Live To Tell | May 24, 2019

Talk About It

Fantastic: Jimmy John’s Wine

Jimmy John’s has made its own brand of wine—a pinot noir named Vin de Sandwich—to pair with its latest actual sandwich, The Frenchie, which features salami, provolone, capicola and butter on a baguette. As part of the campaign around the release of the Frenchie, a limited quantity of bottles is being sold online for $29.99 each.

Celebrity: Kim Kardashian Calls Out Jack in the Box

On Monday, Kim Kardashian used a public forum to air a gripe with Jack in the Box—well, sort of. Kardashian took to Twitter to let the brand know she’d sent them an email about an issue and she was expecting a reply, which she received in the form of dozens of other brands using the moment to troll Jack in the Box. Competitors that got in on the fun include Wendy’s, Burger King, Toppers Pizza* and Shake Shack.

Cash Money: Uber Eats Subscriptions Coming?

A portion of code in its app’s latest update revealed Uber’s plans to roll out a $9.99-per-month subscription service for its Uber Eats platform, a move that has the potential to shake up the fast-growing third-party delivery space. The subscription would waive Uber’s service fee that’s typically 15 percent of the cost of an order, resulting in “free” food delivery for monthly subscribers.

Forward Thinking: Free In-Flight WiFi, What a Concept

In 2016, JetBlue became the first domestic airline to offer free streaming-quality Wi-Fi service on all its planes. Now, Delta has begun testing the same service in a two-week pilot (pun intended) that includes free Wi-Fi on nearly 55 domestic flights a day. Delta’s test is one industry experts expect the airline to establish full-time in the not-so-far future and that other airlines will have no choice but to follow. While this idea is something passengers have been calling for forever, the notoriously slow-to-adapt airline industry is catching on to the idea that consumers view connectedness as a necessity, not a luxury.

Friend or Foe: Target’s Counter to Amazon

We often talk on this program about the many ways in which Amazon is systemically destroying the retail landscape. However, there are brands standing defiantly in its way, using their large footprint to their advantage in the process. One such brand is Target, whose strong Q1 saw same-store and digital sales both increase, the latter to the tune of 42 percent. Target’s investments in both same-day distribution and smaller store sizes are showing signs of success, but will they be enough to create more value than Amazon Prime, and, in turn, win enough customers away from the service?

Heating Up

The value of a story is only as good as the forum in which it is told, making a call to a reporter that says, “Did you read my press release?” an extremely ineffective way of getting that story out there. In his latest column for 1851 Franchise, No Limit Agency* CEO Nick Powills recounts his time as a journalist and how it influenced his approach to PR, as well as the ways in which journalism has been infiltrated by advertising and social media. Recognizing this has changed what it takes to be successful in PR, those who approach the industry as data-based marketing are the ones moving the needle.