TLDR
Wendy's has appointed Tariq Hassan, former chief marketing officer at McDonald's, to lead its marketing recovery after six straight quarters of falling US same-store sales. The hire coincides with an agency overhaul that moved media buying from Publicis Starcom to WPP Media.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
A new title and a broader remit
Wendy's named Tariq Hassan its Chief Marketing and Customer Growth Officer on 24 August 2026, a title that deliberately extends beyond the conventional CMO scope.[1] The "customer growth" addition signals a remit covering the full commercial funnel, not just brand awareness. Lindsay Radkoski, who held the US CMO position since 2024, will stay through a transition period before departing.[1]
Hassan brings a résumé built across more than 30 years in marketing, customer experience and digital transformation. Before McDonald's he served as CMO at Petco, with senior roles at Hewlett-Packard, Omnicom Group and Bank of America also on the record.[2] At McDonald's his most visible work ran through culture-driven activations, adult Happy Meals and the Grimace birthday campaign among them, each leaning on social momentum rather than conventional promotional mechanics.
Six quarters and a diagnosis
Wendy's recorded a 7.0 per cent decline in US same-store sales in the second quarter of 2026, the sixth consecutive quarterly fall.[3] The pattern points to softer traffic and a value perception problem that one-off promotions have failed to correct. CEO Bob Wright, who joined the company in May 2026, has framed the core issue as an absence of consistent brand narrative rather than a pricing or menu deficiency.
Wright said Hassan's appointment was "another meaningful step in returning Wendy's to profitable growth."[1] Hassan said his focus would be on "reigniting that passionate connection," describing the brand as having "a real point of view that our customers genuinely feel."[1] That framing tracks with what moved the needle at McDonald's: campaigns built around cultural moments rather than discount mechanics.
The agency machinery behind the pivot
WPP Media was named Wendy's US media partner, replacing Publicis Starcom after a formal media review.[4] Both the agency appointment and Hassan's hire landed on 24 August, suggesting the decisions were coordinated rather than sequential. A CMO who inherits a fresh media partner on day one can set unified planning cycles from the start, which is a tighter arrangement than the alternative.
VML retained the creative account and executed a temporary rebrand of the chain to "Tendy's" to support the launch of its Chicken Tenders range.[5] The stunt carried the hallmarks of the culture-led playbook Hassan ran at McDonald's: a brand willing to alter its own identity for a product moment, generating earned media in the process. VML's continuity on creative means Hassan steps into an established agency relationship, which compresses the time before coherent campaigns can reach market.
The structural question for Hassan is propagation speed: how quickly a refreshed brand narrative moves from brief to indexed content to measurable traffic at the drive-through. His first full planning cycle with WPP Media will indicate whether the diagnosis of promotional over-reliance produces a genuinely different media mix or a rebranded version of the same schedule. Wendy's reports its next quarterly results after Q3 2026 closes in late September.
SOURCES & CITATIONS
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Who is Tariq Hassan and what did he do at McDonald's?
Why has Wendy's been losing sales?
What changes has Wendy's made to its agency roster?
Zara Kincaid writes about artificial intelligence and search. Her focus is what happens to businesses when the front page of the internet stops being a list of links and starts being an answer.
