Chicken Salad Chick

Summer 2026 at Chicken Salad Chick’s corporate office meant one thing: my job was to make people crave chicken salad. And I had a lot of fun doing it. I helped develop the influencer strategy and social content for National Chicken Salad Day, helped power a national app campaign that brought in 124K downloads and 62K new loyalty members, and built the Fall LTO Flavor campaign from first concept to full cross-channel rollout. Here’s a closer look at what I cooked up.

Nashville Hottie Campaign

The Fall LTO Flavor campaign was my chance to see a launch through from the first spark of an idea to the moment it hit everyone’s feed. The flavor itself grew out of an insight about Nashville, which is one of Chicken Salad Chick’s most loyal customer bases, and I helped shape the campaign concept around that connection. From there, I jumped into the photoshoot, where we turned a bowl of chicken salad into something you’d want to eat through your phone screen. I also worked on post-production graphics and helped roll the campaign out across channels, making sure the story stayed consistent everywhere our customers saw it. It was a front-row seat to how a seasonal flavor goes from a menu idea to a moment people actually talk about.

1st Annual National Chicken Salad Day Campaign

National Chicken Salad Day was the brand’s biggest moment of the year, and I got to help make it happen. I helped develop the influencer strategy and social content that kept the day buzzing online, and I worked alongside our PR firm, Brave, on press releases and media outreach that earned a lot of attention. I also helped plan an event at one of our storefronts, complete with activations that brought the celebration out of the feed and into the real world. It all came together as one of the brand’s highest-engagement promotional moments of the year, and it was a great lesson in how social, PR, and in-person experiences can work together to turn a single day into a full-on celebration.

Day to Day Social Media

Day to day, I helped keep Chicken Salad Chick’s social channels active with the Brand Marketing Team, which meant staying close to what people were saying and jumping on moments as they happened. This summer, creators across social media kept talking about the brand, and that wave of earned attention turned into a very viral moment that lasted all season. I was part of the team that capitalized on it, finding ways to join the conversation, amplify what creators were already saying, and turn organic buzz into content that kept the momentum going. It was a great lesson in how fast social moves and how much a brand can gain by listening first and then showing up in a way that feels natural.

What I learned from the Chick

My time at Chicken Salad Chick taught me that great marketing is a team sport. Working on the Fall LTO campaign, National Chicken Salad Day, and the daily social channels showed me how an insight, like Nashville’s loyalty to the brand, can grow into a concept, a photoshoot, a press push, and a feed full of content that all feels like one story. I learned how PR, social, creative, and in-person events can amplify each other, how to move fast when a viral moment lands, and how to let data guide the creative instead of the other way around. Most of all, I learned that the best campaigns start with listening to what people already love and then showing up in a way that feels natural. I’m leaving with a stronger strategic eye, a faster creative instinct, and a lifelong craving for chicken salad.

    • Campaign concept development

    • Event planning & activations

    • Creative Direction

    • Audience and performance analysis

    • Adobe Photoshop

    • Adobe Indesign

    • Microsoft Office