Lucy Thompson and Ben Drew. Credit: Chicken Dinner
Chicken Dinner has appointed Lucy Thompson as its first head of growth.
Thompson joins from Dentsu, where she spent two years in the network's leadership ranks, most recently as group digital director.
Thompson brings 11 years of digital and performance leadership to the role.
At Dentsu's Carat Perth, she ran digital strategy and performance media for clients including the WA Government, Cash Converters and Revo Fitness. Cash Converters carries $3.6 million in annual media investment.
She has also worked on brands including Kurt Geiger and Stokke.
"The holding company model isn't slow because the people are bad - it's slow because every new tool and every process change has to move through layers built for control, not speed," Thompson said.
"Chicken Dinner moves like a F1 car next to that. What convinced me wasn't a pitch, it was watching how fast this team turns AI and automation into actual client impact, not next quarter, this week.
“That's the muscle I want to help them build at scale. What the team has produced in under a year speaks for itself. My job is to build the engine that takes it to the next level."
Chicken Dinner founder and managing director Ben Drew said Thompson was the calibre of operator the agency was built around.
"We've spent the last year proving that a lean, senior, AI-augmented team can out-deliver the traditional agency model,” Drew said.
“Lucy's job is to compound that, taking what's working and scaling it without diluting it. There aren't many people who can hold growth and standards at the same time. She's one of them.”
Thompson will oversee the agency's next growth phase, with plans to double media under management by mid-2027 and open a US office in Miami to service its expanding American financial services client base.
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