Fresh Never Frozen Beef?
Wendy’s is a popular fast food chain in the united states and in places all over the world too, they are most known for their burgers and more recently their beef quality. Dave Thomas opened the first Wendy’s restaurant in Columbus, Ohio in 1969 and wanted to create a place where families could share a meal with quality ingredients. These values are something all Wendy’s shared as well, but recently their values have been questioned, specifically with their beef. Wendy’s has recently, in 2018, changed their slogan to “Fresh never-frozen beef” which has created both good and bad reactions to the restaurant. Since Wendy’s is now hyping their beef, I explain how my findings show that their efforts are ineffective in persuading the public/consumers that their beef is fresh.
In the past, their slogans have been taste-based, examples including “deliciously different”, “do what tastes right”, and “it’s waaaay delicious, it’s Wendy’s”. At the time they used slogans like these because they were capitalizing off of the good, quality burgers they were serving. Since the slogans were taste based people probably associated them with great taste. Although this may have worked for them for a while it wasn’t long until their competitors were doing the same and Wendy’s was falling behind, so they changed it to something that was completely different. When asking around about old slogans they’ve people weren’t quick to say they were Wendy’s slogans so, it wasn’t a surprise when I made a survey asking if people knew the new slogan.
What this shows is that since changing the slogan they’ve gotten more attention and people are able to identify Wendy’s to their slogan. So instead of capitalizing on the taste of their burgers, they decided to “capitalize” on the fresh meat that they sell since many of their competitors weren’t doing the same. Although this may seem like it has nothing to do with them trying to persuade people that they have fresh meat, it is only part of it. I say this because it was when Wendy’s decided to change their slogan that people started questioning their beef quality.
The point of the slogan and the way it was framed was so that people knew that they never sell or use frozen beef. Sometimes when something is meant to be framed a certain way to persuade others of a certain thing people will believe the exact opposite. For example, when former president Bill Clinton was dealing with his alleged cheating scandal, he was videotaped saying that he “did not have sexual relations with that woman”. Although he was trying to persuade people of exactly what he said his efforts in doing that were unsuccessful. This is because he kept denying that he had sexual relations which isn’t something you’d want to do when persuading people because then they’ll believe the opposite. Another explanation would be when a someone swears they’re not a cheater, but no one believes them because that is exactly what a cheater would say. This is what I believe is happening with Wendy’s slogan campaign. By putting the “never” in their slogan makes people believe that they really aren’t selling fresh beef.
Although some may say the slogan does make them think of fresh beef, they don’t believe they sell and use fresh beef. If they’d reword it maybe it could’ve been as successful as they'd hope it’d be but unfortunately, they framed it in a way that made people question and distrust Wendy’s and their beef quality. What Wendy’s has done to clear the whole fresh beef debacle is go to twitter and explain how it works. From this came the infamous Wendy’s roasts tweets where they roasted haters and even other fast-food companies, and though this did help get them more attention people still didn’t trust that they sold fresh beef.
Since they’re so many mixed feelings with Wendy’s and their beef I decided I wanted to try it for myself and see if there is a noticeable difference when you're actually eating it. I got everything on it which means lettuce, onions, pickles, and ketchup with mayo. The presentation itself wasn’t that bad for a fast-food joint. The buns weren’t squished the beef didn’t look weird in color or size either, the lettuce was annoying because they literally put a flimsy piece on it. Something else I noticed is that it smelled really good too when eating other burgers the smell is the same because you could almost smell how average it is but with Wendy’s it smelled fresh. I had to take the onion off because I’m not the biggest fan of raw onion, but the burger was really good for the fast-food place. I didn’t expect it to be that great because they aren’t a fancy restaurant with fancy food and ingredients, but for Wendy’s selling it that cheap it’s a dang good burger. This means something, to me at least, because I haven’t had a fast-food burger in over five years because they’d always make me feel gross and id have bad stomach problems, but Wendy’s didn’t do that to me. So, does this mean they really do sell fresh meat? Probably, but the way they go about adverting that is not persuading the public. What Wendy’s should do is continue with their twitter roasts because its good to get people to like and be interested in what they're doing because of its free advertising and marketing for them. something they need to consider is either going back to another taste-based slogan or change what they have completely because people clearly do not think their meat is fresh, which sucks because their burgers are pretty good if I do say so myself.
