Keeping Subway fresh through PR and influencer activity

Long-game storytelling served with Aruga's secret sauce

Subway Australia came to Aruga in 2023 with a single task: make people care about sandwiches every day. Not when a new menu item drops. Not when there’s a big announcement. Consistently, culturally and creatively.

What followed were 2.5 years of campaigns and always-on activity that rightfully earned their places in the news cycle. A Chip Butty that crashed The TODAY Show on April Fools’ Day, a SubBus that took over Australian streets, an Anzac biscuit brought back after 17 years and many, many more.

Across earned media, influencer engagement and always-on storytelling, we delivered sustained, creative momentum that turned a sandwich brand into a media mainstay.

The numbers stack up as impressively as a Footlong: Over 1,400 editorial clippings, millions of Australians reached through earned media and hundreds of days (yes, days) of influencer-content watch time across the partnership.

The real win for us though is knowing that we absolutely nailed the brief, with Australians genuinely looking forward to what Subway does next.

Results

1,477

total editorial clippings

46.7M

total audience reach

100%

positive/balanced sentiment

1,053

cookies delivered to media

275

Subs delivered to media

20

influencers engaged

2.1M

influencer video views

411

days of influencer content watch time

Deliverables

Always-on media relations

Sustained national media pitching across 2.5 years, securing consistent editorial coverage in outlets including The TODAY Show, The Courier-Mail, The Project, news.com.au and the Australian Financial Review.

Influencer engagement

End-to-end engagement of 20 influencers across food, lifestyle and entertainment, including talent negotiation, brief development, content oversight and performance reporting.

Brand partnership activation

Coordinated high-profile paid media partnerships with BuzzFeed Australia, Bloke in a Bar, Triple M and Nova.

Campaign launches and media gifting

Developed and executed launch campaigns for key moments including new menu items, seasonal activations and franchise milestones.

Winning Tactics

Aruga built a rolling campaign calendar that identified cultural moments Subway could credibly own, then reverse-engineered story angles and influencer briefs from those moments.

Rather than treating influencer and earned PR as separate workstreams, Aruga ran them as one ecosystem. Influencer content was seeded to journalists to generate editorial coverage, while media placements were used to amplify influencer activity.

Aruga invested in media gifting as a relationship-building tool, not just a campaign tactic. Delivering 1,053 cookies and 275 subs to journalists produced 52 organic social posts from media contacts and helped maintain a consistently warm press list across the 2.5 year partnership.