Mr. Submarine Celebrates 50 Years with 50 Commercials

Mr. Submarine, a classic Chicago-based sub sandwich chain with 25 locations scattered across the city and suburbs, released a new campaign featuring 50 unique ads to celebrate its 50th anniversary.

For decades, Mr. Submarine’s been infamous for their comically corny commercials (like this one and this one), a staple on local Chicago television. This campaign, created by Quality Meats and produced by their in-house production arm Sandwiches, taps into their heritage, revisiting their old commercials and their iconic jingle.

“Creating 50 commercials for Mr. Submarine’s 50th anniversary was an extremely dumb idea, possibly one of the dumbest we’ve ever had” said Gordy Sang, co-founder and co-CCO of Quality Meats. “Which means it was something we absolutely had to do.”

Among the 50 commercials feature a range of lengths and styles, all with one thing in common: they all use their 80’s jingle as a punchline. Some feature local Chicago celebrities, including former Chicago Bears wide receiver Tom Waddle, former White Sox player and coach Ozzie Guillen, former Cubs player Jason Kipnis, Chicago DJ Eddie Volkman (from famed duo Eddie & Jobo), film critic Richard Roeper, and longtime Chicago sports anchor Mark Giangreco. Some integrate other iconic Chicago advertisers, like personal injury lawyer Howard Ankin, United Auto Insurance, Aaronson Furniture, The Bedding Experts, and even created a remake of one Chicago’s most infamously bad local commercials, Eagle Man. Over 40 were filmed with local Chicago actors (directed by Chicago native and actor Brad Morris and filmed over the course of two days at a Mr. Submarine in Chicago suburb Downers Grove), while a handful were created purely with AI.

“Their classic jingle is an earworm, and also a cheat code we used as a punchline,” says Brian Siedband, co-founder and co-CCO of Qualty Meats. “‘Cause when you’re making 50 commercials at once, they’re not all gonna be the best in the world - but like a Mr. Submarine sub itself, most of them are pretty darn good.

Select :30s and :15s will air on local television, and all 50 will be shared sporadically on Mr. Submarine’s social accounts, as well as housed altogether on their website: www.mrsubmarine.com/50thAnniversary. The campaign also features OOH celebrating Mr. Submarine’s 50th anniversary running across the Chicagoland area.