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Wendy's loses its legend
By Bruce Horovitz and Theresa Howard, USA TODAY
File
Thomas
You can replace ketchup with mustard. Or sweet pickles with dill.
But you can't replace Dave Thomas.
Thomas, 69, died of liver cancer early Tuesday.
Ronald McDonald aside, his was the most familiar face in Hamburger Land. But it was so sweetly soft — if not silly — that it hardly looked like the face of a corporate giant who knew burgers every bit as well as his one-time mentor, Colonel Sanders, knew chicken.
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Audio Thomas: Why he did commercials (1999)
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It wasn't ego that pushed Thomas to appear in more than 800 Wendy's commercials. It was necessity. Nothing else sold the fast-food-gobbling public on Wendy's like his mug. Never mind that the day-to-day control of the company had been out of his hands for more than a decade. As far as the consumer was concerned, Thomas was somewhere in the back of the restaurant — apron around his waist — cooking up the Classic Double Burger with cheese that they'd just ordered.
Now, Wendy's suddenly finds itself blessed — and cursed.
Blessed to have been linked with a lovable icon that has a shot at immortality on Madison Avenue. But cursed with the reality that the man whose kind face sold more burgers than any single person on earth is gone.
What to do? Company executives aren't exactly saying. But they are hinting. "Dave was the messenger, not the message," says Wendy's CEO Jack Schuessler. "We've been working on a seamless transition for three years."
No simple task. Not in a $126 billion industry that has enlisted everything from redheaded clowns to scrawny Chihuahuas to move food out the door. By one estimate, nearly $1.5 billion was spent over the years to create and broadcast ads featuring Thomas. The underlying message of every Wendy's ad: How could you not trust this guy when he says his food's good?
"He's everybody's nice uncle," says adman Jerry Della Femina. "You simply can't walk away from him as a character."
Wait six months, or so, Della Femina says. Then, Wendy's can bring back his illustrated image, he suggests, much as KFC did after Colonel Sanders died in late 1980.
Another possibility: the chain's namesake, Wendy. She's the daughter after whom Thomas named his chain when he founded it in 1969. Stranger things have happened. After Orville Redenbacher died in 1995, he was quickly replaced by a look-alike grandson, Gary, whose accent and trademark eyeglasses were similar to his grandfather's.
AP
Dave Thomas serves customer Tim Hughes, at a Wendy's in Fort Wayne, Ind., that was built on the site of the Hobby House restaurant where he worked as a bus boy 51 years before.
But daughter Wendy — who was unavailable for comment — was a reluctant rep and hasn't been used since she was a freckle-faced child. And Thomas' face always has been more familiar to consumers.
The current mix of national ads featuring Thomas was yanked on Tuesday, says Schuessler. Consumers, after all, rarely feel comfortable seeing recently deceased people pitching products of any kind.
Meanwhile, a "tribute" ad for Thomas will appear in national newspapers later this week, Schuessler says.
Within the industry, Thomas was considered near godlike.
"A true pioneer," says Jack Greenberg, CEO of McDonald's.
"A legend," says David Novak, CEO of Tricon Global Restaurants, which runs Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut.
Advocate for adoption
And as a tireless advocate for adoption, Thomas was hailed in high places Tuesday. "I have always admired his untiring commitment to the idea that every child deserves a permanent, loving home," said a statement from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Consumers responded the only way they knew how on Tuesday: by herding to Wendy's restaurants.
"We had people phoning in all day saying they're going to Wendy's in honor of Dave," says Denny Lynch, a company spokesman. Not only were many of the 6,000 restaurants swamped, but also the company's Web site received a record number of hits and was inaccessible for part of the day.
Fans of Thomas expressed so much interest Tuesday that a decision was quickly made to let the public say goodbye. Thomas' body was flown from his home in Southern Florida to Wendy's corporate headquarters in Dublin, Ohio. His body will be placed in the company's lobby for the public to pay respects today and Thursday.
Thomas' death also became talk show fodder on Tuesday.
Viewers tuning in to NBC's Today show saw photographic tributes to Thomas "usually reserved for a head of state who dies," says Robert Butterworth, a Los Angeles psychologist who specializes in cultural issues.
"Thomas never had liposuction or a face-lift," Butterworth says. "He was the regular guy's regular guy."
He hardly lived a regular life.
Thomas never knew his birth parents. Six weeks after he was born in Atlantic City in 1932, he was adopted. His childhood was unstable, as his family often moved. Thomas took comfort in going to restaurants, where he watched families happily dining together. By age 12, he decided he'd have his own restaurant some day.
At 15, he dropped out of school and began working full time at a restaurant. Several years later, he opened a barbecue restaurant and met Colonel Harland Sanders, founder of KFC. He worked for KFC for several years, but Thomas was a burger aficionado. In 1969, he opened the first Wendy's in Columbus, Ohio.
Thomas demanded that Wendy's burgers never be frozen and be sold made-to-order. Never mind that the burgers had that odd, square shape. "We never cut corners," Thomas liked to say.
After briefly leaving the company, Thomas returned in 1989. "Dave was perturbed with the advertising," recalls Gary Steele, executive vice president of Bates USA, which has handled Wendy's ads since 1987. "He came in and lectured everybody about how you should talk about his product."
First ads 'were terrible'
That's when frustrated agency executives suggested Thomas star in the ads. Thomas reluctantly agreed to appear in a few Wendy's commercials. Critics howled. They had good reason. The first few commercials "were terrible," recalls Ron Kirstien, CEO of DavCo Restaurants, Wendy's biggest franchisee, with 163 restaurants. "They were trying to make him something he wasn't."
But the agency opted to let Thomas be his lovable self in Wendy's ads. Sales picked up as consumers took a liking to the chubby guy with the goofy smile.
Wendy's quickly emerged as the No. 3 burger chain — behind only McDonald's and Burger King. Then, top management's mettle was repeatedly tested.
Thomas' handpicked replacement, CEO Jim Near, 58, died suddenly of a heart attack in 1996. One year later, Thomas nearly died after a massive heart attack, followed six days later by quadruple bypass surgery. And in late 1999, Gordon Teter, 56, the man who replaced Near as CEO, also died from a heart attack.
Through it all, Thomas remained a brick. Just three months after his heart surgery, he was back in ads.
And not without his humor. On his very first ad shoot after his heart attack, Thomas handed out T-shirts to the crew that said on the back, "Dave's Back!" On the front of each T-shirt was the proclamation: "Dave's Front!"
But the transition had begun.
'We all have to go'
Instead of being the single star of the ads, Thomas increasingly became an icon who appeared only at the end of each ad — usually with a catchy punch line.
About three years ago, company executives met to begin planning a succession campaign, says Don Calhoon, executive vice president of marketing at Wendy's.
Thomas' health was slowly failing, and he had noticeably lost weight. Although Thomas was aware that a so-called succession campaign was in the planning stages, he kept his nose out of it.
That was his way.
Back in 1997, while recovering from his heart surgery, Thomas spent the better part of two days taping several Wendy's ads. A USA TODAY reporter was invited along.
"It's important not to be a big shot," Thomas confided during a break in the taping. "Each of us are fragile human beings. We don't know when we're going. Or where. But in the end, we all have to go."
And so, he is gone. But not his message.
-- Anonymous, January 09, 2002