Subway: The freshest of them all

Lauren Alberts
2 min readOct 21, 2015

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Subway is one of many sandwich restaurants in America, all of which advertise in some way, either on TV, billboards, or in magazines. In this case, Subway has decided to use a print advertisement to appeal to consumers and get them to buy their subs. Since there are so many sub shop options, Subway has to make it clear to the public why their product is the best, even though they are virtually the same. Subway uses the unique selling proposition of “Eat fresh” to give the reason for why people should buy sandwiches at Subway, and because it appeals to people’s desires to eat the best quality food and separates themselves from their competition.

Subway is trying to sell its sandwiches and wants to stand out from other sandwiches by saying that their food is “fresh”. No other sub company makes the claim of being fresh which is how Subway makes itself stand out from the rest. For example, Jimmy Johns, which virtually sells the same product as Subway, uses the unique selling proposition of “Freaky fast delivery” to gain customers. It is up to the consumer to decide which advertisement and USP are more convincing and therefore decides which product they want to buy.

The colors used in the ad are bright and energetic. They are even colors that could be described as “fresh”. Therefore, the advertisement sends the message that people will eat fresh food and live a fresh life if they eat at Subway. In addition, there are very minimal words on the Subway print ad. All it says is “Subway”, “Eat Fresh”, and “Our healthier way”. This arrangement gets the consumer to focus on the name of the company and its USP of eating fresh. The simple yellow and green background do not distract from the text and send a refreshing vibe from the advertisement. Along with text, there are very minimal images as well. The only thing that could be considered an image is the arrow in which the text “Our healthier way” is placed. This image is also Subway’s logo.

Overall, simplicity is key in the effectiveness of this advertisement by Subway, especially in regards to staying focused on the company’s unique selling proposition. Because Subway established this idea of “eating fresh”, they can call that idea their own and they do a great job of displaying it in this ad. People are going to want to buy Subway sandwiches because of the bold simplicity that grabs their attention on this poster, and once again because all people are interested in “eating fresh”.

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