With sales of $8.5 billion in 2011, Wendy’s just the claimed number 2 spot, moving ahead of Burger King but was well short of McDonald’s $34.2 billion. This second place battle of the pygmies needs to find greater meaning in the market if either ever wants a crack at McDonalds.

My worry for Wendy’s is that its rise will prompt it to confuse activity with accomplishment. Yes, from a marketing perspective, Wendy’s is doing things, but its rise has been relative to Burger King’s inconsistent execution of any strategy.

Most of our battles at Stealing Share when rebranding companies is changing the internal mindset of those companies. Positive news, like Wendy’s received, provides a false sense of security. Fortune favors the bold and, if my past experience has taught me anything, it is that a third place Wendy’s would be strategically more bold than a second place Wendy’s.

Strategically, Wendy’s should set its sights on the white whale: McDonald’s. At the moment, however, it seems to be doing the same as Burger King by marketing product instead of brand. Copy in a recent Wendy’s ads goes: “No matter who you are, Wendy’s will make a Dave’s Hot and Juicy Cheeseburger fresh just for you, so its special, just like you.” Give me a moment while I my eyes stop rolling. Beyond its campy verbiage, it provides no switching trigger for the customer. Does anyone believe they would be refused service when they go to a fast food restaurant? Or that a competitor will not make hamburgers?

McDonald’s has been successful due to its message clarity, consistency and firm brand meaning of “fun.” In fact, that brand promise is represented as an experience rather then product.

Wendy’s is certainly in a good position. Number two is nothing to scoff at. But it will take focus to clear the gap with McDonalds and being able to spot the pivotal brand difference between its brand  and the Mickey-Dee one.

On a frequent basis, Stealing Share will take a look at various markets for companies who are in position to steal market share. We send information about our process and, as brand strategists, we try to get across in a small amount of information the absolutely imperative effect brand has on a company’s success.

These attempts do not always gain the traction we would hope as many companies keep their own rose colored glasses on because taking a critical and honest look at their brands is not often an easy or comfortable task.

However, we have never had this information returned to us by the company with our unopened envelope hidden inside a new hand-addressed envelope, noting our information as unsolicited. Wouldn’t it have been easier to just trash it?

That returned letter was from Burger King, a brand whose existence in the fast food hamburger chain market has been restricted to second place, and lower than that when looking at the totem pole of overall fast food chains.

We now know why.

Burger King is obviously a company that appears to be so process driven that it takes to the time to mail back an unopened envelope rather than evaluate its contents. It is essentially claiming that it wants it to be known that: “When pursuing the success of our company and the preference of our brand, Burger King will stop at nothing short of ignorance to remain status quo.”

Napoleon once said, “If the art of war were nothing but the art of avoiding risks, glory would become the providence of mediocre minds.” Stealing market share does not involve avoiding risk. It involves being bold, memorable and intensive to your market. One can only surmise from the directness at which Burger King avoided what was so very desperate to its brand’s success that it has found comfort in its stasis.

Perhaps in time, having McDonalds eat its lunch will prompt a departure from mediocrity. In the meantime, if this is the care by which they value its brand, my suggestion to the private equity firm that bought Burger King is to invest elsewhere. Get out when you can.

It’s an interesting time in the fast-food burger industry. There are more outlets than ever and the industry is growing. In addition, the foodservice research company Technomic released a report that smaller brands, such as Five Guys and Shake Shack, are eating into the big retailers’ market share.

Yet, the big three – McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Burger King – still make up 75% of US burger sales.

So how do we interpret this? To me, this market mirrors what the beer market has been going through for years, starting with the emergence of microbrews. At that time, the big three in beers – Budweiser, Miller and Coors – reacted with panic by introducing their own kind of specialty beers, without completely entering into the microbrew space, and flooding the marketplace with marketing and advertising.

They have since adjusted by buying out many of the microbrews and, more importantly, giving more meaning to their own brands. (Well, Budweiser does. And, BTW, you’d be surprised how many microbrews are owned by Budweiser and its parent company, InBev.)

Microbrews also deluded themselves into thinking they had found a meaning in the marketplace that was previously untapped. What they found, though, was that the microbrew drinker had a completely different brand face than those who drink one of the major American lagers. They are not brand loyal, but like to try what’s new. That means, while they may prefer Boulevard or Shiner Bock, they will try another microbrew if it isn’t available at that time.

The Bud drinker, meanwhile, will leave if the establishment has no Bud.

That is the case here with fast-food burgers as well. McDonald’s is still the most powerful brand in the market and, with a few exceptions, the smaller brands have taken hold of the much smaller audience of “I’ll try it” that is not as brand loyal.

In the beer industry, most of the microbrews did not take advantage of its entry into the market, as their market share is still less than 5% in 2010. (The microbrew industry has grown a bit, but that’s because more microbrews are entering the market. The individual brands aren’t growing so much as they are cannibalizing each other.)

With few exceptions, like Fat Tire and Samuel Adams (although, most microbrewers don’t consider Sam one of them), they never bothered to develop a brand. Instead, they just got clever with names like Moose Drool.

Meanwhile, the largest brand in the market, Budweiser, continues to hold more than 50% market share – practically a monopoly – by having the most meaningful brand in the market.

For the smaller burger brands such as Smashburger and Mooyah Burgers and Fries, they will have limited growth in the future if they don’t develop a brand that captures the highest emotional intensity in the market. They will be deluded into thinking that the McDonald’s and Wendy’s of the world won’t react and their better burgers will eventually win.

As a microbrew drinker and a fan of Five Guys, I’d like to see those smaller brands decide they want to grow up and adopt meaningful brands that go beyond clever and are about who the customer is instead of what they offer. If they do, they can truly transform the market. If not, they will find the growth of the individual brands plateauing and the big three continuing to survive successfully.