How Sonic Drive-In Solved Its Identity Crisis With Two Guys

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1:58Sonic Drive-In was founded in 1953, when there were a lot of drive-ins. And by the 1980s, Sonic the company was asking itself, what makes us special? And the answer they came to was basically, we were a 50s-style drive-in that didn't go out of business. Which is cool, but not exactly a reason for people to come buy your food. This is why in the 1980s, Sonic barely advertised, except for hyperlocal marketing. The brand just didn't know what it was. That voice you heard, by the way, was Cliff Hudson. He was the head of Sonic's legal department in the 80s and watched as the brand started to make a shift in the 90s, leaning into nostalgia.

2:43Sonic went from being a drive-in that just didn't go out of business to a drive-in that could take you back to the good old days. And that worked for a little bit. But by the time Cliff Hudson became CEO in 1995, he realized that they had to do more than just be nostalgic. Because, you know, nostalgia is fine, but not exactly a compelling reason for people to go to Sonic instead of somewhere else. If we would have gone strictly trying to discount, We had major competitors who could buy more cheaply than us and beat us up. So we had natural, really natural differentiation. We had made-to-order food.

3:21We had carhops. It was there. And we had products that our competitors didn't have. What we had to do was just market it effectively. And maybe you know where this is going. because if you think about sonic advertising, you probably think about one thing or really two things. These guys. Fire burger, huh? Oh yeah, real nice. Pretty good? Yeah, it's got that habanero sauce on there. So it gives you a little sweet and then it gives this nice little spicy kick to it. Sounds good. It's like, Hey man, I'm a sandwich. And I got this going on. I got a little bit of that going on, you know? I see. I got this.

3:59No, no, no, no, stop. I don't, I get it. I'm not talking about the sandwich anymore. That was TJ and Peter. And if you know what I'm talking about, then you can picture them immediately. These two guys bantering in a car, eating Sonic food. This became the core of Sonic's marketing. It was a simple concept and it worked geniusly. But getting to this simple concept wasn't actually so simple. It was far more complex and interesting than I could have ever imagined. And I heard all about it recently by talking with Cliff, as well as his former Sonic colleague, Craig Miller, who was Sonic's chief information officer.

4:38Here's Craig. How do we think about 21st century marketing is really always adapting to the relevance of the consumer at the time, while still retaining what still resonated with the DNA and the culture from the beginning. Together, these guys wrote a book called Bricks and Clicks, How We Drove Sonic Into the Digital Age. And I wanted to understand how they had shifted the perception of Sonic, turning it from a sleepy, regional, small town kind of brand into this massive national behemoth. and the answer really has to go back to the fundamentals of marketing and storytelling and how to take what Craig just said, this core of what a brand is and why it resonated with people in the beginning and then understand how to translate that into a modern media ecosystem.

5:38And so how did they do it? It's a tale of a brand in search of an identity and what makes it different, and how to share that in a way that feels incredibly culturally relevant, and how many little tests you have to take, and how many upset customers you have to hear from before you get it right. It's a really fun background on a really familiar campaign, and it's all coming up on Problem Solvers right after the break. We're back. I am talking with Cliff and Craig of Sonic drive-in about how they landed on the marketing campaign that helped transform this brand. And before we get there, let's just have them back up a little bit and talk about what was going on leading into it.

6:28So like I said, there was this nostalgia campaign. Frankie Avalon was a part of it. Happy to cash a paycheck. But it was time to move on from Frankie and from nostalgia. And there was a question of, well, what's fresh now? In the late 90s, we even adopted a little tagline on our commercials, drive in for a change. That was the sonic drive in for a change. I'd sing it for you, but that might put a damper on your show. But at any rate, we use that 95, 6, 7, 8. The late 90s and really close to around 2000, a couple of different things happened. One, 01 or so went into a sluggish period in the economy, maybe 01 to 02.

7:15And the marketing we'd been doing just didn't seem to be taking hold as well. Now, in fact, the other thing that had been occurring through the 90s in particular was the explosive presence and customer engagement with cable television. And so reaching consumers was becoming more tricky. We did start shifting dollars from local network affiliates to, because all of our money was spent locally. We really weren't spending anything nationally. But we started shifting it to cable in order to try to more effectively reach targeted audiences. But we also, our agency, which was at the time Barkton and Evergreen out of Kansas City, They came to us and said, look, the thing that seems to be working on television is reality shows.

8:01If you remember back around that time, this thing, you want to be a millionaire. Who wants to be a millionaire? Who wants to be a millionaire? There you go. The answer was you. You want to be a millionaire. I want to be a millionaire. The fact is, their pitch was, look at this thing. People are tuning in like crazy. And so what people want to see is some kind of reality thing. And this was when, in a different mode, we brought in the two guys. And why did we bring them in? So that they could go around initially, even to our competitors, much less to our place, and have hidden cameras and take film of their experience at our competition and admittedly poke some fun and then shift to our deal.

8:44I don't remember that. Did that make it to air? The answer is yes. but we fairly quickly got feedback from some folks that it felt like we were making fun of the people employed by our competitors and so we thought okay the live nature of this is breaking through but we got to get out of the poking fun at other people i'm sorry actually before i just curious to hear you think about this a little bit more i've always assumed that a challenge with running spots that are directly competitive against competitors is that if you insult the competitor in some way, you risk insulting your consumer who also might shop there or who might relate to that other place.

9:28So if you're sending somebody into Burger King, the Sonic customer might also shop at Burger King. And if you are saying something negative about Burger King, then you're risking saying something negative about your consumer. So am I right about that? That gets really tricky about trying to engage. It's a fine line. So I think what we started initially moving toward was ordering things we knew they didn't have and get the employee to say, you have to go to Sonic to get that. And so this was the goal with these things, made to order food. No, I can't make it. No, we don't make it. You'll have to go to the end of the line.

10:03And you'll have to do something that was juxtaposed the freshness and differentiation of Sonic. But we still got negative feedback about other people looking foolish. So we shifted it to keeping the two guys on premises at Sonic and having fun with things, but not at someone's expense who's on the screen. Right. Now it's just at their own expense, which is totally fine. Well, to a degree, because even the limitation there, if you did something, you had the straight guy, Pete, and you had TJ, the lighthearted guy. Right. The characters don't have names, do they? Pete and TJ. Oh, do they? Do they go by their own names?

10:45They refer to each other as that in the commercials. So at times, if we used lines in which one of them was too much a butt of the joke, we got feedback from customers that, you know, that was kind of mean. Don't do that. What an interesting line to walk that you're discovering as you do this, which is, just to recap here, you start by playing off of this format that is working really well in entertainment and in the medium that you want to reach people, which is television. So you start to think, well, how do we take the DNA of that and put it into marketing? And so you start by sending these guys out reality TV style.

11:22That doesn't work. You get feedback that it feels like it's making fun of, you know, whether it's employees or customers or something. And so then you bring them on premise. But then if they're making fun of each other or that one of them seems a little too foolish, then customers don't like that either. So how do you start to triangulate? Like, what is actually working about this? because as we're talking about this, what I keep hearing is, well, that didn't work, that didn't work, that didn't work, that didn't work. How did you guys even decide to keep sticking with this concept as it kept running into all these guardrails?

11:51Well, I would characterize it a little differently. I would say it was working and the question is, how would we refine it? Okay, and you knew it was working because... Sales were good. There you go. And I'll tell you what else was a great thing about it was with the recognition of the two guys or that format of the commercial, because there was a point through there. We also used a man and a woman that were supposed to be a couple, you know. But the wonderful nature of it was with a moderate size budget, the opening of every commercial with that format meant that we got immediate recognition from the consumer who we were and what this was about.

12:31And so quite varied promotions, meaning one time it's a sandwich, another time it's an ice cream item, Another time it's a drink. It's a different day part. Could be breakfast. Could be snacks in the afternoon. Could be meals. You know, so on. You didn't have to spend a lot on the commercial to get people to recognize who this was. And so we had immediate recognition and then we could go to the product. This gave us leverage that allowed us to hit way above our weight in terms of customer awareness of the campaign. What was the actual value proposition that you think was getting communicated here?

13:08Because we go from nostalgia as the value proposition, right? And what you end up with is two guys in a car. And I understand that that plays really well in it embraces the drive through concept, but without making it the central selling point. And you're talking about a lot of really great elements of it. It's very low cost. It's repeatable. It's really recognizable. It also is a nice flexible format that allows you to bring in different products. But what do you think is actually working about it from an overall brand proposition standpoint? Well, I think it goes back to differentiation. So slight shift in wording, the way you would describe it and the way I would describe it, it seems slight, but it's fundamental.

13:49And that is, we wouldn't say drive through, we'd say drive in. Because we have a drive install, whereas our competitors have a drive-through window and you got to wait in line, you know, and so on. So it was all about differentiation because where did it move? It started off with that different point, i.e. sitting in the drive-in stall, which our competitors didn't have, the recognition of the promotion, i.e. this is Sonic, right off the bat, and then moving to differentiated product and always having language used of made-to-order food and or car hop, the delivery of the food to the car. So the setting, the product, the language, the promotion, all focus on differentiated experience versus our competition through and through.

14:39I'd add one more thing, and that's the comedy. And emotionally, that hooks someone to want to listen. And so if they see the two guys, there's recognition to Cliff's point. But then every commercial had a different shtick, so to speak. And so they would just stop. We'd look and want to hear what the joke was. And what was attached to that was all the messaging. And so it was brilliant. Before a lot of other brands started to try to find those hooks, I would just add that piece that really emotionally hook the consumer to first listen, and then everything else you can tag onto it, and they're going to connect with the customer.

15:21I've seen so many of those that I'm having trouble thinking of one in particular that we might want to talk about, but I'm curious if something jumps out to you as one that feels emblematic of the really successful messaging that you were able to embed in there. Well, in a subtle way, it's not the specific message, but it is the whole breakthrough thing with the humor that Craig and I appreciate Craig making that point. And the people looking for the humor then, let me tell you a setup. And I can't even remember what the product was. But the two guys sitting in the car and TJ, the humorous guy, says something.

16:02Pete says, well, you know, it has a certain je ne sais quoi. And TJ says, Jenna said what? And Pete says, je ne sais quoi. He slows down, je ne sais quoi. And TJ says, I know, but what did she say? So that week on Miriam Webster dot com, the number one search term was je ne sais quoi. Talk about breaking through on a relatively small budget. Yeah. You know, something about the evolution of this, I'm just going to go back to something you had talked about a moment ago, which was finding that right balance of who the butt of the joke is. It reminds me of, are you familiar with the Impractical Jokers?

16:50Greg is, apparently. They're great guys. I've done a couple things with them. But they had a really interesting twist on the prank TV show format, which what you're describing reminds me of. And so I just want to share it with you and see what you make of it from a communication standpoint. So, of course, the old prank show concept would be that there would be some kind of situation that was manufactured and then real world people would come into it and then be scared or surprised or have some kind of reaction. And it's funny, but also it's mean because you're ultimately taking an unwitting stranger and making them the butt of a joke.

17:33And so the first evolution away from that, not that I'm a prank TV show historian, but as I understand, the first real evolution away from that would have been something like the Ashton Kutcher show, which was punked because now it's pranking celebrities that he's friends with. So now you don't relate to the average person who might have stumbled into this situation. But the Impractical Jokers, I think, took it to its next more logical conclusion, which was so you had four guys. Now it's three, but it was four guys. And they would send each other. The setup is that let's say we, Jason, Craig and Cliff are the Impractical Jokers.

18:11So we would send Cliff into a grocery store and he has to say whatever we tell him to say. He's got an earpiece. And Craig and I are backstage with a microphone watching this on a screen and we're cracking up and we tell Cliff he's got to say something or do something weird and he's got to do it. Now, he's embarrassing himself in an environment where people are going to look at Cliff askance, but nobody else is being pranked but him. Everybody is really in on the joke. So it feels fun. It feels safe. And it feels like hanging out with friends who are good-naturedly goofing off with each other.

18:48And I feel like the Sonic guys in the car were effectively accomplishing the same thing. A hundred percent. And the refinement, to your point, it's from the early days of punked, right? Each of these guys had a different personality. So they resonated with different segment of the audience, but they were basically punking each other because the joke was they wanted to embarrass you. So they're putting you in a situation and you have to do it. And that's the entertaining part of it. You know, the variation on a theme, when I was a kid, the show that did that was Candid Camera. But one of the things, now I have a different view because one of the things they did on every show, they would show the person being, you know, made a bite of a joke.

19:34But at the end of the program, they would show how they let the person in on the joke. They showed them where the camera was, and the person would, oh, they'd laugh, or they would, oh, it's a joke. go. So that I, but it hadn't occurred to me that probably was to tell the audience, Hey, it's okay. Totally. I would bet that they actually probably took that show to market without that element. And people said it was mean and they had to add it in order for it to be okay. All these different elements are different through the years. It's really a reality theme. If you had to do it all over today, in which you were looking at a totally different media landscape a totally different environment of what is entertainment to people.

20:21Reality TV is nothing new anymore. Where do you think you would borrow from? Or what do you think you would ride that would have had the same impact as borrowing from the idea of reality TV did at the start for Sonic? Well, I'll give a generic answer. That would be the content of the creative and the nature of creative would be significantly impacted, if not determined, by the actual medium. One of the things we talk about in our book, Bricks and Clicks, is that the medium has become everything in terms of reaching the consumer. So I think we undoubtedly would still focus on differentiation, but how we would do that, whether it would involve the two guys and the degree to which it's animation, short film, you know, whatever it is, would be greatly impacted by the medium itself.

21:19Craig, any thoughts there? I think that's spot on. It's the same theme, but now the new mediums are interactive. And we did some of this with the two guys initially as we started to shift and leverage those digital mediums, adapting their format in a way that kind of resonated now with the consumer. You know, Gen X millennials, right? It's some of the same formula, but delivered in a different way, right? And it resonates with where the consumer is going. I mean, I have never thought about this, but I had the benefit of listening to you both now for one minute talking about it so that I have an idea, which I'll just run by you, which is when you said interactive, I thought two things.

21:59First, I thought, do you remember what they did with the Old Spice guy. He was so smart. So you have the guy on a horse. I'm on a horse, right? The Old Spice guy. And he was funny and he was fast talking and weird things would happen around him. And after they ran a couple of those spots, they did this interactive thing where people would tweet at him or something and then they would turn around a video that had him engaging with or responding to whatever the tweet was in minutes, right? They were just doing it live, and they were just spitting out. They had writers on staff. He might have been an improv.

22:35I don't know. But it was really, really smart. And yet, the thing that they didn't do is that they sort of broke the fourth wall with that, but they didn't really send him out into the real world. And the two guys who exist in the real world, the man on a horse does not exist in the real world. He exists in a funny fantasy world. But the two guys exist in the real world. And I don't know if you guys ever did this or thought about this, But now in a social media, always on environment, what would have been fascinating is to send those guys out into the real world and to be like producing live with the two of them.

23:08Were they improv comedians? Could they riff? Like, yeah, they were. So to have them like just show up at random Sonics. Anybody knows you could go into Sonic one day or you could drive into Sonic one day and those guys are there and they're producing content on the fly. That would have been really fascinating. I don't know that I've ever seen a brand do something like that. I think you're spot on that. Now you extend that and have others try to, almost like a contest, to replicate that on their social media. Now you start getting viral. They trigger it, right? And that's how you use medium today for the consumer of today.

23:44In around 2010, the Great Recession, we cut them loose for a while. Then we decided that was a mistake, and we brought them back. But we didn't just immediately take them on television. What we did with them was put them in social media at the time to say, hey, we want our jobs back. And we conducted this little, they, supposedly they, conducted this little campaign. We got to play on it with social media, and then we put them back on television. That was an early setting in which we, in fact, use social media in that manner. Well, guys, this has been really fun. I did not expect to take a trip down the nuances of car comedy, but it's where we landed, and I'm really happy that we did.

24:27Tell me, just as a final point here, a little bit more about the book and how people can get it. Craig, why don't I talk about the book, and then you talk about where they can get it. The book is our story, and it really is about the integration of technology into brand building and the difference in conducting marketing in the 20th century versus the 21st. It's also a leadership story and I think a very good, almost a personal interest story of our path and going through numerous steps that had to be integrated together over a long period of time of getting a 21st century customer engagement process built with the 1950s brand.

25:11By the time of the epidemic, the time of COVID, we had put it in place in such a way that consumers began using it and it just exploded in terms of engagement of customers, as a matter of fact. The key part of some companies and businesses don't appreciate, it's not about bolting on new digital technologies. It's really about synthesizing them together. Traditional and same thing with marketing. It does not replace traditional marketing, just as we described with the two guys. It's on all digital retail channels, of course, including Amazon. Local bookstores can order it. Forbes publishes it. So it's international distribution, really.

25:53and just in the first three weeks it's already hit bestseller in a few categories as well as a new release cliff and i excited certainly exceeded our expectations and it's being perceived it's on the backbone of the sonic story which is a case study but all of the reviews talk about it as a leadership book as cliff said a strategy book there's frameworks in it at the end of every chapter. We turn it back to the reader and say, here's the questions you should be asking. So by the end of it, they're leveraging these lessons and frameworks to really adapt and leverage on their strategies. That's awesome.

26:32And as I look at it right now, it is number one bestseller in business technology innovation on Amazon. Well, Cliff Hudson, Craig Miller, this has been so fun. Thanks so much for your time. Thank you. Thanks. And we appreciate the opportunity. And that's our episode. But hey, let's keep the conversation going. I write a newsletter called One Thing Better, where each week I offer one way to be successful and satisfied and build a career or company you love. You can find it at one thing better dot email. That's a web address. Just plug it into a browser. One thing better dot email. And if you respond to any of those emails, I'll get it.

27:10and I promise to reply back. Problem Solvers is a production of Entrepreneur Media and it comes out every Monday morning. So make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss an episode. Thanks to the team at Entrepreneur and particularly Deepa Shah for production. My name is Jason Pfeiffer. See you next week.