Playing with an anti-restaurant message

Health advocates blast restaurant chains for using toys to influence kids’ thinking. But it looks as if the industry is being victimized by the same dynamic.

Snap on the TV during Saturday morning cartoons and you’ll likely see a commercial for what promises to be a popular toy this holiday season. It’s called Pop the Pig, and it features a sizeable plastic pig sitting on its haunches, mouth agape. It’s the centerpiece of a game where the players take turns feeding fast-food-style hamburgers into the pig until the belt around its balloon-like belly pops open.

The indirect message is clear: Keep wolfing down those burgers and you’ll burst like an overstuffed pig.

Menu-labeling information is apparently not included.

Taco Bell's fake and pass

Taco Bell, for some elusive reason, isn’t using the term “Super Bowl” to detail its ad plans for Football’s Biggest Game, as the chain coyly labels the media mega-event. An announcement issued today says a new flight of ads “will air before, during and following” the Game, exposing the brand’s new Five Buck Boxes to 100 million viewers. But not once do you read the “S” or “B” words in the release.

Maybe the dodge-speak is necessary because the new bargain meals are tied to the National Basketball Association, not pro football. Indeed, the Five Buck Boxes are all but dribbling and shooting foul shots. Their official name is the NBA Five Buck Boxes. The packaging is NBA-themed, the featured foods are called Taco Bell All-Star items, and they’re touted in the commercials by Basketball Hall of Famer Charles Barkley, the NBA color commentator for TNN (the Super Bowl is being aired by CBS).

What else would you expect from the Official Quick Service Restaurant of the NBA?

The announcement didn’t mention any airings of the ads during the Worldwide Multi-National Competitions a few days later in Vancouver. Some might know them as the Olympics.

Meanwhile, in non-Tiger news...

‘Tis the season to hunker down and hope for a better next year, so the restaurant business hasn’t exactly been cranking out news like an elf production line. But a few little-noticed developments in recent days might prompt some hmm’s among the ho-ho-ho’s.

Applebee’s experiments with a server-calling system. A number of franchised stores here and there are testing a tabletop device that allows guests to summon their server if something is needed. Patrons press a button on a tabletop console, which causes a watch-like device worn by their waiter or waitress to vibrate, according to a story in the Sun News, a South Carolina newspaper.

The set-up also monitors how long the guests initially sit before a server approaches. When a hostess seats a party, she waives a watch near the tabletop console. That causes the watch of the wait staffer assigned to the table to vibrate, and an unseen timer starts. If the server doesn’t show within a minute, the manager’s watch buzzes. Then a painful electric shock is directed at the tardy server. Okay, I made that up. But it’s an interesting idea.

Server alerts have been tried for eons. The 160-year-old Tadich Grill in San Francisco, for instance, features tableside buttons on the wall that patrons can press for service. A similar set-up is a signature of a classic watering hole in New York City, the International Bar.

It says a lot that those places are known for the novelty (and kitsch) of having a server-summoning system. Plenty of other converts presumably discovered that the set-up detracted from a guest’s experience. When you have to buzz for someone to take an order, you’re unlikely to coo over the attentive service you’re getting. Unless it’s handled well, patrons might as well take a number, as if they were at the supermarket deli.

Goofy has been pink-slipped by a Disney World restaurant. Other characters had their hours cut, according to a recent post on Examiner, the network of blogs that’s been set up as grassroots news service.

If the posting is accurate, I might soon spot Goofy in a state unemployment classes. The ‘Ohana Restaurant in the Polynesian Resort of Disney World was dropped Pluto’s packmate from the character rotation, or the circulation of people in Disney character costumers during meals, according to the report.

I initially suspected he got a job as the mascot for a Major League Baseball team, since a Goofy would fit just about any of the squads. But that doesn’t explain why Rabbit, a Winnie the Pooh character to which Disney owns the rights, is also gone.

Meanwhile, Eeyore, Piglet, Tigger and Pooh himself reportedly had their circulation hours cut.

And all you see on the airwaves is non-stop reporting about healthcare.

Restaurant marketing makes the list of 2009 campaigns to remember. Unfortunately, the campaigns may not be remembered for reasons the industry should cherish.

For instance, the Wall Street Journal ranked Burger King’s de-friending crusade on Facebook as the year’s fourth best marketing program. In case you’ve forgotten the furor it sparked, the campaign rewarded Facebook users with a Whopper coupon for every 10 acquaintances they “de-friended,” or publicly designated as someone they didn’t want as a friend anymore. About 234,000 people were informed of their newfound leper status before Facebook asked Burger King to knock off the high school nonsense.

It’s vexing to see that effort on the Best of the Year list when KFC’s plug from Oprah Winfrey is on the Worst-of roster. The talk-show hostess informed viewers that they could try KFC’s new Kentucky Grilled Chicken for free, triggering a run on the Colonel’s old Kentucky chicken home.

KFC halted the giveaway, saying supplies had been depleted. But it was never clear if the chain rain out the new product or merely didn’t want to give away that much free food.

In any case, the cut-off triggered more media coverage than we’d see until Tiger was brushing broken car window off his Nike shirt. The logo would be torn off later, no doubt to Woods' delight that nothing else was torn off his body.

Yum! steers its chains onto surprising turf

Yum! Brands has previewed some scrambles it’ll try in the next few months to juice up sales at its three major fast-food chains. But most were unrelated to the breakfast initiatives being plotted for Taco Bell and KFC.

Instead, the franchising giant is trying to remix its concepts' sales by venturing into some surprising territories. Here are some of the brand-bending undertakings Yum! described to financial analysts during a conference call on Wednesday:

--If you think Taco Bell is all about stuffing skateboarding dudes with as much bulk as they can buy for a buck, steel yourself. The chain will kick off 2010 with a national advertising for its Fresco line, a nine-item array of lower-fat and less-caloric selections.

If that's not enough of a departure from Taco Bell's traditional image, consider what looms on the horizon: "Longer term, we are most excited about breakfast," said Yum! CEO David Novak.

If the Taco Bell chihuahua hadn't passed away, he'd be letting out a Klingon death howl right about now.

--KFC--that's shorthand for Kentucky Fried Chicken, in case you're of a vintage that thinks Col. Harland Sanders was some Civil War hero--now derives 30% of its sales from Kentucky Grilled Chicken. "We have driven awareness to 75% of quick service restaurant users," said Novak, noting that the product is transforming the brand's image.

"We needed to broaden the appeal of this brand and we have done it," he said. Nevertheless, "continuing to drive trial is our top job."

--A major reason for Pizza Hut's 13% same-store sale drop in the third quarter was its image as a place for premium pizza, according to Novak. It shouldn't be a shocker, then, that the chain's new ads focus on chicken wings and a concept-within-the-concept, the bolted-on WingStreet wings brand. WingStreet is being positioned as a separate concept that piggybacks on Pizza Hut's delivery service.

Novak was far less effusive than he has been in past conference calls about Pizza Hut's new Toscani pasta line. He gave no reason why, but did note that the pizza chain has to do a better job of stressing the new diversity of its menu.

Novak noted that Yum! is in the process of choosing a new ad agency for Pizza Hut, precisely "to give the brand a fresh, more differentiated positioning." But he acknowledged that pastas already account for 10% of Pizza Hut's sales and figure into 30% of all transactions.

He also disclosed that breakfast is seen as a big international opportunity for KFC.

"When you look at KFC outside the United States, the only competitor we have is McDonald’s, so why can't we do breakfast?" he commented. "I mean, who is closer to the egg than Kentucky Fried Chicken?"

Novak also mentioned that Taco Bell is working on "a bigger beverage program," without divulging details. But the Orange County Register reported Wednesday night that at least two units in California are testing a juice bar featuring smoothies and a new frozen shake called the Frostbite.

Also available are fingerfood snacks like Mini Crispy Empanadas and Bacon Belly Bombers, along with cupcakes and cookies.