Church's & Texas Chicken

Making Texas mean something

Challenge

In 2017, the leadership at Church’s was at a crossroads.

The Texas brand had seen significant growth internationally, but the domestic business was struggling. In a fast-moving QSR landscape, the team needed clarity on how and where to drive growth for both parts of the business.

To do that, they appointed Clear as true end-to-end partners. A team capable of delivering clear insights, uncovering the right commercial opportunities and then bringing that strategy to life creatively through a new 360 experience.

Clarity

We blended qualitative and quantitative research into consumer needs, occasions and desired experiences in the category with commercial, trend and competitive analysis to deliver a rigorous segmentation of the target consumers across every market in which the brands operate.

Across every segment, there was a clear opportunity – to do a better job of calling out what being from Texas means for the brands. So our strategy was clear – to create a flexible global brand expression, with a shared focus on bold, down home flavor, small-batch, handcrafted preparation and warm, open door Texan hospitality.

Global brands with a local flavor

Solution

Together, we mapped that opportunity across every experience touchpoint, delivering a clear direction for change across dine-in, carry-out, drive-thru and delivery experiences in every market.

The two brands are now able to dial up different elements of a shared playbook – with a clear understanding of what resonates most powerfully with different audiences in different global markets.

The Texas brand has received a top-to-toe overhaul, its first since the 1980s. Menu innovations, logo, packaging, restaurant design, uniforms have all been developed and thoroughly tested with consumers – and the resulting rebrand is rolling out across restaurants in Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Thailand and beyond.

The Church’s brand has undergone a smaller shift, but the shared expression between the two brands is clear and lays the groundwork for closer integration in the future.

Results

New Texas Chicken restaurants opened in Indonesia, with the first in Jakarta launching in May 2019. In addition, existing sites in a variety of global markets transitioned to the new branding and restaurant designs.

Domestically, our work featured in new national advertising campaigns – and it’s already delivering great sales performance.

“In 2016, the company began a three-year strategic plan to improve operations domestically and internationally and bolster its U.S. image by creating new packaging and uniforms. These efforts helped push sales to over $1 billion in 2019, the same year it boasted 20 consecutive weeks of positive comp sales.”