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El Pollo Loco Changes Spokesman from Actor to Flame

Costa Mesa-based El Pollo Loco Inc. is updating its spokesman.

The Mexican chicken chain launched a series of TV and radio spots last month featuring a man-shaped flame that’s in charge of grilling and promoting the chain.

Previously, El Pollo Loco featured an actor pretending to be the chain’s master chef. He wooed women and schooled men with his culinary skills and good looks.

“Early on we had a tagline for the previous character that was, ‘Women want to dine with me and men want to grill like me,’” said Mark Hardison, vice president of marketing at El Pollo Loco.

The company’s ad shop, Los Angeles-based Krueger Communications, helped to create the latest campaign.

The move is part of the chain’s shift to highlight that it grills over on open flame, unlike some of its competitors.

“We realigned our focus to the real core of our brand, which is our flame grill,” Hardison said.

Its position on grilling was a major talking point when it picked a fight with KFC Corp., part of Louisville, Ky.-based Yum Brands Inc., and its oven-grilled chicken last year.

El Pollo Loco also cooks its chicken in an oven but then finishes it over an open flame.

“We hold that using fire and grilling in our restaurants in front of our guests is a unique position we hold in the marketplace,” Hardison said.

Earlier last month, the restaurant chain launched steak dishes—the meat is one of several new foods the chain plans to add to its menu this year.

In line with the new campaign, El Pollo Loco launched advertising targeted at Hispanics.

The Spanish-language TV and radio spots feature Mexican actors dressed up as flames in an El Pollo Loco grill commenting on the cooking going on above them.

“It comes from the same brand strategy of communicating real grill and real fire in an irreverent kind of way,” Hardison said.

The prior Spanish language campaign featured a cast of Mexico-born chefs commenting on the food they were grilling.

Burbank-based Cruz/Kravetz Ideas Inc. helped create the Spanish-language campaign airing on local TV and radio stations.

Unexpected Publicity

You may have seen the ad for German automaker Audi AG’s latest auto during the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl in which the “Green Police” crack down on ecologically unfriendly practices from their green three-wheeled personal transporters.

In the ad, these eco-police arrest a man for choosing plastic bags at the checkout counter, storm a house for a battery discarded in the garbage and even harass a police officer drinking from Styrofoam from their three-wheeled cruisers.

The 60-second tongue-in-cheek TV spot promoted the automaker’s latest clean-diesel wagon, the A3 TDI. But it could have easily have been a commercial for Costa Mesa-based T3 Motion Inc.’s clean-energy T3 series electric stand-up vehicle.

Four of the company’s T3 series personal transporters designed for police, military and security guards were shown in the commercial. They were made up to look like official cruisers for the eco-police.

T3 Motion was contacted by Los Angeles-based production vehicle specialist Picture Car Warehouse and San Francisco-based advertising agency Venables Bell & Partners about participating in a TV commercial.

“We didn’t even know it was a Super Bowl commercial until about the day before,” Chief Executive Ki Nam said. “Even then we didn’t know how much of the T3 they were going to show.”

It’s the first time the T3 Motion has been featured in a national TV spot, even if the commercial was for Audi.

“You can’t even pay for the attention we received,” Nam said. “The best part for us is we didn’t spend a dime and actually got paid for use of the T3.”

The company hasn’t done much marketing outside of trade shows and piggybacking off the attention its vehicles receive out in the field.

“We targeted law enforcement first to build the brand identity of the T3 as reliable and tough,” Nam said. “The goal is to one day penetrate the consumer market.”

The T3 personal transporter is used by more than 500 agencies including the police departments for Los Angeles, New York and Dallas, as well as by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The three-wheeled vehicle also is found at major airports including John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, Los Angeles International Airport and John F. Kennedy Airport in New York.

In addition to the U.S. market, the T3 has shown up in Britain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

All of T3 Motion’s personal transporters are designed in Irvine and assembled in Costa Mesa.

The company has yearly sales of about $8 million.

“We are exporting about 35% of the T3s made here in Orange County,” Nam said.

The company competes with Bedford, N.H.-based Segway Inc., whose self-balancing two-wheeled personal transporter gained international attention years ago and which remains the poster vehicle for personal transporters.

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