Situation 

A casual dining chain with new ownership and C-suite leadership faced negative press, severed advertising relationships, and consumer apathy and confusion. The senior leadership questioned the organization’s internal capabilities and relationships with partners.

Approach 

A&MPLIFY was engaged to address these challenges and evaluate opportunities for the new leaders to refocus the marketing organization and drive impact. This included assessing the organization’s marketing operations, determining how capabilities and spending compared to benchmarks, and identifying short- and medium-term opportunities.

• Marketing Capability Assessment: Benchmarked capabilities across 17 core competency areas using more than 100 inputs — including client data, external tools, and interviews with marketers and agency partners.
• Media Budget Evaluation: Developed a recommendation to optimize the client’s marketing channel mix and budget allocation, aligning with historical strengths and industry best practices.
• Value Identification: Provided six actionable opportunity areas with next steps that represented either a potential risk, a cost-saving opportunity or a chance to generate higher returns through additional investment.

Key Outcomes 

• Quickly uncovered organizational challenges, prioritization issues and resource gaps with a blended approach of outside-in tools, data analysis and internal/external interviews.
• Identified $8–$10 million in potential value: Evaluated the process, tools and analyses being used to set marketing budgets and allocate across media channels
• Developed a prioritized opportunity map to help new leadership reposition the company for growth.