Sonic’s CMO on its new campaign, changing media approach and why it stuck with Mother

Sonic is refreshing its look with new packaging, new crew uniforms and a new creative campaign as the drive-up chain looks to increase brand equity with price-sensitive consumers. The effort from Mother, which includes the new tagline “Live Free, Eat Sonic,” encourages consumers to break up the monotony and treat themselves. “We talked a lot internally about how it would be received,” said Ryan Dickerson, Sonic’s chief marketing officer. “The idea of living free is not something where you have to quit your job and change your whole life to chase a dream adventure. It’s just reminding people there is a lot of rinse and repeat behaviors in life, and there’s inflationary pressures, it’s an election year and there’s a lot of uncertainty for people, but there are opportunities every day to deliberately choose a bit of fun.”More from Ad Age: Summer ice cream marketing strategies The “treat yourself” idea is driven home in new ads from Mother. One 60-second spot shows a family eating a humdrum lunch at “Nothing Burger” when man representing Sonic’s “chief ingenuity officer” pulls up to take them to Sonic’s “department of research and deliciousment,” a colorful building featuring the chain’s pebble ice, drinks and tots. “In this world we don’t get to control much,” the CIO says in the ad. “But there is one thing we do get to choose every single day: what we eat.” The spot includes a nod to Sonic’s old “Two Guys” campaign, which featured comics Peter Grosz and T.J. Jagodowski sitting in a car at Sonic. They appear as a bobblehead on the van’s dashboard. The new tagline replaces the previous “Mmm. Sonic.” line from 2022, also from Mother. Another spot takes a page from a tech keynote, introducing Sonic’s new “groovy” fries that debuted in May. Its first new fries in 10 years are crinkle cut, rather than straight cut like its old ones—Sonic claims they hold sauce and salt better. The spots will run across linear, streaming, digital, social and radio. Inspire Brands, Sonic’s parent company, hired Publicis Groupe as its media agency of record in 2021. (Along with Sonic, Inspire Brands also owns Arby’s, Dunkin’, Jimmy John’s and Buffalo Wild Wings.) Sonic’s brand refresh comes at a time when consumers have made it clear that they are tired of rising fast-food prices. Burger King, McDonald’s and Wendy’s have all responded with $5 or $3 meal deals. A new survey from LendingTree revealed that 62% of Americans say they’re eating less fast food due to rising prices. The report also found that 78% of consumers now view fast food as a luxury, a telling stat for a category that was once perceived as economical. “It’s becoming clearer and clearer that the days of occasionally using fast food as a cheap way to help make ends meet are long gone,” LendingTree stated. “Now, most Americans say it’s more likely to wreck your budget than to help you extend it.” Retailers including Target, Walmart, Aldi and Walgreens have slashed prices on certain items in an attempt to retain budgeting consumers. More from Ad Age: Pride marketing is quieter this year Sonic is trying to appeal to price-sensitive diners by focusing on value and affordability, Dickerson said, pointing to the chain’s $1.99 wraps and half-off shakes after 7 p.m. Sonic has over 3,500 locations in 47 states and did $5.5 billion in system-wide sales in 2023, according to Inspire Brands, and ranked 12th in Nation’s Restaurant News’ list of the top 500 restaurant chains. Inspire late last year announced Dickerson’s promotion to Sonic CMO. He had served as VP for retail and e-commerce in Inspire’s Commercial Group. Ad Age recently caught up with Dickerson to learn how Sonic is speaking to a wide range of consumers, why the chain stayed with Mother after conducting an agency review last year and how the relaunch may change the brand’s media mix. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. What consumer is the campaign supposed to speak to? We have been a leader in the drink category and you can see us talking more towards some of those innovations, which appeals to Gen Z. But at the same time, we play in the middle, and that can be really tough or really fun. Other brands may have to try and age down or move to a different position, but we have broad appeal because we serve every day part and don’t focus on one protein. We want our consumers to see themselves in our advertising, we don’t want to over-index too far. You went through a creative review last year and stuck with Mother. Why? What changes did you both make to continue the partnership? Our president Jim Taylor joined almost a year ago and I joined this year, and we both started looking at what we would like to do around relaunching Sonic. One thing we owed ourselves, our franchisees and our guests was just taking a look at our resources. Anytime you look to deviate from a norm that’s been there for decades, it’s a level of diligence we felt we had to take—do we have the right partners to achieve this goal? Talking with Mother was new to Jim and me, so it was an opportunity for us to make sure we had the right partnership and the right level of agreement and understanding on where we want to go. And we could not be happier with the creative. When you’re new, you want to be able to take an objective look, and that's what you saw us do. You were previously the VP for digital retail and e-commerce for all Inspire Brands. What lessons have you brought with you into the Sonic CMO role? I spent most of my career in the digital marketing space. Sonic has a very large first-party database and when I think about the way that we speak to consumers, I don’t ever just think of own, paid or earned. For groovy fries, I asked the team to pull the addressable database size because we can start to move our media mix. If we see we have consumers who have purchased a certain product or are interested in a certain category, we can talk about how to use the channels more effectively and not over-message. We’re able to get a little bit more targeted and creative with how we take media dollars and reach a different consumer set rather than folks who are already engaging with us. Looking through the lens of CRM and loyalty and our Sonic Rewards campaign, I think I come with a little bit of a different view in terms of how we should be communicating: right place, right time, right product, right person. Just because we have this amazing set of rewards consumers that we can talk to, let’s be really diligent about how and when we’re engaging them. What is Sonic’s media mix? Inspire Brands has a robust media optimization capability team and allows us a lot of flexibility. It’s not generally a “set and forget” thing month to month or even quarter to quarter. We will shift spend week to week just seeing what channels are performing. And this year is going to be a tough exercise for that. We’re in an election year, so prices are all over the place. Eyeballs and impressions and consumer engagement can be volatile. A lot of times it’s easy to pull back on something like linear spend to lean into digital or to lean into streaming because they tend to be a little more measurable and attributable. Internally, we just did our first round in terms of our big sort of media optimization piece and for Sonic specifically. But the nice thing about that is I have a couple of other Inspire brands that have gone through their media optimization exercise as well before us. So we’re going to go with a fairly diverse mix for this particular campaign. When you launch an equity campaign, you have to create space for it, give it air on the calendar. How is social media a part of that mix? On social media we just brought in two new social media interns, and we are looking at that as just a fun place to play. We certainly are taking a holistic look at how we show up on our organic, how we think about paid, what the splits need to be more of a content creation function rather than just putting branding elements out there. @sonicdrivein reporting for duty 🫡 ♬ original sound - SONIC Drive-In We are not there to just talk about ourselves. There will be Sonic elements, but we want to make content that people can relate to, like getting your first job, coming up with your first idea and pitching it to your boss. Those [social media] channels are certainly massive advertising platforms, but we want to treat our organic social content very differently than we ever would any of our paid media, and that’s somewhat of a deviation from where we’ve been. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs What trends are you watching in the fast food space? Looking at food and beverages, there is a lot being done in the drink space and seeing more brands step into the fun flavor combinations. That can be hard because most consumers aren’t that adventurous with their palate. So we are constantly looking at what is over-indexing. Is it regional? Is there a flavor profile that is standing out? I’m also watching social and activations. We see a lot of celebrity activations these days and are watching how those are working for brands. Rather than piggyback on something, how can we create something that's really, truly ours and that is just inherently Sonic. In general we are looking at trends we can learn from, but not necessarily inject ourselves, because that’s not what consumers want. We’re the presenting partner of the X Games this summer, and that is a super fun activation for us as we continue to try to look at how we can bring “Live Free” to life and look at areas where we can be a little bit unique. What is your Sonic order? My order has changed recently, but it’s a product I can’t talk about yet. But a few months ago, it was a double cheeseburger, tots and I am a vanilla shake guy. Maybe that’s lame, but I love an awesome classic milkshake. If not a shake, a Dr Pepper. Editor’s note: Sonic did not reveal what this new product might be.

Sonic’s CMO on its new campaign, changing media approach and why it stuck with Mother

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