Time to bid farewell to a familiar face

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© St. Petersburg Times
published January 9, 2002

Wendy's founder Dave Thomas, that grandfatherly figure we've come to know so well in television ads, has passed away. But he remains a senior member of a rarefied club.

Few corporate chieftains have ever attained the face recognition Thomas achieved as the ubiquitous TV pitchman for his burger chain. Today, as many of us bid our own goodbyes to Thomas (and silently swear to eat fewer french fries), I doubt any other corporate pitchman or pitchwoman (and here I exclude hired guns such as Michael Jordan or Britney Spears) is currently as widely known as mild-mannered and bespectacled Dave.

At the least, Thomas set a remarkable marketing record. Over 13 years, he starred in an amazing 800 spots. That made the Dave Thomas ad campaign the longest to star a company's founder, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

In 1997, Thomas' level of recognition was tested by Marketing Evaluations/TvQ Inc., a Long Island, N.Y., company that uses "Q scores" to measure the familiarity and appeal of personalities, sports figures, TV programs, brand names and other icons.

"Thomas did very well," company executive vice president Henry Schafer says. "At that time, he was known by about 90 percent of the (U.S.) population. That's very rare for a business executive. And his appeal was almost two times the average for the typical personality we measured."

Translation? For Wendy's, Thomas was a marketing gift that comes along once in a lifetime. Literally.

Sure, Thomas has plenty of competitors. Martha Stewart is one up and comer, though she is more a promoter of her own name brand (sold at Kmart, for example) than a pitchwoman for her own business. And certainly, Bill Gates is recognized worldwide. But these days, his face is valued more as the world's richest human than as chairman and promoter of Microsoft Corp.

In recent years, who else came close to cuddly Dave?

Steve Jobs pitching his new Apple computer products? Jobs is big in the tech world but not in Thomas's league.

Michael Dell promoting his mail-order Dell computers? Take away his props and, for all his success, few would recognize Dell.

Herb Kelleher (Southwest Airlines) and Charles Schwab (Charles Schwab brokerage) gave TV testimonials to boost their businesses but lacked the saturation, on-air staying power of Thomas.

There are other high-profile celebrities who happen to now run businesses. Oprah Winfrey, who runs Harpo Productions, and Paul Newman, who started Newman's Own, were famous before they became corporate executives.

In the mid-1980s, the Wendy's chain was in the fast lane thanks to cranky pitchwoman Clara Peller, who made "Where's the beef?" a national punch line. When that and other campaigns faded by 1989, Thomas landed in TV ads sporting his signature short-sleeve white shirt and red tie.

He was not an instant hit with critics. Advertising Age said that as a Wendy's spokesman, Thomas came off as "country -- but witless."

Apparently the public viewing audience thought otherwise.

Thomas is a big player in a line of corporate executives over the decades who became high-profile promoters of their own companies.

In the early 1980s, CEO Lee Iacocca gained national prominence as a feisty salesman for struggling Chrysler Corp. Orville Redenbacher was a hit pitching his brand-name popcorn. Mary Kay Ash was a legend promoting her Mary Kay Cosmetics (and awarding pink Cadillacs to her top sales people). Starting in 1971, Frank Perdue gained a cult following for his folksy ads for his Perdue chickens.

Now there's even a trend, some say, of more companies jumping on the Thomas-styled, "gee whiz" ads.

For example, at S.C. Johnson -- makers of Windex, Pledge and Scrubbing Bubbles -- 73-year-old retired chairman Samuel C. Johnson appeared last fall to promote cleaning products and family ownership. At Colombo Yogurt, retired former owner Bob Colombosian and his Armenian immigrant mother talk about how the family business started in Massachusetts. And at Columbia Sportswear, 77-year-old chairwoman Gert Boyle tests jackets on her son in extreme weather conditions.

Thanks for the show, Dave. You were the master.

French fries, anyone?

- Robert Trigaux can be reached at trigaux@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8405.

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