It’s a classic case of, “It’s not you, it’s me.” Cara Operations has ended a 26-year relationship with ACLC by moving its Swiss Chalet account to BBDO. BBDO, which has held Cara’s Harvey’s business since last April, was also named agency of record for Cara’s Milestone’s chain.
“We’re looking at all possible opportunities to further accelerate how we go to market and how we execute our marketing activities,” says Arjen Melis, president of corporate development at Cara. “And as we looked at turning everything upside down, we embarked on reviewing our model.”
Though Melis declined to provide specifics as to what “turning everything upside down” might entail, the shift in agencies comes on the heels of sweeping staff changes at Cara in recent months. Don Robinson, who left Effem to become CEO of Cara last February, “has come in and rebuilt the team starting at the top,” says one former senior executive. Gone are Steven Tsampalieros, COO of Swiss Chalet; Ron Magruder, president of Swiss Chalet and Harvey’s; Stacey Mowbray, president of Milestone’s; Nils Kravis, president of Kelsey’s and Montana’s; Mike Cataldi, COO of Kelsey’s; and Peter DeGroot, COO of Montana’s.
Doug Fisher, president of food service consulting firm FHG International, believes the changes are an indication the company wants to take a stronger approach to marketing. Cara is now “trying to build value by making the brands stronger and getting repeat business up. I know they’re putting a lot of discussion into how to improve the guest experience.”
Fisher thinks the brand that needs the most help is Harvey’s. “They just haven’t figured out how to do the operations correctly and the marketing has always been bad… It needs to be reworked and retooled from the bottom up.”
Cara’s Melis said ditching ACLC had nothing to do with its work or results. “We’ve actually seen our business improve significantly over the last six months.” But the company thinks it can “accelerate that growth even further” by putting three brands under one agency umbrella.
For its part, ACLC is “disappointed with how things ended up,” says Ian Gordon, president of the agency, which took part in the account review. “Would we have liked to have continued the relationship? Absolutely, and we thought we were doing a pretty good job at it.”
ACLC was also Harvey’s agency of record for 20 years, before the account was awarded to John St. in 2003. John St. had the business for just three years and introduced the hamburger chain’s award-winning “Long Live the Grill” campaign. But last year that tag line was switched back to the 1980s era “Harvey’s makes your hamburger a beautiful thing” when new work from BBDO was unveiled.
BBDO president and CEO Dom Caruso says it’s “way too early to tell” what the new creative direction will be for Swiss Chalet. But he adds, “Canadians love this brand and we’re lucky to build on all the success and momentum that they’ve created.”
