Inspire Brands, the owner of Arby’s, Buffalo Wild Wings, Dunkin’ and other restaurant chains, picked Publicis Groupe as its media agency of record, bringing more Inspire chains to the roster on which Publicis’ Zenith and Digitas already works.
Publicis created a new unit, Inspire Media Engine, to handle the account. Inspire Media Engine will be led by Zenith and Digitas.
Inspire Brands, formed in 2018, collectively has more than 22,000 U.S. restaurants across the Arby’s, Baskin-Robbins, Buffalo Wild Wings, Dunkin’, Jimmy John’s, Rusty Taco and Sonic Drive-In chains.
In all, external billings on the Inspire Brands family of chains total roughly $600 million, according to COMvergence data.
Publicis’ Zenith already handled media for Arby’s and Sonic, while Digitas worked on Dunkin’. In late 2018, Inspire awarded the Arby's media account to Zenith, which was already working with Sonic. At that time, Inspire Brands said there were no plans to consolidate all of its holdings under Zenith. Inspire Brands has grown further since then, most recently adding Dunkin’ and Baskin-Robbins when it bought Dunkin’ Brands Group for $11.3 billion in December.