Grupo Gallegos in Huntington Beach will be the first multicultural advertising agency of record for Church’s Chicken after a joint pitch with Made Movement LLC, which will handle general market advertising duties.
The Atlanta-based fast-food chain has more than 1,700 restaurants that racked up 2013 sales of more than $1 billion. Its main competitors are KFC Corp. and Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen.
The company did not disclose its plans for ad spending this year. Grupo Gallegos dubbed it a “midsized” account on its roster, which ranges from national retailer J.C. Penney Co. to the California Milk Processor Board in San Clemente.
New York-based industry tracker Kantar Media said Church’s Chicken spent more than $2 million on the Latino-American market in 2012; its media-buying budget for the general market was $14.3 million during the same period.
Boulder, Colo.-based Meade approached Grupo Gallegos in November.
There was a “need for the pitch to look at the entirety of the consumer segment for Church’s Chicken, and their audience is very diverse,” said Montse Barrena, group account director who spearheaded the effort for Grupo Gallegos. “They wanted to make sure that the Hispanic consumer was well-represented, not just in the creative, but in the development of the strategy and the insight as we move forward reaching out to the total customer base for Church’s Chicken.”
Groupo Gallegos arrives on the account as Church’s Chicken gets ready for a rebranding effort.
It’s always “key to understand [the] consumer that you are talking to, to understand the dynamic of their lives and also their interaction with your brand,” Barrena said. “What Church’s is very proud of is actually being there for their consumers, for the neighborhoods that they are in. … They’ve stayed in many communities where other [fast-food chains] have left.”
Out With the Old
The new direction is a turn from “Life’s too short to skimp on chicken”—a live-in-the-moment message the incumbent agency on the account, ESW StoryLab in Chicago, coined about a year ago.
The fast-food chain is instead looking to “forge a deeper connection between the highly recognized brand and its restaurant guests,” according to the company.
The bilingual creative pitch, the first collaboration between the two agencies, was prepared at Made’s office in Boulder.
“We loved working with them—there is great chemistry between the creative teams, as well as strategy teams,” Barrena said. “The enthusiasm that the team showed for the brand, they loved it, and I think that made a difference. We saw Church’s as a brand with great potential, a great product, one that would be very exciting for us to work on, and I think that showed in the pitch.”
The account will be “absorbed within the staff” at Grupo Gallegos—the same 10-member team that bid for the contract will continue to work on the marketing effort.
“That was one of their requirements when they met us,” Barrena said. “They wanted to make sure that the team that they met was the team that was going to work on the account” on “repositioning of the brand.”
There are no Church’s Chicken restaurants in OC, but the Huntington Beach headquarters of the ad agency is near one in Long Beach.
Future marketing campaigns will include TV, radio, digital and point-of-sale advertising, with new ads debuting before summer.
The agency is owned by John Gallegos, who projected it would finish 2013 with $20 million in revenue, up $4 million from 2012. Its client roster also includes Wonderful Pistachios, Comcast Corp., Clorox Co.; Ashland Inc.’s Valvoline; Foster Farms; and G6 Hospitality LLC’s Motel 6 brand.
Cajun Operating Co., owned by private equity firm Friedman Fleischer & Lowe in San Francisco, operates Church’s Chicken.
