Perth independent media agency Chicken Dinner has hired Lucy Thompson as head of growth following the addition of new clients.
Thompson joins from Dentsu, where she was group digital director and has led digital strategy and performance media across clients including the WA Government (which Dentsu’s Carat recently lost), Cash Converters and Revo Fitness. She has also worked in agency roles on brands including Kurt Geiger and Stokke.
Ben Drew, a former Google growth manager, launched Chicken Dinner in July 2025 as an “antidote agency” to counter junior-led delivery, recycled campaigns and missing ROI. The agency pairs a senior-only team with AI and automation infrastructure that strips out manual work, freeing the team for strategy and client outcomes.
Chicken Dinner now manages $96 million in media billings, with clients including Yes Loans, Penny Finance, Stax., Fundo, Deel., Muscle Mat, Australian Tenders and Rapid Service Plumbing.
Thompson’s appointment is the most significant hire to date for the agency, which has tripled in size in a year and has a client roster spanning Australia, US and UK.
“Lucy is exactly the calibre of operator Chicken Dinner 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.”
Chicken Dinner said Thompson’s appointment reflects a broader industry shift: senior holding company talent trading network scale for the speed and ownership of independent challengers.
“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.”
Thompson’s remit covers the agency’s next phase of growth, 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.
