Quiznos: Engaging influencers with visuals

Mmm...toasty

Quiznos, a franchised fast-food restaurant brand based in Denver, Colorado, is best known for making toasty subs. Targeting a strong core demographic of millennials (but really, everyone eats!), it makes sense for Quiznos to focus a majority of their marketing efforts on digital and social media. Their loyalty app keeps tech-savvy customers engaged and gets them through the doors. Kristen Melick is the Digital and Social Media Manager for the Quiznos corporate brand. She manages content across digital platforms, but primarily social channels. Quiznos has a strong presence on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat. Kristen is in charge of the content strategy, content creation, analytics, paid campaigns, and influencer outreach for these channels...

A brand that needed to keep up

Kristen wanted the Quiznos brand to participate in social media conversations every day. However, working on a small team, it was really hard to keep up with production of visual content. When it came to social media photos, Kristen wanted a good mix of product shots, lifestyle shots, and influencer content. She used to plan expensive shoots with photographers. The photographers would have a specific shot list for sandwiches and lifestyle-type shots, and would spend a couple days creating bulk content all at once to fill in enough of the content calendar for upcoming months. The process was expensive and not scalable for Quiznos. Kristen wanted to find a solution that would give a large quantity of high quality photos at a reasonable price. On top of that, Quiznos has locations all across North America, so there needed to be a more efficient way of doing localized shoots. Kristen looked internally to create scalable programs first before approaching vendors. After exploring crowdsourcing programs with some success, she looked at a number of different vendors to create customized photos at scale. "I was looking for a solution that felt like I would have an extension of my team. Where I could act as a creative director, have some control and creative input, but stay at my desk and feel comfortable with that process."
- Kristen Melick, Social Media Manager, Quiznos