As discussed by John Maas in a previous post, Subway has done an amazing job marketing during this time when it seems everyone is trying to find a way to save a few bucks.   Their $5 foot-long campaign (and catchy jingle), along with many of their other marketing tactics, have seemed to really catch on and create new business.

So it’s no surprise that Quiznos would follow suit.

Quiznos is now offering $4 toasty torpedoes to compete with Subway.   If that wasn’t enticing enough, you can go onto their website and get a coupon to get two for the price of one.   Sounds too good to be true, right? It might just be…

Before I get into the negative, I’d like to point out a positive.   I have to say that the website Quiznos created for this new campaign is great.   The narrator on the site is a Quiznos toasting oven.   The voice combined with the clever writing (and use of euphemisms) had me and my coworkers laughing hysterically.  It actually got us fired up (pun intended) and excited to head to Quiznos.   Unfortunately, our excitement was short lived.

With coupons in hand, we headed out to the second nearest Quiznos from work.  The closest one has an irate manager that doesn’t seem to respond well when we bring in coupons (think Seinfeld’s “No Soup For You”).   We walk up to the counter and prepare to order.   To our surprise, unlike Subway’s ANY foot-long, you had to choose from a short list of sandwiches.   A minor setback, but we can deal with that.

Then we see the bread.  WOW, is it small.   The bread is literally half the size of a regular Quiznos’ foot-long.   It’s like they took a regular sandwich and cut it in half (and then magically made it chibata bread).

Ok, so let me recap for you.  One torpedo is about half the price as the normal foot-long sandwich.   Two torpedoes are about the same size as a normal foot-long sandwich.   Essentially, Quiznos is selling the same amount of food, for the same price as they always have.  There is no deal here.

We were pretty disappointed to say the least.   We then noticed the picture in advertisement for the torpedoes.

That hand is holding the torpedo in a very misleading way, making it look a lot bigger than it actually is.   Judging by the size of the sandwiches we got, the space between the torpedo and the hand model’s palm must be vast.

I can’t believe we didn’t notice this before.  We know, just like anyone else, that products are photographed and positioned in certain ways in order to make them look better.  Perhaps this is why we didn’t catch this.  We are conditioned to accept this sort of trickery.

Our experience with Quiznos’ new product has been mostly underwhelming.   They did a great job getting us to their store with their website and coupons, but they did a horrible job at creating a return customer.   We won’t be returning anytime soon to get a toasty torpedo.    You’ll most likely find us in a Subway dancing around and signing “Five Dollar… (ANY) Five Dollar… Five Dollar Foot-Long.”