Red Lobster has named Andy Pitts, a longtime agency-side leader who has shaped the seafood chain's marketing for several years, as its next chief marketing officer. Pitts announced the move Tuesday in a LinkedIn post, and the Orlando-based chain confirmed the hire in an email, saying a formal announcement will follow in the coming weeks.

Pitts joins from BarkleyOKRP, where he served as EVP of brand leadership and experience. The appointment installs a marketer who already knows the brand's operations and positioning intimately — an advantage for a chain still working through a post-bankruptcy turnaround that depends heavily on rebuilding customer traffic through marketing.

Red Lobster named BarkleyOKRP its agency of record in 2022. After the chain filed for bankruptcy in 2024, the agency rebuilt its creative strategy around a series of ads featuring CEO Damola Adamolekun reintroducing the brand to customers. That campaign put the chief executive front and center as the chain sought to win back lapsed diners and stabilize its reputation under new ownership.

Pitts spent more than 13 years at the agency, according to his LinkedIn profile. His account roster there included Fogo de Chao, Dairy Queen, and Wingstop — experience spanning full-service Brazilian steakhouse, QSR, and fast-casual chicken formats.

He steps into a role that has been vacant since late last year, when Nichole Robillard departed after just over a year as CMO. The revolving door in the marketing suite is a familiar pattern at Red Lobster, which cycled through ownership and leadership turmoil in the years surrounding its bankruptcy.

The chain has stayed aggressive on the marketing front during its comeback. Earlier this year it brought back Endless Shrimp for the first time since before the bankruptcy filing — a promotion with a complicated history for the brand, given that a prior iteration of the deal was widely blamed for contributing to the financial strain that preceded the Chapter 11 filing. Reviving it signaled confidence that new cost controls could support a traffic-driving value platform.

Bringing the CMO role in-house from the agency side rather than hiring from another restaurant chain suggests Red Lobster wants continuity in the creative direction that Adamolekun's ads established. Pitts helped build that strategy; now he owns it as a client.

In his LinkedIn post, Pitts framed the assignment in personal terms. Red Lobster was his dad's favorite restaurant, he wrote, and it is now his son's favorite as well.

"Red Lobster is an American icon writing its next chapter," Pitts wrote. "I don't take that responsibility lightly, and I'm grateful to be doing the work beside a team that loves this place as much as our guests do."

Pitts takes over marketing at a moment when chain restaurants broadly face slowing sales as consumers pull back on dining out, raising the stakes on every traffic-driving promotion. His first formal announcements as CMO are expected within weeks.