Here’s a marketing quandary you never hear about: what happens when it turns out your tag line turns out to be true? The Heart Attack Grill claims its offerings, which include triple bypass burgers and lard-fried flatliner fries, are a taste worth dying for.
And now Blair River, the 570-pound spokesman for the chain, has died. He was 29 years old, and the official cause of death was complications from pneumonia Rivers contracted after coming down with the flu. Morbid obesity is indicated as a cause of complications in recovering from the flu. Even if River’s fat didn’t kill him, it surely didn’t help him get better. Every item on the Heart Attack Grill menu can be considered a contributing factor to morbid obesity.
Will this be the end of the Heart Attack Grill’s operations? Or will Rivers have a place of honor on a morbid Wall of Fame, his passage marked by an annual ritualized consumption of Butterfat Shakes?
It could go either way. Jon Basso, owner of the Heart Attack Grill, has a unique understanding of a normally marginalized segment of the dining market. In many places, customers who weigh more than 350 pounds are hardly welcomed with open arms. At the Heart Attack Grill, after a celebratory, ceremonial weigh-in, these customers eat for free.
He’s the first to say nothing will change. “I hired him to promote my food. We are absolutely guilty of glorifying obesity. That’s what I do for a living: I make a mockery of heart-related issues in order to sell hamburgers,” Basso said in a recent interview with ABC.
Will that confidence continue? Basso has to know who his customers are. Is the loyalist, most profitable contingent of his market the super-sized?
Every business needs to have a concrete understanding of who their Brand Lovers, their most profitable, loyal, enthusiastic customers are. It’s not safe to assume. Examining the demographics of Basso’s customer base may reveal that the lion’s share of business comes from smaller diners. The appeal of indulgence and unabashed gluttony knows no weight limit, but there are far more people who enjoy the menu who tip the scales at under 350 pounds than over it.
The Heart Attack Grill’s Brand Lovers may have king sized appetites, but not necessarily for Triple Bypass burgers. Customers are seeking a specific emotional experience when they came to the Heart Attack Grill. Basso is selling rebellion. A non-stop litany of the warnings of cholesterol, alcohol, and nicotine have a certain segment of the public fed up. They’ve had enough of hearing about what they should eat. Every item on the Heart Attack Grill is a chance to thumb your nose in the face of nutritional authority, to say, “I’m going to do what I want to do, no matter what!”
The appeal of the guilty (yet, River’s death nonwithstanding, relatively harmless) indulgence is strong. Basso has already tried business from the other side of the fence: having hawked Jenny Craig and run a fitness franchise, he hasn’t been able to connect with the customers who place a high value on healthy eating and enduring health. Self-abnegation does nothing for his bottom line. Gluttony may be knocking them dead, but Basso knows he’s on to a formula his Brand Lovers can’t resist—even when they know they should.