In the run of humankind, there are natural affinities—like the affinity of Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce for pop supericon Taylor Swift. And as another football season begins, Applebee’s restaurant is attempting to make the most of the affinity between fans of its restaurant and fans of the NFL. (Applebee’s became the “Official Bar & Grill of the NFL” in April.)
In a new national TV campaign by Gray Advertising, Applebee’s will be running 15- and 30-second spots featuring Brock Purdy (San Francisco 49ers quarterback), Saquon Barkley (Philadelphia Eagles running back), and Dan Campbell (Detroit Lions head coach). The TV campaign will be supported by a loyalty program sweepstakes, a digital game and a content series, and a six-part “Applebee’s Training Camp” docuseries playing on social media.
The TV spots are entertaining albeit predictable, putting the NFL stars in Applebee’s restaurants interacting with diners. One spot casts coach Dan Campbell as a server. He dishes up the dinner play to the couple in the booth, covering his mouth with his order pad lest somebody from the opposing team reads his lips. In one part of the docuseries, we see quarterback Brock Purdy in full football gear being trained to be an Applebee’s server. Whether you dig this approach or not depends largely on two things: how much you dig NFL football, and how surprised and excited you are to see some of your favorite NFL personalities repurposed as Applebee’s servers. I’ll have to trust Applebee’s CMO Joel Yashinsky on that one. In a recent online interview with Marketing Dive, Yashinsky states, “Applebee’s fans really over-index as NFL fans.”
Something else is at the heart of Applebee’s NFL strategy: selling a lot of 50-cent boneless wings. This aligns with the restaurant’s longtime value proposition. If you’ve seen prior Applebee’s TV commercials over the last several years, more likely than not they’ve been focused on “price-and-item,” attempts at luring customers in with some value-priced appetizer or entree. It’s a way to build traffic, especially when the economy dips and people eat out less (another natural affinity). However, it does virtually nothing to build a brand story.
What is in Applebee’s favor is the voracious appetite we have for wings. The National Chicken Council reports that during Super Bowl LVIII (San Francisco 49ers vs. Kansas City Chiefs), Americans consumed 1.45 billion chicken wings! Do the math! That’s three-quarters of a million chickens that gave it up for the NFL! That’s four wings each for every man, woman, and child in the continental United States! If nothing else, given those affinities, Applebee’s seems destined to sell a lot of wings.
Here’s my problem with all of this. It’s an awfully big spend on a seasonal sport. In the same online interview, CMO Yashinsky claims that the NFL gets Applebee’s year-round fan engagement. Bringing a healthy skepticism to this, I’m not so sure. It may be true during the season, but there will definitely be a drop off in fan interest after Super Bowl 2025. At some point, people stop painting their faces in team colors and creating homemade banners from bed sheets and go on with their lives. The bet for Applebee’s is that they can create enough momentum with this campaign to carry them through the off season. Super Bowl 2025 is February 9. But after that? For restaurants, February is typically the slowest dining month of the year.
Also, at the risk of being Debbie Downer (whomp-whomp), we live in a world teeming with random cases of livestock pestilence. All it would take to gut Applebee’s playbook is a good outbreak of avian flu. Picture it. Millions of chickens must be slaughtered to stop the epidemic! Suddenly those 50-cent Applebee’s boneless wings are a buck and a quarter. Boom! There goes your whole value proposition. It’ll take a lot of extra ranch dip and celery to recover from that one.
Advice to Applebee’s: Never put all of your wings in one basket.
