Jimmy John's is setting out to launch a campaign with an interesting strategy. To throw shade at the third party food delivery services like GrubHub, Uber Eats, Door dash, and Post-mates.
This new ad campaign teams up with agency WorkInProgress to disassociate themselves from all third party companies, highlighting their flaws and backing this disassociation with a promise to never let one of these services deliver one of their sandwiches ever again.
What I thought was really interesting about the origin of this campaign was the research that that caused this separation. A study which was payed for by Jimmy John's and conducted by the Boston Consulting Group learned that many customers are not happy with what they get out of using these third party delivery companies. Their research has shown that 35% of people experiences issues with their delivery service, making them dissatisfied customers. Not only that, but 76% of the people surveyed by the Boston Consulting Group and Service Management Group hold the restaurant responsible for any errors with their food and/or delivery.
Jimmy John's has recently been looking these numbers and have become worried. They do not (nor should any food chain) want to make a perfectly good, fresh order, that reaches them less fresh or improperly, and have those customers associate this lack of quality with Jimmy John's. CEO James North describes in reasoning for this campaign the company's relentless pursuit of quality, freshness, and speed upon order. He says that their restaurants can get a sandwich to a customer faster than any third party company can, and without error. He wants Jimmy John's to oversee the entire process always, from cutting the meats to getting the order in the customers hands.
This all makes plenty of sense to me. If you can deliver your own food faster than these other companies can, why let them try if there is a chance they can't represent the company properly? For other companies who do not deliver food like Jimmy John's, this can hurt the way that they use these delivery services. As for these services, companies like Door dash, Uber Eats, and Post-mates, might be facing some trouble if this campaign is received well. But then again, there will always be people who would rather pay a little extra to have their food delivered than to go pick it up. Additionally, those negative reviews left of these delivery services may not all be genuine. It is easy to give a 1 star out of 5 when it doesn't affect you.
This campaign will use billboards and other physical advertisements, as well as a video of tweets bashing on these various companies.
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