Louise Wardle: Bringing Subway's Superpower To Life

With seemingly unlimited culinary choices to hand for consumers every day, it's hard to remember a time when making a decision felt satisfying. That’s why Subway is making sure that the power to choose never fades away.

It's latest campaign, Get Your Own Way, celebrates the freedom of personal choice. By refreshing the brand’s identity, it highlights Subway’s superpower of getting exactly what you want and how you want it. The strategy is to create unique, personalised experiences that give customers the confidence to take every decision life throws at them.

And it's being led by a marketer who knows what she's talking about in this space. With over 20 years of experience in the hospitality industry, Subway CMO Louise Wardle has spent the majority of her career leading the marketing teams of multiple food services, expanding markets internationally and managing new product development.

“As long as we’ve been in business, all Subway subs have been made by hand, right in front of you, selected by you. Only Subway lets you get your own way, and it’s our superpower. The team at Saatchi has leant into this and helped us establish it as a brand promise, using humour and design to show that when you always get your own way at Subway, you might just start to think you can get it everywhere," says Wardle of the new campaign.

Wardles' career began as a brand manager at Regent Inns before moving to Boots as assistant scheme manager for its Advantage Card. She then went on to work at the UK’s leading pub retailer and brewer, Greene King as commercial director. Wardle moved on from that position to regional VP EMENA and international menu innovation for Papa John’s. That experience is being well utilised at a time of strategic growth for Subway, which expanded to Azerbaijan earlier this year, showcasing the QSR brand's continued global appeal.

Since 2019, Wardle has led on transforming Subway and bringing it into the conversation, keeping the brand moving and relevant. She has emphasised that “delighting the customer” is one of Subway's top business objectives and central to that is the experience customers have in the brands stores. Another integral part of her engagement plan is with the store managers. Describing herself as “an operator marketer”, she is challenging herself to understand the basics and get them right, which she believes is essential to any success.

In 2023, Two Ways To Subway, again by Saatchi and Saatchi, showcasing the series of 18 individual subs, set out to reach 96 per cent of 18- to 44-year-olds, making the goal of the brand to be more aware and accessible. With extensive customer research, the campaign aimed to prevent “order paralysis” as well as sparking debate between two types of customers: those who like to fully customise their Sub, versus those who prefer to pick a predetermined creation. Although it was communicated that customers would still be able to fully customise their sandwich, as before, the campaign put the focus on making the choice easier, with the large menu expansion taking centre stage.

Now, with Get Your Own Way, Wardle is placing customisation forward, front, and centre. The platform reflects a wider reset, introducing a refined colour palette and typography, as well as focusing in on the entire customer journey with a new photographic style. Building this brand platform will be driven by customer experience while going back to Subway's origins, celebrating its true cultural ritual, of choosing a personalised unique sub to whatever taste, that fans know and love.

Jonathan Tapper, managing director at Saatchi & Saatchi says: "Lou is a multidimensional marketing leader working across EMEA. She has deep knowledge of Subway's business worldwide and knows how to balance the needs of audiences, franchisees and the business at the same time, while pushing relentlessly for simplicity and consistency in the creative work. Those traits were instrumental in developing the new Get Your Own Way brand platform.

"Both passionate and pragmatic, Lou buys ideas on instinct but is razor-sharp on how they'll be used, carried through the business and out into culture.

"Lou had a clear vision for what she wanted to achieve with the new Subway brand platform. More than just a new endline and ATL campaign, it had to be a transformative idea that could shape the whole consumer experience and be the north star for all the marketing and culinary innovation that follows.

"Her benchmark was high, and we believe we've met it. The Subway and Saatchi teams have been working feverishly for the last six months to bring this new brand expression to life and make sure no customisable opportunity or personable detail is missed. 

"The subs are in the oven, and the tomatoes are sliced, so now it's time to invite the world to Get Your Own Way."