game but what you expect from trying to play Won't say no names but you a Clown get it? Okay. Another track was titled Rest in grease and trolled McDonald's ice cream machines. That's a Joe Why your ice cream machine always broke why your drive thru always slow why your innovation just can't grow it's queen when you need a samo Wendy's even sent a Spotify playlist link directly to McDonald's on Twitter. Other tracks took potshots at burger King and KFC. Rest in Grease debuted at number one on Spotify's Global Viral 50, which means it was the most shared trending track around the world. The mixtape climbed to number three on the iTunes hip hop charts, plus it received the equivalent of 76 years worth of streaming time in one week. Clowning around with music generated a ton of free press for Wendy's. Pepsi versus Coke in one of the most famous examples of a brand throwing shade on an arch rival, Apple's famous futuristic commercial titled 1984 trolled IBM. That ad revolutionized super bowl advertising. Suddenly, advertisers realized commercials could have Hollywood production values. That was the moment the super bowl became the super bowl of advertising. Pepsi had not done any big super bowl commercials up until that time. It was deemed too expensive. But Pepsi's advertising agency, bbdo was in awe of the Apple commercial. And when the agency dug deeper into the super bowl viewership stats, it realized that people buy more soda, more pizza, and more snacks on Super Bowl Sunday than any other day of the year. As obvious as that seems now, it was a big insight. In 1985, Pepsi was the number two brand always nipping at Coke's heels. It began in earnest with the Pepsi Challenge campaign and morphed into the all out cola wars. So Pepsi's ad agency decided to create a commercial for the 1985 Super Bowl. The strategy was to create a commercial with Hollywood sized ambitions while taking a run at Coke. The resulting ad was titled Archaeology. Inspired by the Apple commercial, the Pepsi ad begins with a view of a futuristic cityscape as a Pepsi spaceship cruises by. Meanwhile, on the ground, a professor is taking his class on a tour of an archaeological discovery. This class is perhaps the greatest archaeological discovery of our time. A dwelling called the Split Level Ranch. His students listen as they drink their Pepsis. One student finds an old baseball in the rubble and asks what it is. Ah. A spherical object begins to hurl at each other with great velocity while others look down. Another student finds a dusty electric guitar and asks what it was used for. The professor says the device generated excruciatingly loud noises that made people gyrate in pain. Then a student finds another unfamiliar item. It's an old Coke bottle. What is it? I have no idea. The choice of a new generation. It was the dictionary definition of slamming the competition, suggesting that Coke wouldn't survive into the future. That commercial was voted the most popular ad of the 1985 Super Bowl. And in the ad industry, it's considered one of the greatest examples of arch enemy advertising. Domino's versus Subway. Domino's has always been an aggressive marketer in the crowded pizza category. There are a lot of choices when it comes to za to expand its market, Domino's decided to start offering oven baked sandwiches. Introducing Domino's oven baked sandwiches. Four flavors, baked at 450 degrees and delivered right to your mouth. Just $4.99. Domino's. You got 30 minutes. That move suddenly put Domino's into direct competition with Subway. To launch its new oven baked sandwich line, Domino's organized a series of independent blind taste tests. Domino's claimed the results showed the public preferred Domino's Sandwiches 2 to 1 over Subway. Domino's oven baked sandwiches, the taste that beat Subway's in a national taste test 2 to 1 starting at $4.99. WHO beat Subway in a national taste test? Domino's. That didn't sit well with Subway. The company immediately protested the taste test results and had its law firm send a cease and desist letter over to Domino's. That led to an eyebrow raising commercial featuring Domino's CEO talking about the letter. Domino's oven baked sandwiches beat the taste of Subway's 2 to 1. Then Subway's lawyer sent us this letter demanding we pull our commercials off the air. I was gonna burn the letter, but everything's better when it's oven baked. Then the CEO threw the cease and desist letter into the aforementioned 450 degree oven where it caught fire right there in the commercial. Subway countered, saying the testing was flawed and the results were biased against subway. The Domino CEO fired back saying the 2 to 1 claim was reviewed by both lawyers and the television networks before airing and the claim passed all the requirements. And with that, another classic rivalry was born. Here's how to stay alive longer so you can enjoy Boost Mobile's unlimited plan with a price that never goes up. Do not mistake a wasp nest for a pinata. Stay alive and switch now at boost mobile. After 30 gigs, customers may experience lower speeds. Customers will pay $25 a month as long as they remain active on the Boost Mobile unlimited plan. Dreaming of getting the all new iPhone 17 Pro designed to be the most powerful iPhone ever. Then stay in bed and let a Boost Mobile expert deliver and set it up for you. Oh actually they will have to get up and open the door. Oh right. Delivery available for select devices purchased@boostmobile.com supply. DHL vs UPS the courier business is another very competitive category with heavyweight brands like UPS and DHL. DHL was born born in San Francisco over 50 years ago. It was founded by three men named Adrian Dalcy, Larry Hilblom and Robert Lynn, D, H and L. They wanted to create an international courier service. Back in the early 70s. Only Loomis and Purolator delivered parcels overseas and DHL saw an opportunity. It was very successful, grew over the years and was eventually purchased by Deutsche Post in Germany. Not long ago. DHL supposedly wanted to promote the fact it had more offices, more vehicles and more personnel in many countries around the world, which allows it to deliver packages faster. But advertising in key markets around the world is expensive, so a stunt was devised. Large yellow packages were created and covered with Thermos active foil. Each package had big red letters on it that said DHL is Faster. Then those packages were cooled down below the freezing point, causing the Thermos active foil to turn completely black and the DHL is faster line disappeared. Then competitors were called to pick up and deliver the black packages, which they did. As the packages warmed up in the rival delivery trucks, they transformed back to yellow and the line DHL is faster magically reappeared. So what the public saw in the streets of various cities were courier competitors like UP delivering packages that said DHL is faster written across them in big red letters. A film was posted on YouTube that showed their rivals wheeling those huge packages through crowded streets with people staring at the spectacle. DHL has since said it wasn't responsible for the stunt, that it was done by a rogue advertising agent agency. Hard to know, but it was the ultimate checkmate. Why boast about your own company when your arch rivals can deliver the message for you? There are many arch enemies in the world of marketing. While those brands may use humor to slam their rival, in reality it's no laughing matter. Marketing is a battle. But there's a fascinating aspect to rivalries. Often an enemy defines you. It gives you a wedge. It lets you draw a line in the sand. That conflict can create interest, and interest can get people off the fence to choose sides. There is also an unwritten rule between archenemies. You may notice that the dominant brand seldom acknowledges the feisty challenger, McDonald's rarely hits back at Burger King and Coke rarely responds to Pepsi, a lesson Coke learned the hard way when it responded to the Pepsi Challenge by changing its formula, one of the biggest blunders in business history. It must be difficult to bite the corporate tongue when a smaller competitor's sniping starts to get a lot of attention. Attention. But there will always be a number one brand and a number two brand. That's a fact of life. Like Spy vs Spy, they are doomed to an eternal standoff when you're under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly. This episode was recorded in the Tear Stream Mobile Recording studio. Producer Debbie O'Reilly sound engineer Jeff Devine research Terry O' Sullivan theme music by Ari Posner and Ian LeFever. If you enjoyed this episode, you might also like Sue Me, sue youe Blues Famous advertising lawsuits season four, episode 20. You'll find it in our archives. Where wherever you listen to podcasts. See you next week. Fun fact amazingly, the $0.01 Whopper Detour app had to geofence all of McDonald's nearly 14,000 locations. That's a whopper of an achievement. Lifelock how can I help? The IRS said I filed my return, but I haven't. One in four taxpaying Americans has paid the price of identity fraud. What do I do? My refund though. I'm freaking out. Don't worry, I can fix this. LifeLock fixes identity theft, guaranteed and gets your money back with up to $3 million in coverage. I'm so relieved. No problem. I'll be with you every step of the way. One in four was a fraud. Paying American not anymore. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com specialoffer terms apply acast powers the World's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. The Real Housewives is a guilty pleasure for most, but if you're looking to not feel guilty about that pleasure, tune in to Everything Iconic with me, Danny Pellegrino, where I break down all the messy moments and behind the scenes antics of Bravo's popular franchise. On Everything Iconic, I also interview celebrity guests like Kelly Ripa, Keke Palmer, Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and more about their guilty pleasures, their past work, and so much more. So if you're pop culture obsessed and find yourself watching way too much reality TV like me, tune in to Everything Iconic with Danny Pellegrino. Wherever you listen to podcasts, ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.