Why Popeyes Hired McKinney as Its Creative Agency of Record

Popeyes has concluded a short review for its creative agency record, selecting McKinney as its new shop of choice.

When Popeyes put the account into review in February, it had initially named McKinney its interim agency for a six-month trial period, but invited Anomaly and FCB into a final round of pitching, according to a source familiar with the review. SRI conducted the lighting-fast pitch.

McKinney had a previous relationship with Popeyes’ new CMO, Jeff Klein, who joined the brand from Little Caesar’s last year. At the pizza chain, Klein joined in 2019 and several months later made the agency shift, moving away from Barton F. Graf to McKinney and used SRI to run that review as well. According to COMvergence, Popeyes spent $160 million on measured media in 2022. Popeyes had been previously working with upstart independent agency Gut since March 2020.

Popeyes’ message to the agencies competing for the business was clear: Sell more chicken, bring the brand’s New Orleans roots front and center of the marketing and help move the ample conversations around the brand to commerce, as Joe Maglio, the CEO of McKinney, put it.

“We have repeatedly demonstrated Popeyes’ ability to permeate pop culture and have all the tools to build a world-class, iconic brand,” Klein told Adweek.

McKinney will staff the account with employees across all of its five locations, including Phoenix, where its new office is located following its acquisition of influencer agency August United. This pitch was McKinney’s first opportunity to bring its new creator capabilities to the forefront, which Maglio said was a big part of its final pitch to the brand.

“McKinney has incredible retail experience and a reputation for producing creative that helps drive the business, while building the brand long term,” Klein said.

The brief

McKinney, which was on Adweek’s Midsize Agency of the Year shortlist last year, is tasked with drawing more direct connections to New Orleans in the marketing, making the brand’s roots in the city a foundational aspect of the campaign. What consumers will see is how the essence of New Orleans is baked into the preparation of the food—meaning more tender loving care goes into the food from the marinating to the breading of the chicken.

“New Orleans is in our DNA at Popeyes and we will continue to highlight our roots, heritage, delicious food and what makes us unique—our chicken—in our marketing,” Klein said.

Maglio points out that every ad ends with that sting of “love that chicken from Popeyes” with “Popeyes, Louisiana kitchen” displayed on the screen. “What we’re trying to do is give it much more meaning again and have it be a repeatable construct and pound that into people’s heads.”

By focusing on the more involved process Popeyes goes through to prepare its food, Maglio said it will help differentiate Popeyes from its QSR competitors “where your food is basically sitting there and there’s kind of throw in a bag and hand it to you.” And that differentiation should help consumers accept slightly longer wait times for their food.

“Our first work together will pay homage to our roots in a unique and purposeful way and we’re looking forward to unveiling that campaign this spring.”

Redefining conflict

The ad agency business has long viewed conflicts at the extreme end of the spectrum as brands will often not allow agencies to have multiple clients that are tangentially related in category or competition.

For McKinney, it now holds two QSR restaurants as clients—Little Caesers and Popeyes—but the agency explained how it assured both clients that there wouldn’t be any conflicts within the shop.

“We committed to separate teams in a really transparent way,” Maglio said, explaining McKinney laid out who would work on each account to ensure no overlap. He added that the brands shared a common viewpoint that they want McKinney to succeed because they benefit with better talent working on their brands. As long as each brand is “getting the right people at the right level of attention,” Klein was good with it, Maglio said.

Maglio, who sits on the board of the 4A’s, adds the industry has a chance to redefine what a conflict is. While Maglio acknowledges some conflicts are legitimate in the context of trade secrets—think Pepsi and Coke—there are plenty of opportunities where agencies get conflicted out from a brand where there is no overlap in consumer, but the brands live in the same category.

“In retail, a lot of the contracts that we see are still ‘well, you can’t do that because you’re doing this’ and it’s like, but nobody will ever walk into both of those stores, if the two brands have different geographic footprints,” Maglio said.