Glocalisation is one of the most common phenomenon where global multinationals want to be local in order to be more relevant and appealing to local audiences.

While this has worked wonders for a lot of brands, some brands like Sub way try too hard and fail miserably.

The fictional character Rose Wah Chin Swee tries to inform people about the $5 turkey ham sandwich and still doesn’t succeed in getting any queue outside a subway outlet.

Ofcourse, the SGAG page went viral with 500 likes and 900 shares. Various memes and jokes have been created by users around this video and it surely has gone viral.

However, I wonder why a lot of people including the regional Asia Pacific director believe that it is great to get people talking about the brand.

Just because people are talking about a brand, doesn’t mean that they are talking about good things. Furthermore, It definitely does not indicate any post purchase behavior.

The true gauge of the success of this campaign is not the YouTube hits, but the number of people queuing up outside Subway because they simply cannot imagine missing out on such a wonderful $5 combo deal because this video has simply moved them.

No matter what anyone will say, just localizing accents does not make a brand more relevant to the locals. Scores on “people talking about the brand” is never going to be a good enough metric to measure brand engagement.

Let’s get real Subway, not a single extra person is waiting outside your store because this ad campaign got them there.