April 14th, 2023, Lesley Simeon
HOA Brands (parent company of restaurant chain Hooters) has hired Firehouse as its new creative agency of record. Firehouse will replace incumbent shop The Morrison Agency which has managed the company’s creative account for the last seven years.
The new agency has been brought on board to aid Hooters’ effort to court younger audiences and grow via “loyalty and digital sales.”
We look at YouGov data to understand the generational makeup of Hooters’ current customers.
According to YouGov Profiles - which covers demographic, psychographic, attitudinal and behavioral consumer metrics - 50% of all Hooters’ customers in the US are Millennials. Gen X is just over a quarter at 27%, 11% are Baby Boomers and 8% of Hooters’ customers are Gen Z.
Homing in on Millennials and Gen Z consumers, let’s examine how effective the restaurant’s advertising has been in grabbing young people’s attention.
Data from YouGov BrandIndex - which tracks consumer sentiment towards thousands of brands daily - shows that Hooters’ Ad Awareness score has grown among Gen Z and Millennial consumers in the US. The score - which indicates how many and which consumers are noticing the brand’s advertising - grew from 5% in March 2018 to 9% in March 2023.
By comparison, the score remained mostly unchanged throughout the same period among the general US population.
We also explore YouGov data to identify factors this group considers before deciding on a restaurant to order food from.
Profiles data reveals that value for money is the top factor among both Gen Z and Millennials as well as the general US population (41% vs. 52%).
Further, 28% of Gen Z and Millennials in the US consider freshness of products/ingredients and another 27% take into account whether restaurants treat their staff fairly.
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Methodology: YouGov Profiles is based on continuously collected data and rolling surveys, rather than from a single limited questionnaire. Profiles data for the US is nationally representative and weighted by age, gender, education, region, and race. Learn more about Profiles.
YouGov BrandIndex collects data on thousands of brands every day. Hooters’ Ad Awareness score is based on the question: Which of the following restaurant chains have you seen as advertisement for in the past two weeks? and delivered as a percentage. Scores are based on an average daily sample size of 7306/23376 US adults between March 2018 and March 2023. Figures are based on a yearly periodicity. Learn more about BrandIndex.
Photo by Aleisha Kalina on Unsplash