Iris Atlanta | Agency Profile, Contacts, AOR, Client Relationships

See Winmo sales intelligence in action

Millennial Media Opps: Zaxby's increases digital advertising spend, focuses on online sales (Score 68)

We told you about digital sales by upgrading drive-thru, carryout and delivery. To pull this off, Zaxbys created a new position by hiring chief development officer Vanessa Fox in September 2020. Fox comes from Jack in the Box, where she held the same position. She will be responsible for working on a new building design and implementing dual-lane drive-thrus. Additionally, the company plans to add more options to its menu. While the CDO hire should not affect marketing spend or agency relationships, she will likely work with the marketing team team to promote new building designs, drive-thru layout ect. 

According to iSpot's estimates, Zaxby's spent around $10m on national TV ads in 2020, a 29% decrease from $12.9m spent in this channel in 2019. The decline was most likely a result of coronavirus relate cost-saving measures. The chain spent $12.3m during 2018. In 2020, it placed ads during programming such as "College Football," "College Basketball," "College Football Scoreboard" and "World Chase Tag- USA." 

Per Pathmatics, Zaxby's earned 592.9m impressions through desktop video ads (63%), Facebook ads (21%), Instagram ads (11%), mobile video ads (3%) and desktop display ads (1%). It placed the majority (97%) of these ads site direct onto sites such as youtube.com, facebook.com, instagram.com, tubitv.com and wsbtv.com. It placed the remainder (3%) indirectly through Amazon onto sites such as twitch.tv, yahoo.com, accuweather.com, epicurious.com and mypoints.com. It spent around $7.3m on digital display ads in 2020, a 9% increase from $6.7m spent in this channel in 2019. Zaxby's has been increasing spend in this channel over the past several years considering it spent around $2.8m in 2018. 

Sellers-- Zaxby's seems to primarily target Gen-X and millennials with a male skew. It reaches these demographics mainly through digital display and national TV ads. The chain increased digital display spend while decreasing national TV spend, which could indicate a slightly younger target audience. However, the decline in TV spend was due to coronavirus, so I predict TV spend will go up in 2021. Zaxby's typically hits college football and basketball hard (Q3 and Q4) hard. It also invests in OOH and local broadcast TV ads, per Kantar. Please use the chain's location finder here, to see where you may be able to provide local ad space. Sellers should reach out offering relevant ad space. 

Agency & martech readers-- The chicken finger chain currently works with creative AOR Camelot. There are no glaring triggers pointing to a potential review at this time, but Zazby's is going through some changes that could lead to a review down the road. Agencies located near its Atlanta, GA headquarters may have more success.