Subway Makes Rivals the Punchline in Make It What You Want
Subway's Make It What You Want is a 2019 UK film campaign created by Above+Beyond that positions Subway's expanded customisation menu against its fast-food rivals by casting their recognisable mascots as comic antagonists disrupting a polished Subway commercial.
Launched on 15 July 2019 across the United Kingdom and Ireland, the campaign marked a decisive creative reset for Subway in the British market. Above+Beyond took over the account from McCann London, ending a relationship that had lasted approximately a decade, according to reporting by Campaign magazine. The change of agency brought with it a sharper, more combative creative posture — one that named no rival directly but left nothing to the imagination.
The central premise is both simple and audacious. A sleek Subway food film is repeatedly interrupted by masked figures bearing the unmistakable likenesses of Ronald McDonald, Colonel Sanders and the Burger King, each appalled that Subway is offering consumers too many choices. The gag inverts the usual rules of competitive advertising: instead of claiming superiority in a straight comparison, Subway lets the competition indict itself through its own panic. The campaign promoted more than twenty new ingredients and reinforced the proposition that every Subway order is made precisely as the customer wants it.
Media distribution was deliberately broad. The campaign ran across television, online video, cinema, digital, radio, print, outdoor, social and in-store channels, ensuring the message reached United Kingdom consumers at every relevant touchpoint. The single film asset anchored the entire campaign, making creative consistency across channels a structural priority rather than an afterthought. Clapboard has assigned Make It What You Want a score of 63 out of 100, reflecting competent execution of a strong central idea within a category that rewards boldness.
Above+Beyond entered the Subway UK account at a moment of genuine brand urgency. David Billing, Partner and Chief Creative Officer at Above+Beyond, described meeting Subway at what he called a pivotal point in the brand's journey, noting a real energy and a fighting spirit within the organisation, as quoted by Marcomm News. That fighting spirit translated directly into the strategic choice to put competitors on the defensive rather than simply articulate Subway's own strengths.
The strategic insight at the heart of Make It What You Want is that customisation — Subway's longest-standing functional advantage — had become invisible through repetition. In the United Kingdom, the quick-service restaurant category is intensely competitive, with McDonald's and Burger King operating thousands of locations and KFC maintaining a strong cultural presence. According to reporting by foodtruckempire.com, Subway ranked behind McDonald's, Starbucks and KFC among the most visited fast-food brands globally at the time of the campaign. Reclaiming share of mind required more than restating a familiar benefit; it required making the absence of that benefit feel absurd.
The rival-mascot device accomplished this economically. By staging the campaign as a food commercial interrupted by frightened competitors, Above+Beyond compressed brand positioning, competitive context and consumer benefit into a single narrative arc. Colin Hughes, Country Director of Subway UK and Ireland, confirmed the campaign reflected the bold strategy and creative energy Above+Beyond brought to the account, and described the process as truly collaborative, involving both the internal team and franchisees, as reported by Marcomm News. The decision to run the campaign across nine channels simultaneously — from cinema to in-store — indicates a brand investing seriously in recapturing cultural relevance in the United Kingdom market rather than executing a narrow product push.
BLOGMichael Clowater directed Make It What You Want for Subway through the production company Smuggler. Clowater's background in narrative comedy made him a natural fit for a script that required the mascot-interruption gag to land with precision — too broad and the satire collapses, too restrained and the competitive edge disappears.
The creative execution operates in a register that Campaign magazine noted for its surreal, comedic quality. The film opens as a conventional, warmly lit Subway food commercial — familiar production codes that signal quality and appetite appeal — before the masked rival figures burst into frame. That structural contrast is the creative engine of the piece. The audience is primed to read the film one way before the interruption forces a reappraisal, and the reappraisal delivers the brand message more memorably than a straightforward product demonstration could. Above+Beyond understood that in the United Kingdom market, where advertising literacy is high and audiences are quick to reward wit, the comedic misdirection would earn attention that a conventional spot would not.
PR and social amplification for the campaign was handled by Good Relations, extending the film's reach beyond paid media placements and into earned coverage across the United Kingdom. The mascot concept provided natural news value: the implicit acknowledgement of McDonald's, Burger King and KFC without ever naming them generated the kind of industry conversation that campaign-only media buys cannot manufacture. David Billing of Above+Beyond articulated the agency's philosophy directly, stating in Marcomm News that it is a dynamic category that demands full participation and that you cannot just sit on the sidelines. Make It What You Want is the practical expression of that conviction — a campaign built to provoke a response rather than simply occupy media space.
No verified performance data for Make It What You Want is publicly available in terms of sales uplift, brand tracking shifts or media efficiency metrics. The absence of published figures is not unusual for a campaign of this type in the United Kingdom market, where QSR brands rarely disclose granular commercial outcomes for individual creative executions.
Structural analysis, however, points to several factors that would support effectiveness. The campaign launched with nine distinct media channels operating simultaneously, a deployment pattern that maximises reach and frequency across different consumer contexts in the United Kingdom. The rival-mascot device generated inherent PR value, with Campaign magazine publishing coverage of the campaign and its competitive framing — earned attention that extends the paid investment. Above+Beyond's appointment itself represented a significant vote of confidence following the decade-long McCann London relationship, and the breadth of the launch suggests Subway committed meaningful resources to the new creative direction.
The campaign's central creative mechanism — making competitors react rather than simply asserting Subway's superiority — is a format with a proven track record in the United Kingdom advertising market, where ironic self-awareness and competitive wit are established tools for building brand affinity. The promotion of more than twenty new ingredients gives the comedic premise a concrete commercial anchor, ensuring the entertainment serves a specific product objective rather than existing purely for awareness. Clapboard's score of 63 out of 100 positions Make It What You Want as a credibly executed campaign that achieves its strategic aims without fully realising the creative ambition its central idea makes possible.
.webp)
Creative Collaboration Platform: The Backbone of Modern Creative WorkWhat is a creative collaboration platform?Clapboard defines a creative collaboration platform as the operational core for today’s distributed creative teams. This is not a collection of digital collaboration tools stitched together; Clapboard’s system
Understanding the Creative Production MarketplaceWhat is a Creative Production Marketplace?Clapboard defines a creative production marketplace as a structured ecosystem where brands, agencies, and production talent converge to execute video, advertising, and branded content at scale. Unlike the legacy agency or freelanREAD FULL ARTICLE
The Urgent Need for a Creative Production Operating SystemWhy Traditional Creative Production Models Break DownClapboard sees the creative production landscape shifting under pressure. Content velocity is no longer a buzzword—it’s a mandate. Modern advertising demands relentless output across dozens of channels, each wREAD FULL ARTICLE
