Applebee's has struck a new partnership with BBDO Chicago, a move that sits at the center of the casual dining chain's latest attempt to make its marketing stand apart, according to details shared by Marketing Dive.

The executive driving the change is Michelle Chin, Applebee's chief marketing officer. Chin is overseeing an evolution of how the brand shows up with consumers, and the BBDO Chicago relationship is the most concrete signal so far of where that work is heading.

Who is Michelle Chin?

Chin holds the top marketing job at Applebee's, one of the largest casual dining brands in the U.S. Her remit now includes rethinking the chain's creative and media approach at a moment when the category she competes in rewards price messaging above almost everything else. Marketing Dive, which reported the details, frames her priority as differentiation — finding ways for Applebee's to be noticed for more than the deal of the week.

That is a real constraint, not a theoretical one. When every competitor leans on value, value stops being a distinguishing message. Chin's task, as the report describes it, is to build marketing that earns attention on the brand's own terms.

What does the BBDO Chicago partnership change?

The new relationship with BBDO Chicago gives Applebee's a fresh creative engine. BBDO is part of the Omnicom network, and its Chicago office will work with the brand as it retools its marketing approach. Marketing Dive identifies the partnership as a key piece of how the chain's marketing is evolving under Chin.

For marketers watching from other value-heavy categories — grocery, quick-service restaurants, telecom — the structure is familiar. A new CMO brings a new agency partner, and the brief is rarely just "make better ads." It is usually "make us mean something again."

The takeaway: Applebee's has paired a marketing leadership change with a new creative partner, betting the combination can lift it out of a value-message pile-up.

Why differentiation is the brief now

Marketing Dive's framing of the casual dining sector as "value-obsessed" is the load-bearing fact in this story. In a category where diners can comparison-shop promotions from their phones, price is the easiest lever to pull and the fastest one to be copied. Chin's push, as reported, aims at the harder problem: giving diners a reason to choose Applebee's that a rival can't discount away.

The brand's marketing evolution under Chin will be worth tracking on two fronts:

• Whether BBDO Chicago's first work moves the brand beyond promotion-led messaging.
• Whether that shift shows up in how the chain schedules campaigns across the year, not just in creative tone.

The short version: a value-obsessed category forced the question, and Applebee's has answered with a new CMO-led plan and a new agency at the table.

Watch the first BBDO Chicago work to land under this arrangement — it will show quickly whether the differentiation talk turns into a message diners can actually tell apart.