Wingstop is shifting its marketing approach to drive more consideration | Photo courtesy of Wingstop
We can point to the relentless inflationary environment for causing much of Wingstop’s recent sales struggles. The chain overindexes among lower-income consumers, who are feeling the pinch everywhere, from higher gas and grocery prices to higher energy and insurance costs.
But, similar to last quarter, CEO Michael Skipworth also outlined some marketing opportunities the brand has been missing in recent quarters and vowed to correct them “with urgency.”
“We’re sharpening our creative and messaging,” he said during the company’s earnings call Wednesday morning.
Such sharpening comes as same-store sales in the third quarter fell 5.4%, on top of a 5.6% decline from the same period a year ago, marking the chain’s sixth straight quarter in the red.
The chain’s marketing focus, Skipworth said, has now shifted to the brand’s equities, like bone-in wings and innovative flavors, but also value, which hasn’t been a strong enough part of the chain’s messaging despite more consumers demanding such a proposition. To move the needle, Wingstop is ramping up its marketing investments from the General and Administrative budget, though the company’s G&A outlook was otherwise reduced to a range of $138 million to $140 million, from $146 million to $149 million in the second quarter.
“We’re layering in menu, value, and promotional levers amplified by creative and paid media,” Skipworth said, adding that this strategy is the path back to sustained same-store sales growth.
Skipworth conceded that the brand has spent too much time focusing on brand awareness and not enough time focusing on driving consideration. But, with an allocation shift of media dollars, the company has started to see positive signals so far.
For instance, dedicated promotions like Watch Party Bundles, which include 20 classic wings, fries, and a side of ranch sip for $27.99, and 30 Wings for $30, available every Thursday and Sunday through early January have driven average weekly sales and “reactivation of guests,” as well as “an uptick in organic surge traffic,” according to Skipworth.
Most of these marketing shifts began in mid-September with the NFL regular season kickoff. According to point-of-sale data from Toast, chicken wings are the single most popular game-day food during football season, with weekly orders jumping 25% on Sundays in NFL cities.
During those games, Wingstop is focused on “front loading” video investments with more premium placements and 30-second spots.
“From there, we plan to sustain efficient reach and frequency through a weekly presence of 15-second spots and an always-on social strategy to keep Wingstop top of mind,” Skipworth said. “We are concentrating investments around high-relevance occasions, pairing it with creative that more clearly communicates Wingstop’s quality, flavor, and value, and sustained engagement through paid and owned channels between those moments.”
Wingstop is “continuously” measuring results on this new strategy and will sharpen its marketing investments if need be.
Beyond a heightened media presence, Wingstop is also leaning more into new menu news and dedicated creative support around limited-time offers, like the Lemon Pepper Trio launched in September. The LTO was integrated into the company’s paid and social channels, which was a new approach and one that will continue as the Trio performed well.
“Newness, innovation, those are things that really drive consideration, and that’s that opportunity we have in front of us,” Skipworth said.
Executives also remain bullish on the potential of Club Wingstop, the company’s first-ever loyalty program launched in May. New customers in the program are returning within 30 days at 13 points higher than those who have been in the program for the full 90 days. The company is now testing what messages within that program increase purchase frequency and an AI-powered personalization engine has been integrated to provide more targeted offers. In initial tests, guests receiving personalized offers have generated higher total sales, Skipworth said.
“This demonstrates the value of more relevant messages and the offers at the individual guest level and give us a foundation to scale this capability,” he said. “Our objective is to give consumers more compelling reasons to choose Wingstop more often. We are doing this by concentrating our media investment on occasions where interest and relevance are the highest.”
Contact Alicia Kelso at Alicia.Kelso@informa.com
Follow her on TikTok: @aliciakelso
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