Wendy's has hired WPP's Bravo Group in Miami to handle creative duties on its Hispanic ad account following a review, the fast-food giant said today.
The chain spent $25 million in major domestic Hispanic media last year, and $8 million during the first half of 2010, per Nielsen. Wendy's had previously worked with the Vidal Partnership on the assignment.
Bravo will transition into its new role over the next 60 days. Hispanic media planning and buying remain with Publicis-owned MediaVest and MV42. The client's general-market ad agency is The Kaplan Thaler Group, also a unit of Publicis.
Research firm Technomic ranks Wendy's as the No. 4 chain in the U.S. with full-year 2009 sales of $8 billion, down 2.6 percent from '08. That performance was slightly worse than its category peers; by way of comparison, McDonald's sales rose 3 percent while Burger King's dipped 2 percent.
There's been plenty of account-shift activity in the casual-dining niche this year, with lots of chains (though mainly second-tier players) moving assignments and breaking notable campaigns as they jockey for customers as the recession eases.
This marks the second major Hispanic ad account shift in a week, following yesterday's announcement that GM's Chevrolet had moved to LatinWorks sans review.
