Jared Fogle in Wellington

Originally uploaded by alphafoobar

Being a subway card online member, I was invited along to meet the “Subway guy” Jared Fogle. I was a little apprehensive about this meeting; it was at The Boathouse facilities above Star Boating Club, so the facilities could fit rather a large number of people. But it was clear that they were not expect hundreds of people to appear.

They didn’t give out tickets, they didn’t even seem concerned about the number of “guests” I would bring with me. It seemed that the only advertising of the event was through the Subway card memberships email database. So I was really in the dark on who would show up. Plus Wellington was pretty cold that night, I think it hailed later and the hail was about the size of 10 cent coins.

I sort of thought there might be a few school kids there or perhaps a stack of office workers… it was basically in the CBD. But I think their were around 20 people there, perhaps a few more. Jared didn’t seem to care. He’s been doing stuff like this for the better part of ten years now, his routine is pretty slick… his 10 year old jeans look in pretty good condition, well washed and perhaps even ironed.

Jared spoke about his story, and it didn’t sound like a corporate American speech, I hear plenty of that crap at work. Jared sounded like a normal bloke; a guy who found himself embarrassed by the way he’d let himself go and who had tried a few things to try and get himself into a healthier weight range. It happened that the thing that worked for him also worked for Subway and that’s sort of how Jared Fogle “the Subway guy” came into being. Around 1998-9.

The other thing that struck me about Jared, was that he seemed like a really easy going and relaxed sort of guy. I asked him about the South Park episode Season 6: Jared Has Aides, Jared was familiar with the episode and several other of his appearances on other shows… but I hadn’t seen any of the others.

I was quite impressed, Jared was an amusing guy. But I couldn’t understand why so few people were there… perhaps people don’t really care here. But I thought more would show up through pure curiousity.

Perhaps it was that the only advertising was via email and spammers have taught people to ignore almost everything they didn’t ask for. Perhaps the lesson is maintaining a good email database of your customers is easy and sensible, but don’t rely on it for all of your advertising needs… that email is probably in their Junk inbox.

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