SpendscapeCompanies · Restaurants
Wendy's
AdvertiserWEN
Wendy's spent $28M on advertising and marketing in fiscal 2018, down 31.7% on the year before. That's 1.8% of revenue.
$28Mmarketing spend, FY2018
-31.7%vs the year before
1.8%of revenue
Receipts say brand/spend downsay vs do
Marketing spend by year
Bars: advertising and marketing expense, $B (10-K). Line: spend as a share of revenue.
What they told investors
“Our marketing, David, has been -- our calendar, frankly, has been somewhat focused on promotions and collaborations without the continuity of the brand building that goes underneath it and a story that the customers really kind of connect with and resonates with them that, that…”Robert Wright · 2026 Q2 · transcript
“No, I think we all have to be honest about the performance of our marketing efforts are not delivering what we want, but that would not suggest that we would pull back from the marketing spend.”management · 2026 Q2 · transcript
“We have a new media agency coming on board that's going to help us with a more sophisticated audience-based approach that's going to leverage everything we've learned about our customers, which is going to help us be much more effective from a media perspective.”Ken Cook · 2026 Q1 · transcript
“media spend is still going to be down year-over-year in the first half and then significantly improve in the second half”Ken Cook · 2026 Q1 · transcript
“In January, we built on the brand equity of Biggie and launched new Biggie deals as our everyday value architecture.”Adjusted EPS · 2025 Q4 · transcript
“We are redeploying company breakfast advertising spend to investments in field operations that will improve the customer experience across all dayparts and drive efficiency in our restaurants.”Ken Cook · 2024 Q4 · transcript
What the 10-K says about marketing
- investing in brand “mbination of trademarks, service marks, copyrights, domain names, trade secrets and similar intellectual property rights to protect our brand and other intellectual property. The success of our business strategy depends, in part, on our continued ability to use our intellectual…” 10-K, Feb 23, 2026
Say vs do
Receipts say brand/spend down. In 49 statements from its leaders in interviews, 2 argued for investing in brand and 0 for cutting; the filed spend went down.
In the news
- E.l.f. jams to second music album under entertainment marketing arm Marketing Dive · Sep 28, 2026 · campaign