Millennial Media Opps: Chili's appoints AOR, marketing VP (Score 82)

Sales lead: These changes signal a strategy shift, so reach out now if you can help. 

• Chili's Grill & Bar selected GALE as CRM AOR in September 2023. 
• The agency will handle strategy, email, digital, & data/insights. 
• It will also revamp the My Chili's Rewards program. 

In other news:

• Chili's hired Steve Kelly as marketing VP.
• Kelly will handle CRM, loyalty, digital experience, third-party delivery, & paid media. 
• He most recently served as senior marketing director at Pizza Hut. 

Target demographic: Millennials 

The company will likely:

• Revamp customer relationship strategy 
• Continue ramping up ad spend
• Make additional agency changes 

Broadcast insights (TV ad creative spend, effectiveness, impressions, and performance)

• YTD spend: Chili's spent approximately $14.5m on national TV ads YTD, after not airing an ad during the same time period of 2022. 
• 2021-2022 spend: Full-year spend equaled $453k in 2021. 
  • It did not utilize this channel during 2022. 
• Ad programming: It placed ads during programming such as College Basketball, NBA Basketball, The Bachelor, The Voice, and Chicago Fire. 

Digital and social insights (digital ad spend, effectiveness, impressions, and performance)

• YTD spend: Chili's spent about $4.5m on digital display ads YTD, a huge increase from $362.7k spent in this channel during the same time period of 2022. 
• YTD data: 594m impressions via Facebook (40%), Instagram (35%), YouTube (22%), desktop video (2%), and desktop display (1%). 
• 2021-2022 spend: Full-year spend fell from $1.2m in 2021 to $993.1k in 2022. 
• Ad location: It placed 99% of these ads directly onto sites such as facebook.com, instagram.com, youtube.com, genius.com, and bleacherreport.com. It placed 1% of these ads indirectly through Google AdX+AdSense onto sites such as genius.com, finance.yahoo.com, yahoo.com, aol.com, and espn.com. 

Additional channel insights  

• Vivvix: Chili's also invests in OOH, radio, and local broadcast. 

Agency analysis:

• Opportunity: Agency appointments commonly follow one another, so get in touch now to secure top priority. 
• Current roster:
  • O'Keefe Reinhard & Paul: creative, digital, & social AOR
  • Access Brand Communications: PR AOR
  • 360i: media & social AOR
  • GALE: CRM AOR

Insight Sources: Broadcast insights estimated by iSpot; digital spend insights estimated by Pathmatics; additional channel insights estimated by Vivvix.