Subway closed 729 restaurants in 2025 and watched total revenue fall more than 6%, according to franchise disclosure documents. The chain that once disrupted the QSR category now fights on two fronts — against buzzier sandwich brands and against health-focused concepts — and Jeff Klein, elevated to U.S. chief marketing officer after joining in March and an executive shake-up shortly after, says the fix will not come in small increments.

"Subway's challenges have been well documented," Klein said. "The challenges are real, which is why we're taking such a big swing now, because I don't think we're going to fully reverse the challenges with incrementalism."

That swing is "Feed Your SUBconscious," a brand platform that rolled out in late September with actor Will Arnett voicing consumers' inner dissatisfaction with competing food options. Klein, a veteran of CMO posts at Popeyes and Little Caesars and more than a decade in marketing roles at PepsiCo, frames the campaign as a refocus on Subway's most valuable guests rather than a hunt for new audiences.

"I don't think our core guest is choosing between us and Sweetgreen," Klein said. "I think they're choosing between us and traditional QSR, which is where we had a lot of success pivoting off of in the past."

The economics behind that logic are frequency-driven. New-customer acquisition cannot offset attrition among high-frequency core guests. "The math isn't mathing if you're losing core guests and gaining new ones at the same time — the frequency is tough to overcome," Klein said. The strategy now routes innovation, partnerships and value constructs through a core-guest lens, with media targeting and look-alike audiences built around that center of gravity.

Klein positions Subway in the middle of a market flanked on both sides. "It's a big step from Subway to some of the uber-healthy brands or even some of our other competitive sandwich brands when it comes to price," he said. He sees demand from guests who "don't want to pay $20 for a sub" and are pulling back from third-party delivery because of fees. Distribution remains the chain's structural advantage: nearly 19,000 locations, concentrated in small towns across America, giving Subway a convenience and value proposition that premium sandwich and salad concepts cannot match.

Agency Martin won the business by pitching a single idea, one Klein says nailed the insight. Arnett was not part of the original pitch; Subway wanted the concept to work without a celebrity. The actor, chosen for instant recognition that reaches beyond the core audience, improvised parts of the finished spots. "There's no point in hiring somebody of his caliber unless you're going to take advantage of those talents," Klein said. The extended material will run largely in social channels.

The platform is built to last. Each vignette in the anthem spot doubles as a standalone commercial for an LTO, core menu item or value message. Subway has committed to another batch of Arnett ads for spring and is working with him through at least this time next year, though Klein says the construct is modular enough to refresh without depending on the celebrity.

An integrated Omnicom team supports the effort: UM on media, Omnicom Precision Marketing on CRM and FleishmanHillard on PR, all alongside Martin. Klein credits the single-tent structure with making below-the-line digital and social assets work harder behind the top-of-funnel creative.

Partnerships will also change shape. The summer campaign around the live-action "Moana" performed well but missed the core target — "that blue collar, looking-for-lunch-on-his-lunch-break kind of guy," Klein said. Future tie-ins and innovation decisions will be screened against the core-guest lens, a discipline Klein expects to streamline over time.