Subway launched its first standalone brand campaign for the EMEA region built entirely around one idea: that getting exactly what you want at a Subway counter might make you expect the same treatment everywhere else in life. Created by Saatchi & Saatchi and titled “Get Your Own Way,” the campaign runs across online video, out-of-home, radio, and print across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
The Idea
The films work through a series of tongue-in-cheek scenarios grounded in ordinary British situations. In one, a customer changes the TV channel mid-match at a pub during a football game. In another, a learner driver asks to stop at a supermarket for groceries in the middle of a driving lesson. The joke is consistent across all of them: someone used to getting their own way at Subway has started applying that standard to the rest of their life.
The humour is dry and low-key. The Subway experience sits in the background as the cause of this behaviour, and the films never break from that logic to show the product directly. It is a harder creative discipline than a standard fast-food ad, and it is what makes the campaign land.
Louise Wardle, Subway’s EMEA CMO, put it plainly: “All Subway subs have been made by hand, right in front of you, selected by you. Only Subway lets you get your own way, and it’s our superpower.”
The OOH and Press Work
The out-of-home execution takes a different approach to standard fast-food outdoor advertising. Rather than product photography, the campaign uses printed receipts that surface individual customer orders verbatim. One receipt flags a Spicy Italian with a single jalapeño placed at a random position, described by the customer as a “SURPRISE!! POW!” moment.
The receipts work because every regular Subway customer has their own version of an unusual request. Putting those requests on billboards turns the brand’s customisation claim into something the audience can recognise from personal experience rather than a marketing statement they are being asked to accept.
Reactive editorial placements in The Sun and The Metro extend the platform by responding to the news agenda in the spirit of “Get Your Own Way,” keeping the campaign active and current beyond a fixed set of pre-planned assets.
The Visual Identity
Alongside the campaign, Subway introduced a new visual identity for EMEA built around the bains, the food-counter containers that run along every Subway store. Graphic versions of these bain shapes form the structural element of the visual language across markets, paired with a refined colour palette, updated typography, and photography centred on personalised orders rather than standard product imagery.
The system is designed to scale across all EMEA markets and every point in the customer journey. Because the bain shape is something every Subway customer has stood in front of while ordering, the visual identity connects the brand’s design language directly to the physical experience of being in the store.
Franki Goodwin, CCO at Saatchi & Saatchi, described the platform in terms of the product itself. The design system is the bread, the film construct is the fillings, and humour and craft are the secret sauce.
The Production
Films were directed by Andrew Gaynord through production company MindsEye. Editing was handled by The Quarry with editor Scot Crane, post-production by Harbor, and audio by Runamok with sound design by Jon Clarke. Music was composed by Stephen Ettery. Stills were shot by Junior and post-produced through Publicis Production. Creative direction at Saatchi & Saatchi was handled by Nick Bygraves and Michael Thomason.
The Context
This is Subway’s first campaign built for EMEA as a unified region rather than a collection of individual market activations. The brand has been expanding its physical presence across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and “Get Your Own Way” is the platform sitting above that expansion at brand level.
Customisation has always been Subway’s functional point of difference. What the campaign does is take that functional claim and turn it into a personality. The films, the receipts, the reactive press work and the new visual identity are all expressions of the same idea: that choosing exactly what goes into your sandwich is unusual enough to affect how you behave everywhere else. That is a position a competitor cannot simply match by adding more topping options.
Campaign Name: “Get Your Own Way”
Agency Name: Saatchi & Saatchi
Brand Name: Subway
Location: EMEA (launched in the United Kingdom)
