Chili’s has been around since 1975. While we have this beloved legacy brand from Dallas to thank for bringing Tex-Mex to the rest of the US, Chili’s lost sight of its Texas roots and unintentionally conformed to the casual dining sea of sameness.

To help Chili’s reclaim its identity and reinvigorate the business, we developed a brand campaign that defied category convention while borrowing from Chili’s past. The “Chili’s Is Back, Baby” campaign leveraged a rewrite of their famous earmwork jingle to communicate everything from brand positioning, to new menu items and LTOs. And to visually differentiate Chili’s from category tropes like cheese pulls and bite-and-smiles, the campaign featured high-key, editorial-style, perfectly imperfect food photography.

This work made it impossible for consumers to ignore Chili’s, demonstrated by category-besting traffic and sales lifts of 8% and 4%, respectively.

Photographer: Manny Rodriguez
Created at former agency, OKRP