Lori Abou Habib, at Sonic, on the brand's new identity and its campaign featuring real people

If you know Sonic Drive-In you probably know the "two guys" commercials. Those guys, Peter Grosz and T.J. Jagodowski, gave their humorous, lightly improvised musings in the brand's advertisements for years. But in the brand's new campaign, the guys are replaced by real people, mostly families, and a heartfelt message about the power of everyday moments in the car. Lori Abou Habib, chief marketing officer at Sonic, lead the brand towards this transition and spoke to NRN's Extra Serving Podcast about the process.   "One of the things that we really attribute a lot of the success of 2019 to was getting to know our guests better than we ever have before through some extensive consumer research," Abou Habib. "What we've uncovered in the last couple of years is there's an opportunity for us to really connect more with our fans and with prospective fans. And the best way that we landed on doing that was through launching a new advertising campaign, but also just refreshing the visual identity of the brand. It's been at least a decade since we've changed our logo, maybe more. And it was just time to signal to consumers that there was something new going on at Sonic." Sonic hired real fans and created "authentic" storylines centered around Sonic.To keep the "realness" in a polished professional commercial, took some help from a reality TV production crew, which Sonic hired through the brand's new creative agency, Mother LA.  Hear more from Abou Habib on the process of casting fans, developing authentic storylines and creating a new identity for Sonic.