Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - S11E24 - Arch Enemies

Episode Date: June 18, 2022

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 mixtape at their rivals and how the CEO of a pizza company set fire to a cease & desist letter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly. As you may know, we've been producing a lot of bonus episodes while under the influences on hiatus. They're called the Beatleology Interviews, where I talk to people who knew the Beatles, work with them, love them, and the authors who write about them. Well, the Beatleology Interviews have become a hit, so we are spinning it out to be a standalone podcast series. You've already heard conversations with people like actors Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, and Beatles confidant Astrid Kershaw. But coming up, I talk to May Pang, who dated John Lennon in the mid-70s. I talk to double fantasy guitarist Earl Slick, Apple Records creative director John Kosh. I'll be talking to Jan Hayworth,

who designed the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Very cool. And I'll talk to singer Dion, who is one of only five people still alive who were on the Sgt. Pepper cover. And two of those people were Beatles. The stories they tell are amazing. So thank you for making this series such a success. And please, do me a favor, follow the Beatleology interviews on your podcast app. You don't even have to be a huge Beatles fan, you just have to love storytelling. Subscribe now and don't miss a single beat. This is an apostrophe podcast production. You're so king in it.

You're so king in it. Your teeth look whiter than no nose. You're not you when you're hungry. You're a good hand with all teeth. You're under the influence with 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 Prohias 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 vs. 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 offices unannounced. He showed the editors spy versus spy. Through his daughter, he told them that it was a satirical comment on the Cold War. Intelligence versus counterintelligence, skullduggery 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 vs. 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. Proheus 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 Proheus 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 vs. Spy, he once said, The sweetest revenge has been to turn Fidel's accusation of me as a spy into a money-making venture. There are many arch enemies in the world of marketing.

In some categories, it's a flat-out battle. Coke vs. Pepsi, Burger King vs. McDonald's, Apple vs. IBM. The number two brand is always pecking away at number one. Many of those tactics are ingenious. It's intelligence vs. counterintelligence, skullduggery vs. 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 one-cent 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 one-cent Whopper if you were at McDonald's. Utilizing geofencing 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 one-cent 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 one-cent 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 Whopper. Whopper? It says buy a one-cent Whopper at McDonald's. That's crazy. Sorry, I'm just trying to get my Whopper. Have you heard about 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. The one-cent 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 one-cent Whoppers, as the 200% increase in sales continued to hold

after the one-cent 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 the screening of It

to troll Ronald McDonald and turn 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. Hashtag, 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 Reinhardt. 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 Brothers 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 arch enemy. So Keith and his team sat down to brainstorm potential arch enemies.

They considered aliens, monsters, and pirates, but nothing seemed just right. Then early the next morning, Keith bolted upright in bed at 3 a.m. with a thought. The word burger sounded like burglar. So Keith waited until 6 a.m., 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, Docterman 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 sneaky. The Hamburglar! And he loves taking McDonald's hamburgers. So, what should you yell when you see him? Help Ronald, say hello!

That's right. Uh-oh. Hamburglar. It's a good time for the train to go. 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. Which reminds me of that time Wendy's aimed a mixtape at their nemesis.

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Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Wendy's vs. McDonald's Back in March of 2018, Wendy's teased something on social media. The tweet said, Fresh, never frozen, beats.

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 Cirque du Soleil. 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. Wendy's even sent a Spotify playlist link directly to McDonald's on Twitter. Other tracks took pot shots at Burger King and KFC. Rest in Greece 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 vs. 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. 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. Absolutely. 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 ZAW. 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 beats Subway's in a national taste test 2 to 1. Starting at $4.99. Who beats 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 two to one. Then Subway's lawyers sent us this letter demanding we pull our commercials off the air. I was going to 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's CEO fired back saying the two-to-one 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. Classes built to push you. We know how life goes. New father, new routines, new locations. What matters is that you have something there to adapt with you, whether you need a challenge or rest. And Peloton has everything you need, whenever you need it. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton.

Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. DHL vs. UPS The courier business is another very competitive category with heavyweight brands like UPS and DHL. DHL was born in San Francisco over 50 years ago. It was founded by three men named Adrian Dalsey, Larry Hillblom, 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, 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 UPS, 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 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. But there will always be a number one brand and a number two brand. That's a fact of life. Like spy versus 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 Terrastream Mobile Recording Studio. Producer, Debbie O'Reilly. Sound Engineer, Jeff Devine. Research, Terry O'Sullivan. Theme music by Ari Posner and Ian Lefevre.

If you enjoyed this episode, you might also like Sue Me, Sue You Blues, Famous Advertising Lawsuits, Season 4, Episode 20. You'll find it in our archives wherever you listen to podcasts. See you next week. Fun fact. Amazingly, the one-cent Whopper detour app had to geofence all of McDonald's

nearly 14,000 locations. That's a Whopper Detour app had to geofence all of McDonald's nearly 14,000 locations. That's a Whopper of an achievement.