Fast food chain Church’s Chicken has named JWT Atlanta as its agency of record, effective as of August 1.
The appointment concludes an extensive review which lasted four months and involved researching agencies of all sizes across the country, pitted JWT against another large agency in its final stages, Hector Munoz who joined Church’s Chicken from Popeyes as executive vice president and chief marketing officer in March, told AgencySpy.
“We weren’t looking just for a creative agency,” Munoz explained, “we were looking for that partner that will help us identify that key insight that will make this brand great again.”
He added that JWT Atlanta “showed tremendous passion for our business, our franchisees, our customers, high level strategic muscle, and made us feel comfortable with what they could bring to the table.”
The agency will be tasked with all brand marketing efforts, including broadcast and radio advertising, which will be led by chief creative officer Vann Graves, who was appointed to that role last December.
JWT Atlanta will partner with Munoz, Church Chicken senior director of advertising Georgia Margeson and the rest of the chain’s marketing team on a brand repositioning effort. The agency’s first campaign for the brand is expected in early 2018.
Munoz credited Graves and JWT Atlanta CEO Spence Kramer, along with the agency’s head of strategy, as “two main reasons” the brand selected the agency.
“We’re excited about the people, the caliber of their thinking, their creativity and all the resources that JWT Altanta and their parent company can bring to the table,” Munoz said. “Spence has done amazing things putting together a strong team of dedicated passionate people. One of the first things we noticed was that there’s a lot of passion in that room. They hit an emotional connection with Church’s Chicken about our brand.
Church’s Chicken previously worked with Boulder, Colorado’s Made Movement as agency of record, a relationship which ended in late 2016. Since then the brand has been working with Erich & Kallman on a project basis and will be using the San Francisco-based agency’s work through the end of the year.
According to Kantar Media, Church’s spent approximately $13.5 million on marketing in the U.S. in 2015. A 2014 survey by QSR magazine listed the company as the sixth largest chicken chain in the U.S.