WENDY'S PRETZEL BURGER MAKES A COMEBACK

Original story:  USAToday.com

The pretzel burger is finally, mercifully back.

And Wendy's is hinting — though not promising — that it may be back for good.

After a six-month absence, Wendy's will bring back over the July 4th weekend both its wildly popular Pretzel Bacon Cheeseburger and its Pretzel Pub Chicken Sandwich. The success of Wendy's pretzel burger arguably set off 2013's pretzelmania trend in fast-food, from Sonic's pretzel dog to Dunkin's pretzel roast beef sandwich to DQ's pretzel Blizzard.

Above all else, pretzels — especially soft pretzels — sell. Proof: consumers inhaled more than 50 million pretzel sandwiches from Wendy's in 2013, driving 3% sales jumps in both the third and fourth quarters, says CEO Emil Brolick.

"The relaunch is a seminal event in our innovation history," says Brolick in a phone interview. But this go-around, he says coyly, Wendy's won't specifically say if the re-launch is a limited-time offering or a permanent menu addition. "Time will tell," he says.

Of course, customers will have serious influence, too. After Wendy's removed the pretzel sandwiches from its menu late last year, it was pounded on social media by pretzel-loving customers."We learned the passion and emotional connection that people have with Pretzel Bacon Cheeseburger," says Brolick.

The burger, with a soft pretzel bun, is made with cheddar cheese, smoked bacon and honey mustard sauce, will be $4.99, about 30 cents more than last year. Also, notes Chief Marketing Officer Craig Bahner, consumers now will be able to request a pretzel bun with any other Wendy's sandwich for an additional 30 cents. "If you want a Dave's Hot 'N Juicy Double on a pretzel bun, we'll accommodate that," he says.

Beyond pretzel buns, the relaunch shows how quickly young, demanding consumers are changing fast food menus — particularly, sandwich buns and breads. "How long has it been since fast-food changed the white bun?" asks Elizabeth Sloan, a restaurant industry trends consultant. "There is a revolution going on in terms of sandwich carriers."

And beyond. Sloan points out that last year, 225 million Americans say they bought some kind of gourmet food or specialty food, and that number is growing.

For Wendy's, the intro also is a bid to boost sales during its already-busiest time of year and to regain its footing as an industry innovator.

Under its late founder Dave Thomas, Wendy's was regarded as a fast-food innovator with then-trend-setting offerings ranging from chili to baked potatoes to prepackaged salads.

The pretzel sandwiches may help change that. Within the industry's social-media buzz meter over the past several years, pretzel sandwiches arguably rank right up there with Taco Bell's game-changing Doritos Locos Tacos.

With the pretzel burger, Wendy's is chasing Millennials by aiming up, says Brolick. He says the chain is competing less with McDonald's and Burger King and increasingly with Chipotle and Panera Bread — which are preferred by Millennials.

That's also why Wendy's will launch a new version of its pretzel burger "Love Songs" ad campaign, which went viral last time around. This time, Morgan Smith, better known as "Red," the woman with the red hair who appears as a Wendy's booster in so many of its ads, will belt out a song professing her love for Wendy's pretzel burger.

Funniest, pretzel burger-worshiping line from her reinvented version of the song All By Myself: "When I was young, I never needed any bun."

Consumer Choice Saves 'Dora the Explorer'

As posted by: Wall Street Journal

The New Year got off to a happy start last week when media goliaths settled a dispute that had terrified toddlers and rattled their parents. The Viacom network had threatened to pull its 19 channels, including Nickelodeon with its "Dora the Explorer" and "SpongeBob SquarePants" cartoons, from the 13 million subscribers to the Time Warner Cable system.

This short-lived fight is a timely reminder for the new regulators coming to Washington that their best course of action is often to do nothing. Even in cases like this, in which consumers were intentionally put in the middle of a commercial dispute, it turns out they have plenty of power. Regulators increasingly can count on new technology to give consumers the protections they need.

Broadcasting remains a deeply regulated industry, reflecting its early days when regulators assumed that the airwaves would always be a scarce resource. Even cable operators are sometimes considered "natural monopolists," since there's a limit to how many companies will invest to dig cable in any city.
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But in this battle between the owner of distribution networks and the owner of the content, it turned out that the party holding the winning hand was the consumer. Both Time Warner Cable and Viacom had to bow to the power of consumer choice and the digital technologies that give customers access to programming in many new ways.

The game of chicken included Viacom advertisements that unless Time Warner Cable agreed to pay more, it would pull the channels, encouraging viewers to call to say they wanted their MTV and other Viacom channels. One ad asked, "Why is Dora crying?" Time Warner countered that consumers would pay more if its costs rose. Bernstein Research analyst Michael Nathanson noted that neither party could afford "mutually assured destruction." Viacom needs to find more subscription revenue as advertising revenues soften, while Time Warner Cable has to worry about satellite and telecom competitors.

New media was the new factor. Many popular Viacom shows are widely available on the Web, including on its own sites. When it looked as if Comedy Central would be pulled, Wired magazine helpfully posted a guide for accessing the shows on the Web, pointing out that Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show" can be accessed on Hulu and that "South Park" episodes are on Fancast. The best parts of "The Colbert Report" are often viewed as email attachments or as snippets on mobile phones.

During the negotiations, Time Warner Cable threatened to make it easier for its subscribers to connect laptop computers to their televisions so that Viacom shows could stream directly onto subscribers' televisions. The cable company also argued that it shouldn't have to pay more to distribute shows that Viacom made available free in other media. At one point, it looked as if Viacom might have escalated by trying to block Time Warner Cable broadband subscribers from accessing its Web sites to see its shows.

This is a very different technological environment from the one that created the prevailing regulatory approach and mindset. Back in the days when viewing meant choosing among three commercial broadcast channels, youngsters were perfectly satisfied when "Gilligan's Island" came on the local CBS channel once a week in its allotted time slot. This is as hard for young people to imagine as dialup Internet connections or telephones with cords.

Toddlers today who want to watch "Dora the Explorer" have endless options, well beyond waiting to see a scheduled program. They are at least as likely to pick the exact episode they want to watch on a digital video recorder, select a DVD or go to www.nickjr.com for access to video online.

This difference between the Gilligan and Dora generations applies to a broad range of policy issues. In 2004, when Viacom had a similar distribution dispute with the Dish satellite system, politicians got involved, warning of new regulations if the parties couldn't settle. Over the years, lobbyists have urged limiting the concentration of media ownership, though it was never clear how this would help consumers. This time around, politicians and regulators chose not to get involved. They understood that consumer choice means there's less worry about who owns what media and that Viacom and Time Warner Cable would have to settle sooner rather than later.

Advances in technology also mean fewer reasons to treat other networks as common carriers in need of regulation. Competition will best boost wireless access, not political maneuvering over who gets access to spectrum. Technology reduces the risks of monopoly power so long as government doesn't create new monopolies by picking winners or by suppressing innovation.

As Dora the Explorer learned in her most recent adventure, so long as competition remains strong, consumers get what they want in the market. There's no reason for tears.