Portillo's

Low brand awareness prompts Portillo's image ads
Nation's Restaurant News, June 28, 2004 by Gregg Cebrzynski
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OAK BROOK, ILL. -- Portillo's Hot Dogs, a Chicagoland institution for 41 years, launched its first-ever image campaign in response to lower-than-expected brand awareness when the chain opened a unit in a new market.
"I want everybody to know us," said founder Dick Portillo, who appears in TV spots for the 40-unit chain.
Portillo said he learned that 30 percent of the population of Shorewood, a town southwest of Chicago where a new unit opened recently, had never been to a Portillo's.
"That kind of upset me," he said. "That opened my mind, and I wanted to introduce us to new customers," he said.
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The campaign includes 30- and 10-second TV spots and eight radio spots that take a humorous approach in telling the history of Portillo's.
The TV spots "Chicken in a Mug" and "Liver on a Stick" are designed to show how some "harebrained marketing schemes" failed while Portillo's marketing innovation succeeded.
"Chicken" opens on an actor holding a mug stuffed with a large drumstick. "I busted my tail feathers trying to make Chicken in a Mug fly, but I'm the one who got deep fried," he says with a recognizable Chicago accent. In "Liver," the actor holds the product and says, "Liver on a stick was gonna be the new taste sensation, but the public's fickle, my friend."
Then the spots describe how Portillo's began in 1963 as a single-unit trailer--a replica appears in the spots--that sold hot dogs and tamales and has grown since then with its menu of hamburgers, hot dogs, sausage and Italian beef sandwiches. Portillo appears at the end of the spots, standing inside a restaurant. He faces the camera and says, "When you see 'Portillo's Hot Dogs' over the door of my restaurants, you know it's the original in Chicagoland for great food and incredible service."
In a radio spot titled "Tour Guide," the title character asks whether any of the tourists have questions about Chicago. "Sausage!" a man shouts. "So you want to know about sausage," the guide says, and then he describes Portillo's. The man asks to be taken to the "Mecca of wieners, the king of kielbasa."
In "Dream Analysis" a guy tells the psychiatrist that he dreams he's "salivating" for a Portillo's hot dog but then finds himself transported to a place where he's "surrounded by clowns and phonies, all trying to hock me garbage."
The psychiatrist says, "This dream can be reconciled" by going to one of the 40 Portillo's units.
Diamond City of Libertyville, Ill., produced the campaign.
"I wanted to tell a story, more than anything," said creative director Michael Reilly. "I didn't want it just to be Dick telling the story. We decided we'd create a Chicago-type character that could act as almost a tour guide to Dick Portillo's career."
Reilly said he decided to take a humorous approach in the ads to match the "warm and fun vibe" in Portillo's restaurants. Portillo agreed that humor would work best to raise brand awareness.
"That's what I find more interesting when I see something on TV," he said. "That's what sticks in my mind."
The chain does not release sales figures, but Portillo said sales growth has been strong year after year, and compared with other chains, "We're on a roll."
Still, Portillo acknowledged that "competition in general, whether it's food or gas or pizza or clothes, is tougher and tougher. There's over 2,300 places in Chicago and the suburbs that sell hot dogs. It's a tough market, and we are one of the No. 1 guys in the market."
The current campaign is scheduled to run through summer. New ads this fall probably will include promotion of the chain's catering business, Portillo said.
Reilly said he "would keep it funny, and I want to keep introducing Dick" to consumers.