Less than a year after being promoted to CMO, Wendy’s Brandon Solano will join Papa Murphy’s as CMO, effective Nov. 30.
Solano joins Papa Murphy's as the take-and-bake pizza chain looks to grow its brand across the country. Of his new role, Solano said: “I look forward to working with the team to leverage digital and precision marketing to enhance brand awareness and support the company’s initiatives and growth plans.”
Prior to being promoted to CMO, Solano served as SVP of marketing for Wendy’s for a year. He joined Wendy’s from Domino’s, where he served as VP of development. He has also held marketing positions with Hershey, Kellogg’s and P&G.
Per CEO Ken Calwell: “I think really the digital marketing strategy and online ordering will pull more heavily for us, starting in the second half of 2016.”
While it may be too late to secure mobile dollars this year, the bulk of digital, radio and TV buys will occur around the rollout of the e-commerce platform in 2016 . So, sellers should start reaching out now to secure dollars. Agency readers – approach Solano now with ideas to engage busy families, particularly millennial moms who tend to make meal-time decisions.
Deloitte Digital is assisting with the redesign of the company’s website, including advanced online-ordering capabilities. Sq1 is still handling display and social and WongDoody is on creative. Just last month, PM named InnerWorkings to “strengthen the impact” of its point-of-purchase, printed marketing materials and branded merchandise.
Additional Insight
TV Breakdown
Per iSpot.tv, PM has spent $32.4 million on national TV ads since January – roughly flat to the same period 2014 ($33.7 million). The most money has been spent to air ads on PAC-12 Network, CW, FOX, NBC and ABC during shows such as “Women’s College Basketball,” “College Baseball,” “Seinfeld,” “Jeopardy!” and “Pac-12 Classics: Basketball.” With the exception of the addition of the PAC-12 Network, 2015 channel targeting is the same as 2014′s.
PM’s national TV SOV is 6.7%, placing it at No. 5 behind competitors Domino’s, Little Caesars, Pizza Hut and Papa John’s.
Digital Breakdown
Per DailyVista, Papa Murphy’s has run 111 standard display ads on 58 publishers so far this year (14% mobile). This is actually down from the same period in 2014, when 143 creatives ran on 627 publishers. The pullback is probably due to the “very” quantitative marketing consumer segmentation research Papa Murphy’s recently conducted, so expect digital spend to increase with more targeted outlays. But while digital presence was down, mobile increased from 3% to 14% (for H1). Note, as well, that programmatic buys have decreased from 33% in 2014 to only 25% in 2015.
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