Advertising

(Click thumbs for better color quality) For my advertising class, we were told to pick a company or brand and create new advertising campaign for them. I decided to choose Five Guys Burgers and Fries. I've always been impressed with them. Beside having amazing burgers, they also have a great philosophy behind the way they operate. Everything is served fresh- they have no freezers- and the know exactly where the potatoes they use for fries came from and are proud to say so. They use peanut oil for frying- so there's no trans fats- and 100% USDA beef. There is very little branding in the store- you're served your meal in paper bags and Styrofoam cups, with a side of napkins that probably came in an industrial pack from BJ's- and no national advertising campaign despite having franchises in numerous states.

For my campaign, I decided to focus on the food. To be honest, Five Guys is not the most convenient fast food joint - no drive thru, a sometimes long wait because nothing is prepared ahead of time, and peanut served in open containers- but the food is amazing. I noticed Five Guys customers were the kind of people that appreciated a good hearty meal- college kids, middle aged men, and high school boys (including a whole football team. Whoaa).

The great thing about Five Guys is that they offer 15 different toppings that you can add to your burger- for free. You can get as many or as little as you want, even doubling up on them, and they don't charge you for it. That's something you can't get anywhere else. Do a little math and these 15 toppings on any of Five Guys burgers lend themselves to 250,000 different combination. Damn, son.

I used this information to consult some people from Five Guys target audience- male college kids- and asked them for THEIR Five Guys burger combos (the title's were theirs too). I picked the 5 best combinations and created personality profiles for each burger, asking "What kind of guy would eat this burger?" I showed that personality on the wrists and arms of the person holding the burger, a different personality for each burger. These wonderful first-person perspective "hey, can't you just picture yourself eating these burgers?" photos were taken by the lovely Emily Bogle.

Behind each burger, screened on the background, is the name of the burger, the combo number (out of a possible 250,000), and the ingredients in the burger. The idea is to really hit home the fact that there are so many different ways to make a burger at Five Guys and everyone can find a combo that's right for them. And if the burger you see sparks your curiosity, the ingredient list is right there for you to take with you to your next Five Guys visit. The type is done in an action-movie-poster-esque way to catch the eye of that male demographic.

I will say, it was a lot of fun to put together these images with all the symbolism that went into them. It was certainly the first and last time I will ever spend $30 on burgers (or try to shoot fresh food- after 3 hours in a wrapper, no burgers is appetizing).

To go along with the 5 print Ads (get it? 5 ads, 5 guys. Oh yeah, I went there), I mocked up a website "burger builder" and a guerrilla marketing campaign. The burger builder is designed to go along with Five Guys current online look and act as a way to create combos virtually, then either save to share with the online Five Guys community or print them out to take with you to the store. The types of burgers go across the top, the toppings on the side, and each selected topping shows up on a replica of the 5 guys receipt (a distinctive feature) to complete the experience.

The guerrilla marketing campaign acts sort of in the same way, where you can create and share your combos but in a physical setting. Replicas of the Five Guys receipts, with blank spaces for you to write in your choices, can be torn off, filled in, and pinned to the fan board (another Five Guys signature feature). Meant to be posted in a public hub such as a downtown area, passer-bys can pull other people's combos off the board and take it with them if they should feel moved to do so.



I think this is the longest entry I've ever written on the blog. But this is probably the most in-depth project I've had yet. Thanks for actually reading it all!