Popeyes Promotes Richard H. Lynch to Chief Global Brand Officer
12/19/2011 - ATLANTA - AFC Enterprises, Inc., the franchisor and operator of Popeyes® restaurants, today
announced the promotion of Richard ("Dick") H. Lynch to Chief Global Brand Officer.
According to Cheryl Bachelder, the company's Chief Executive Officer:
"Dick led our brand transformation and now we're asking him to take on the task of embedding our story into our guest experience and corporate culture. He is an experienced and passionate brand leader who is ideally suited to harness the power of our brand messaging. Effective immediately he is responsible for global marketing and all internal and external communications."
Lynch joined the company in 2008 as Chief Marketing Officer for Popeyes. In an August interview Lynch told AdAge that his "background is unusual for a CMO -- not only from the agency side but from the account-planning side. I led the account-planning side at Campbell Mithun. There's a certain limitation when you're on the agency side. You can have the greatest, most profound insight, but if the client for any reason resists it, it's not going to drive the brand in its entirety, the way you envisioned it. Typically the planners' insights can be limited to the brand communications, per se. And what's been really interesting about what I've gotten to do is taking the skill set and talent that I learned in account planning, identifying brand insights, and now getting to drive the ship myself."
Lynch started with Campbell Mithun Advertising in 1995. He left Campbell Mithun in 2003, to serve as principal of GO, LLC, a marketing consulting firm specializing in in restaurant and food retail. There he developed strategy and innovation plans for a number of companies including Burger King, Ruby Tuesday and Buffalo Wild Wings.
Proof of Lynch's success can be seen in the results he and his team has delivered. Under his leadership and marketing focus, the company adjusted branding from POPEYES Chicken 'n Biscuits to POPEYES Louisiana Kitchen, beat KFC (the dominant player in the category) in a taste test, and drove the first back-to-back same store sales increases since 2005. In the most recent quarter, POPEYES had gains in global same-store sales of 1.7% which outpaced the chicken quick service restaurant category for the 14th consecutive quarter.
Reflecting on his promotion, Lynch said, ”I am thrilled to have this opportunity to leverage the incredible assets and talent in our organization to strengthen the Brand's messaging to enhance engagement with our key constituents. In this role and with this new alignment, we will be able to connect with our franchisees, employees, guests and investors in even more compelling and relevant ways."
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