Hmm, it looks like Quiznos is either stretching a bit much here, or else they are suggesting something uncomplimentary about the taste of their food. You see, in this commercial for Quiznos sandwiches, some guy at a bus stop wearing a Quiznos t-shirt with a sandwich printed on it gets the picture of the sandwich ripped off and eaten by a woman sitting next to him (!). And this is obviously intended to suggest that their sandwiches are so delicious that even a picture of one printed on a t-shirt would taste delicious. (And the thing is, the woman in the ad seems to be completely satisfied with the t-shirt sandwich, which suggests to me that she thinks the real sandwiches taste the same. Maybe the better route to go would be to show her coughing the shirt sandwich up and saying it only looks like a Quiznos sandwich, and that there’s only one place to get a real sandwich that good: Quiznos!)
The problem is, it rather suggests that the sandwiches taste so bad, that nobody can even tell the difference between one of their actual sandwiches and a picture of one printed on a t-shirt. And that doesn’t really do much to suggest that they taste good, does it? And worse yet, this reminds me that their sandwiches always look far better in pictures than they do in reality. And sure, that’s true of all fast food sandwiches, but this reminds me that it has never been more true of any other brand of fast food sandwich than it is of Quiznos sandwiches.
Seriously, look at the sandwiches in their ads, and then go buy one in person: it looks nothing like the one in the ad even remotely! And while this generally true everywhere else too, whenever I see this ad, or indeed any ad for Quiznos, it reminds me that once, a few years ago, I saw an ad for some Quiznos Angus beef sandwich, and I went to get one, but they skimped so much on the beef, it wasn’t even anywhere near to being like the sandwich I saw on TV, and it had so little beef and such a lot of bread, it actually made me ask out loud to my lunch companions: “Where’s the beef?” And while it’s a good idea to make your food look good in the ads and stuff, when they are not even close to resembling the real thing even a little bit, you’re bound to not only disappoint, but perhaps even drive away your customers.
And here’s why this stuff is important: Subway is apparently resoundingly defeating Quiznos in the brutal sandwich wars. And that may be because they’re better, but it could also be due to something else, too. You see, when I look at an actual Subway sandwich and compare it to the big menu photograph, it doesn’t always look exactly the same as the beautiful photograph, but I can at least tell it’s the same sandwich (but without makeup and lighting). But my experience with Quiznos has been that the real-life sandwiches in no way resembled the pictures of them. And when I see this ad, I’m reminded of this, and so it ends up working against the company, rather than for it. See what I mean?
This is just one of countless other ads where someone is shown doing some ridiculously desperate, rude, jerky, selfish, and stupid thing to try to say that the food product is so good, you’ll even want to eat a picture of the food, and you’ll even steal it and screw over your friends to get it. And this, my friends, makes the company look bad, and insults their customers as immoral, selfish sociopaths. (And it’s lazy. But I’ll admit it is silly and fun; it’s just that it never sells me on the product so much as it’s just a forgettable sketch comedy bit we get bashed over our heads hundreds of times until we absolutely loathe it.) And do you really want to do business with someone who thinks that of you? There are so many ads like this on TV, and while they’re supposedly endeavoring to depict the product in a positive light, I’ve always thought they were simply making the people in their ads look like jerks and idiots, and that it looked like this was the kind of people they were trying to attract as customers.
But if they’re going to show this scenario, where a woman eats the sandwich picture off the guy’s t-shirt, the least they could do is show him with huge bite marks taken out of his chest, leaving him bleeding profusely and cowering in pain. And then it could turn out that the woman is a cannibal zombie after all, and then she eats his brain too. (Yum, yummy!) Oh, and this helps to advertise for the new Quiznos human brain sandwich, of course! (Real chunks of scrumptious human brain in a zesty blood sauce! Mmmm: Gory!)
Here’s the sandwich shirt show (You have to look down below and select the ad called: “Bus Stop”, as this spot is not on YouTube; probably because people would leave too many negative comments, especially if they’ve had my experience with Quiznos.):
