I joined Denny’s as Head of Social in April 2025.
Since that time, I’ve led exponential organic growth across all channels, created and launched Denny’s most successful social campaign in brand history, managed multiple agency relationships, and absorbed both PR and Paid Social into my function amid layoffs, budget cuts, and a private equity acquisition. My work includes Denny’s 20 most engaged Instagram and TikTok posts ever, beating 15 years of prior social media history, and 50k+ new followers, a noteworthy turnaround after years of hemorrhaging followers by the thousands. The work has won multiple awards and is currently in consideration for four Cannes Lions, and all of this was achieved organically, with an annual boosting budget of less than $20k.
Yes I know this is clearly made with AI.
Favorite Projects
WTF IS UP, DENNY’S??
If you’ve ever been on the internet, you’ve heard the iconic line. What the f*ck is up, Denny’s??
When I was hired, my first question was how are we going to reengage this moment? Turns out, all it took was getting the band back together… which is exactly what we did.
We launched a limited time Mozz Pit Burger and promoted with a music video featuring the original band, Live Without.
The result? Denny’s most successful social campaign of all time. I could rattle off all the statistics but for reference, the video is the highest performing Instagram post of all time, paid or organic. More than triple the next highest performing. More than any ad or boosted post ever. All without a single dollar of media weight.
STICKY KICKS
I lead quarterly presentations across our inter-agency team to brainstorm and implement Brand Activation style ideas for the purpose of cultural relevance and earned media.
Last summer, I was presented a slide with a silhouette of a shoe and immediately thought “Great — another branded sneaker. Never seen that before.”
But when the next slide revealed the concept, I quickly changed my tune. Not just a shoe with a Denny’s logo slapped on it, but one infused with actual Denny’s syrup.
We called them Sticky Kicks. And they became our most successful PR campaign in brand history.
Denise’s
They say organic social is dead. A convenient line for those who don’t know how to hack it.
Social — and specifically community management — is all about planting seeds. Replying to fans, creators and other brands in a constant crusade for interesting engagement opportunities. Some won’t grow. Others go full Jack-and-the-Beanstalk. I
Emily Zugay is a creator known for “rebranding” well-known companies with a lo-fi, deadpan twist. And when she gave Denny’s her signature treatment, we played along possibly better than any brand had before.
The initiative became our most successful TikTok campaign of all time (by a LOT) and nearly doubled our follower base.
Social Strategist: Kendra Yurczyszyn (She also created and edited the content herself! Rundon’twalk to hire Kendra for your next social campaign.)
CULTURAL TARGETING
The best use of organic social is brand building and cultural relevance. The best use of paid social is to drive conversions. Still, there are occasionally expectations to leverage organic to drive conversions.
In Spring 2026, Denny’s was acquired by a franchisee-led private equity triad, after which time the directive for marketing was to drive sales and traffic with everything we do.
To meet this revised brief, I created a formula.
1) Identify ownable moments in Denny’s calendar throughout the rest of 2026.
2) Partner with our CRM team to create bespoke offers around those moments.
3) Create content specific to those moments and offers.
4) Boost the content, targeting those interested in the respective moments.
For example, to celebrate Taylor Swift’s wedding, we created a 13% discount for our Rewards members. We created the post on the right and boosted it to Swifties with a budget of $3K.
This one post drove nearly 15,000 Rewards sign-ups, 10,000 redemptions, and almost $400K in sales, absolutely obliterating all forecasting.
Pretty good ROI for $3K.
