Qu - Restaurants Reinvented - Greg Creed - Transcript
[00:00:00] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: Hello everyone, and welcome back to Restaurants Reinvented. This is Jen Kern, I'm the hostess here at the show. And today I have a very exciting and special guest, a well-known celebrity in the restaurant world. His name is Greg Creed. He is the former CEO of Yum! Brands. Hi Greg.
[00:00:18] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: Jen, how are you? It's wonderful to be here and talking to you and seeing you and all that sort of stuff.
[00:00:22] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: Oh, it's great to be here. You can see I'm beaming. I'm very excited, and I've got the book. So we're going to geek out. We're going to geek out on all things. Brands, creativity, business, how you got to be a CEO of an international massive brand giant. But first, before we go there, you grew up as a lit up, as a little boy in Brisbane, Australia.
[00:00:45] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: I did. That's very true.
[00:00:47] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: You talked about the beginning of advertising. Sitting around watching, watching TV with your dad and used to play a little game. Tell, tell the audience about that and, and, and let us understand how you got to be the creative and business leader that you are today.
[00:01:03] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: Okay. So yeah, so you're right. So, it's like, when you're young, what do you want to be? I wanted to be a fighter pilot, you know. I think if you're, you know, boys wanted to be fighter pilots, right. And, you know, you go through school. And anyway, my dad, my dad worked at Nestle. So he was in the sort of packaged goods business. And he traveled a lot. He ended up being the head of sales in Australia, but so he was home and away and home and away, but when he was home and we would play this game. And the game was, you know, before dinner, he and I would sit in front of the television, when he was home, and we would wait for the ads to come on. When the ads came on, you had to guess, the first person had to guess what the brand was. You had to guess it correctly. Right. So, we just started playing this game. And, I think it was honestly the genesis of my love of brand building and marketing and making brands distinctive and all that sort of stuff was. It was just like, that was just my, my time with dad and we both loved it, and, you know, mom would be like, "Okay, it's dinner boys. Stop. You know, you gotta stop playing these silly games." And we played it for a number of years. And even as dad got older and I obviously left home, went to university and stuff, we used to always joke. And occasionally when I would go back to visit, we would sit in front of the television and play the game. So it was just, it was a, both a father-son bonding thing. But I think it was when I, you know, 'cause it's the idea was name the right brand. It wasn't, you know, so you see an ad. Could you name the brand? Did you name it correctly? Little did I know, I'd spend 40 years in marketing trying to make sure I did that for every, every brand I happened to work on. So, great, great memories. And I think the genesis of why I wanted to be a marketer.
[00:02:37] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: So, a very formative experience for you. And, was your dad also in marketing or what was role in Nestle?
[00:02:42] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: My dad was in sales. He off, he thought all marketing people were lunatics, because they created ideas that he had to go and sell, and, you know, half the time he didn't think they sold all that well. So I, I thought it was hilarious that dad was in sales and I ended up with a career in marketing. And so, he used to always give me grief if, particularly if the marketing people, or where he was at Nestle had done something crazy. But like, "Oh no, there's damn marketing people." And, "What do they know?" And all that sort of stuff. So, no, but we, it was a sort of a, it's a share of love and business. Right. So that was, it, it was all of that sort of stuff. And when I left university and I joined Unilever, you know, my dad was one of those, "Okay, who are good companies out there? I'm not going to work for Nestle, obviously you work there." And, you know, he, he rattled off a few and Unilever was one of them. And I also eventually wanted to live and work overseas. And so, you know, growing up in Brisbane, you know, working for a company like Unilever, which is obviously a huge global company, that was part of the reason I joined. And I got lucky enough in my career to work in London for them, and New York for them, and all that sort of stuff. So it worked out incredibly well.
[00:03:41] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: Yeah. I'll say, I'll say. And, and when I think about the brands you've worked with, so I think of Colonel Sanders when I think of KFC. For me as a little girl growing up in Pennsylvania, it was kind of a big deal. Those ads, I remember them very vividly. The red, and the white, and Colonel Sanders.
[00:04:01] I went off with this bucket of chicken, you know. so, so you've worked with Colonel Sanders, you've worked with Pizza Hut, and then of course, more recently, Think Outside the Bun and the Chihuahua brand. Right? I, maybe you don't like it being called that. But, so you've worked at these really big brands. What, what are the things that you feel like helped you go through those brands and really leave a mark and an impression for the better?
[00:04:29] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: Yeah, that's a good question. I think one of the things I think marketers have to be is courageous. And, I think you also, you can't and not everyone's going to like this, you can't get up and just following a process. So I, you know, when I was either the Chief Marketing Officer at Taco Bell, when I was running Taco Bell or whatever, you know, someone would come in and say, "Oh, we didn't test market, and we follow this process, and it mixed it this." And I'd be like, "What was the sales growth number?" They're like, "Oh, plus one." I'm like, "Well then, the process isn't working because". But I think a lot of people feel like if, well, if I follow a process, I won't to get into trouble. But, I don't think the greatest ideas ever come out of following a process. And I know organizations need process to make things happen. Certainly, the bigger the organization, the bigger it needs it. But I think people fundamentally think that if I just go through this process big ideas will come out at the end. And I've never seen that to be the case. And I think you really do need, well I just think it's courage. I, I've always said there's sort of, we'll talk about leadership, I say there's three leadership principles I admire. What I call smart, heart, and courage. And smart is IQ, but it's also not as important as EQ, emotional intelligence. Then there's heart. I mean, do you, do you really love what you're trying to market? I mean, I have, you know, as I always loved whether it was Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza, Dove. I ran the Dove brand for Unilever.
[00:05:50] I still use a Dove for men sope. I still use Dove shampoo. I still, you know, not I've got my hair left anymore, but. And so, the products I've worked on, I've also just truly loved. And then I think the last one is courage. And it's, it's courage cannot, you can't be courageous in the absence of fear. And so I think a lot of people go, "I was incredibly courageous. If you knew the outcome, you weren't courageous." Right. And so, I think that, certainly with brands, I remember Roger Enrico when I was at PepsiCo, he showed this timeline of what had happened to diet Pepsi over the, over the years. Right. So when they first launched it, and this, and the can was silver, then it was light blue, and then it was silver, and then it was light blue. And, and he basically said, "We had this brand out for 30 years, and it's still the same market share. So we really haven't done great marketing." And that sort of stuff always stuck with me, which is, my job is to help grow, grow the business and grow the brand. And so we coined the phrase SOBO - Sales Overnight, Brand Over time. And to me, the very best marketers can do both. They can drive sales overnight, and they can build a brand over time. And those are the, they're the sort of the marketers you want in your organization.
[00:06:59] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I have to say that's SOBO made it to my ears about 10-years ago when I had a brand mentor who told me that. So it has, it's traveled around quite a bit. I was not even in the restaurant industry at that time. And he said, sales overnight brands over time, sales overnight brands over time. And that is sort of the essence of our job. How do we keep those parallel things moving. Right?
[00:07:23] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: I've seen, I've seen people that are great at sales overnight. I've seen people that are great at brand over time. By the way, I've also coached lots of marketers over the years and said, "If you don't build sales overnight, you don't, you're not around long enough to build the brand over time." Let's just cut to the chase, like. So in a weird way sales overnight gives you the time to build the brand. But I've seen people that can do both, and not everyone can do either of them, but not everyone can do both. And I think it's just, you just need courage. Ultimately comes down to, are you courageous? Because sometimes intuition and all of those things that just make the most sense.
[00:07:59] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: And something you just said when you were talking about courage caught my ears. I, I, S, I, they, they, they pointed up when you were talking, you said you can't be courageous in the absent, with the absence of fear.
[00:08:09] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: Yeah. Yeah, because if you think about it, if you know the outcome, I've seen people who go, "Oh, you know, someone was incredibly courageous." I'm like, "Well, was the outcome sort of a 99% certainty? And the answer is yes. Then you're not courageous." Fear has to be present or, and I mean, you know, life and death fear, where in marketing, right? But fear has to be present for you to be truly courageous. And, I think often people think they've been courageous and I'm like, "Not really, there was no real fear. There's no real downside." If you, you know, I, I I'll give you a great story and it's not my courage. This is the courage of a lawyer. So this will be interesting. 'Cause they're usually not that courageous, they usually just tell you no. Anyway, we were launching the Doritos Locos Tacos, so almost 10 years ago, Frito-Lay, and Al Carey was running Frito-Lay, I was running Taco Bell. And Al and I decided that literally, if we decided to get a contract on between PepsiCo and Taco Bell it would take, the lawyers would take, you know, six or nine months, and we'd delay everything. So he and I decided on a handshake to launch this, but we didn't tell everybody. And he didn't tell Indra Nooyi. And I didn't tell David Novak. We didn't have a contract. Right. And I'm spending money, and he's building factories to make this stuff. And, it was interesting. People said, "Oh, you were really courageous, or you and Al." And I'm like, "No, actually it was our general councils that were courageous, because general councils exist to stop CEOs doing stupid things." And so I, I always credit Ray Weston, who was my general counsel. And I, and I tell her, there's a great story because, let's assume this whole Doritos Locos Taco had gone pear-shaped. I probably wouldn't have got sacked, but Ray probably would've got sacked for not ensuring that we had a contract. And so, when people said, "Oh, you and Al were very courageous." I'm like, "No, no, no, Ray Weston was incredibly courageous, because he's the guy that had this sort of fear attached to the fact that he let me, you know, do this thing without it, without a signed contract from the, from PepsiCo." And, that's, this, that to me is a great example. You also have to be there for worker who is courageous. Right. And in this case it was Ray Weston. And I always liked telling it as a story because, you know, the people at the top or the most senior people are not necessarily the ones who are the most courageous, or at put them, you know, their job on the line to make something happen.
[00:10:23] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: Yeah, yeah. So we need to be courageous and ditch the process.
[00:10:29] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: Well, yeah, ditch, well, you need a process, but you can't, you can't just say I followed the process. I mean, you know, one of the interesting things that we talk about in the book, and Ken and I being really, this, this is something that we both fundamentally believe in. A lot of people like, "Oh, well just go and do some research. And out of research, oh, there'll be some idea." I don't know what the hell the idea will be, but as if like magic is going to occur out of some research. Ken and I always fundamentally believed is, we, w, we were better off starting with an idea of our own, a hypothesis. And then using the research to either prove or disprove the hypothesis. I think you've got to fundamentally start with an idea. You can't fundamentally start with a belief that out of this research will come insight. And I think it's just a bit, I've seen too many people go, "Oh, we're going to do this research. And, you know, hopefully something will come out." I would rather, you know, sort of say, "This is an idea, and let's go now see whether this is a big idea, or if it's a crappy idea. It's a crappy idea and you have lots of them because you do." And so, I just think again, just thinking that you're going to get insights out of research is a fallacy. What you get is data. You still got to have a brain to, you know, turn that into action. And invariably, if you understand the category well enough, or the brand or the business well enough, you, you should be able to come up with hypothesis that you can pressure test to see whether they're big ideas or not.
[00:11:53] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: Yeah. So, so, we're mentioning the book. Let's make sure I talk, I talk about the book. It's called R.E.D. Marketing, The Three Ingredients of Leading Brands. You publish this, it came out with, with a Ken, six months ago. Is that right?
[00:12:07] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: In June. I think we, I think it was published in June. Yeah.
[00:12:09] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: So tell me honestly, why did you write the book?
[00:12:12] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: Well, I always said I wasn't gonna write a book. And I went public very many times saying I wasn't gonna write a book, because I didn't want to write one of those, "Well, I grew up in Brisbane and now I run a bazillion-dollar, you know, Fortune 200 company." 'Cause I think there's so many of those books. And the other problem is, I'm not sure what you do when you've red a book. Like, okay, so, you know, so-and-so started humbly and ended up successful. I'm not sure how that helps you either change the trajectory of your career or whatever. 'Cause we're all very different. I think I hate, I always used to hate when it's like, "The five th, the five things all successful CEOs do." Well, that would be, "IGo to bed, wake up, brush your teeth, have a shower, put clothes on." Those are five things all successful CEOs do, but they don't define success. Right. And so, it was really Ken that convinced me to write the book, and, well for us to write the book I should say. And, what he wanted to do was, you know, the Collider. He was a Collider, long story on how we got Collider. I got into Yum!, but Ken and I know other for over a decade. And, we'd had such a, both a fun time, but an interesting time creating this framework. Because, I'd run Taco Bell, and then I went to run Yum!, and the six months before David Novak sort of sent me around the world just to see how good our businesses work, because I've been very much in the US for a long time. And so I came away with this, we did brilliant marketing, we did average marketing, we did poor marketing. Because when you're, when you're in 140 countries and three brands, the law of averages, that's what it's going to be like. And what I wanted to do was find a very simple way to help the poor become at least average, the average become good, and the good to become great. And so Ken and I started working around, you know, just, and not just looking at brands within Yum!, but looking at brands outside of Yum! and all that. And we originally came up with relevance and distinctiveness. Wasn't until later on that we added the E, which in a funny way may be probably the most important of the letters today as we live in this world that is not the same world, but when he and I started working 10-12 years ago. And so, so Ken was like, "I think we should write a book and credit to David Gibbs who succeeded me as the CEO of Yum!" Because, you know, some people like, "Oh, you're giving away the secrets, you know, the secret recipe." And I would say we're giving away a framework. And the thing that really pushed it for me was Ken and I agreed that all of the money that we made on the book would go to the Yum! Foundation.
[00:14:37] So, so Ken and I don't make a penny. So even when I promote the book or flog the book or whatever you want to call it, I'm excited to do it because I think hopefully people will learn from the book. Both, good things we did and the mistakes we made because we made mistakes as well. But also the money from the book goes to the Yum! Foundation and that helps the communities and the team members that we operate in. And I think that's good thing.
[00:14:59] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: Well, I'll tell you if that, it pushed me over the edge to buy it when you had the early release. 'Cause I was like, all the funds are going to help these, these workers in your restaurant and help their kids with college funds and things like that. And I mean, that just pushed me right over. I, S, I was like, I didn't even wait for the, for the paper, the paperback copy. I just went ahead and got the hard copy.
[00:15:18] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: Well, I appreciate you doing that. And it was great because Yum! also helped us do the marketing, you know, the promoting it, of the book, and... So everyone's given up their time. And so, I don't know how much money we've raised, but, I, I'm pretty sure it's a fair amount of money. So we got a nice advance and all of that has helped. So I, I feel really good that at the end of the day, as you said, some frontline team members who particularly today are working incredibly hard under the most trying conditions that we can help them get an education. And that it is not just to go to college. They might be going to go to trade school. It's ,it's, it might be going to culinary school, whatever you want. Anyway, it, that was the thing. I think that got us all to say, "Let's do this."
[00:15:56] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: It's fantastic. It really is. It's absolutely fantastic. And like you said, I mean these restaurant workers, I mean, and the operators, you all have just been through it for the last year and a half, been through a big time and continue to go through. And we'll talk a little bit about that. And, and, and, you know, one of the things I love about this book and, you know, full disclosure, I didn't read every single page, blah, blah, blah, blah. I read the beginning part. I skimmed a bit.
[00:16:20] And then I was like, "Oh my gosh, I got to hurry up because it's, because Greg, it's coming on the show, I've got to hurry up and finish." I didn't quite finish it, but I got to tell you, there are so many poignant and opinionated things in there that I feel like marketers need to hear. We need to hear these things over and over again. And so, what are those things that, I think you said, maybe it didn't make it in the book, but, but in one of our discussions, you told me this, that Yum! is a marketing agency that sells food.
[00:16:45] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: Yeah, I said, yeah, I said, we're not a restaurant company. We're a marketing company that sells food. And I think, even how you frame up who you are and what you do. And, and to be honest, I've, it's funny when I first joined Yum!, in 1994, I spent two weeks working in a KFC restaurant in Sydney. That was the hardest two weeks I've ever worked in my entire life. And my, my joke is, "It's harder to run a restaurant than a restaurant company." And so, I've always had this passion for, you know, the people who really, who really do all that incredible hard work.
[00:17:19] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: Yeah. Okay. So how did you get that buy-in? I mean, that's pretty out there. That's pretty forward. We're a marketing. We're not about, we're not about the restaurant and the, well, we are obviously, but we're a marketing company that sells food. I mean, how did you get the buy-in to push their creative processes that you talk about in this book? And you talk about a lot of creativity, and getting your company bought into that, that process, a creative process and the team.
[00:17:47] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: Well, I think...
[00:17:47] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: The co, Collider.
[00:17:48] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: You've got to be honest with yourself. Right? And I, I think the honesty for us was, we were, I think, I really, and David know that who had, who was my predecessor. He was also, he was a great marketer. And we were, we were great at marketing. We were great at food innovation. Like, I mean, we could, we weren't so great at running restaurants. I'll just be honest, right. The company restaurants. And so there were two things going on. One was the franchisees. I've always been, I've always loved franchising. I love franchisees, and I love franchising. And I love it because you put your brand in the hands of people who live in the local community, and they, they they're there for they're passionately connected. Like, I give you an example. So if, if someone had went to a KFC or Taco Bell in Seattle. And let's assume it's a company store, and they have a bad experience, and they go to the soccer game on Saturday, they don't tell Greg Creed 'cause Greg Creed lives in Dallas. Right. But if you're a franchise, and, you know, you live in the community, your kid's playing with someone else's kid, you know, AYSO soccer, and all of a sudden, you know, they had a bad experience, they had to tell you. It's personal. And so, I always felt that the closer the ownership was to the consumer and to the community, the better the restaurants were run. Now, if we'd have run great restaurants better than our franchisees, then I wouldn't have had that opinion. But my fundamental belief around the world was, that, that's not to say we didn't run good restaurants, I don't want, I don't know, I'm not saying the company stores aren't run well, just the franchisees, just always run them a little better, in my mind. And so, my mind was like, in an organization and when you're the CEO in particular, is like, "What are you going to focus on?" 'Cause the other problem for CEO's is he focused in. Like, you can't focus on a hundred things. And so my, my fundamental belief was, "Look, if we are honest with ourselves and say, our franchisees can actually run these restaurants better, then we're better franchising off the restaurants and really turning ourselves into this sort of marketing food innovation engine machine. And we'll do that work. The franchisees run the restaurants and execute it." And that becomes the best solution because then you've got experts in marketing and food innovation, you got the experts running the restaurants, and I think you deliver a better performance for the company. I think that, that occurred. Same store sales growth grew, new units grew, because I think we were focused on, you know, great marketing and obviously strategy, and also people and culture as well as food. And yet, we had the franchisees running the restaurants. And I just, I think that was the, the outcome as to why the business did so well.
[00:20:16] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: Okay. And do you think this is a model that would work for restaurants of all sizes? Or do you think they need to be a certain size and above?
[00:20:22] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: I think the question is whether you like franchisees or not. I think that's a more fundamental question. I mean, I know there are people in the restaurant industry that don't like franchisees. I'm like, "Well, then if that's okay, by the way, then don't on a franchise system." I think that if you talk to some of the Taco Bell franchisees, I'm still friends with a lot of them. I think they genuinely believed we wanted them to be successful, and that we really liked them and they were part of the family. And, so I think the answer isn't so much, whether you're big, smaller, and different. I think the question is fundamentally, "Do you believe in franchising and do you believe in that franchisees can run restaurants better than you can run them?" Now, if you're an organization and you think you run the restaurants better than the franchisees, don't franchise them. You run them. But in Yum's case, I think when under David Novak's leadership and under mine, I just think we were far better at, you know, brands, food, culture, not the operating side of the business.
[00:21:18] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: And what do you say to marketers who work for, let's say mid and larger size brands, let's, let's say, you know, 300 locations and up, who are fighting for the company to understand the value of marketing. What do you say to them?
[00:21:35] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: Well, I have, my, one of my favorite little sayings is 'cause you're right, because a lot of CEOs are either finance people or they're operators. Right. And I wasn't, I was a marketer. And, what I try to remind the finance, operator people is, the two most important assets in an organization don't appear on the balance sheet. They are brands and people. And so, what I would say, I mean, how you say it, but what I would say to a CEO is, the P&L is not the answer. It is not where all knowledge is contained. Because the two most important assets are really the people in the organization and the brands that you've got. And that's why for me, I had two passionate well, let's say three, "Culture, people, brand building and franchising." And even in my post Yum! career, they're the three things I'm still coaching and advising and helping on. Because I fundamentally just so passionate about it, which is, and unfortunately the accountants haven't found a way to value people, and they haven't found a way to put a value on a brand to put it on the balance sheet. So the things that are on the balance sheet are in my mind, aren't the most important thing. So it's hopefully getting a CEO to understand that people and culture and brands, in my mind, are what drive a strong balance sheet, even though they don't appear on the balance sheet.
[00:22:54] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: Yeah.
[00:22:55] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: I'm going to go to my grave believing that.
[00:22:58] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: Yeah, I'm right there with you. And I mean, so hard to measure always, and, you know, th, that brand equity. You know, we've been talking about that for years, how do you manage the, the equity of how the value of that brings? It's very difficult.
[00:23:11] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: I think one of the mistakes people make is, just because you can measure it doesn't mean it's important.
[00:23:16] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: Yeah.
[00:23:17] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: And so, because something can be measured, people are like, "Oh wow. I can measure X." Well, just because you could measure it doesn't make it important. Like, so I mean, my, one of my favorite examples to people that don't believe it is, "Okay. I want you to give a score on love." You can't give love a score. Why you can't? I mean, it's just not possible. And, so, but yeah. Can you measure, you know, drive-through speed of service? Of course you can. In this case drive-through speed of service is important. But I, I think that sometimes people get caught up in, "Well, I can measure these 20 things." Well, that's fantastic, but it doesn't mean the 20 things are important or matter. And don't forget the things that do matter. Culture, leadership, brands, all that stuff. And I've seen too many businesses, they get consumed by what they can measure, and they absolutely miss the things that matter most. And because they can't be measured, you know, if they're a very analytical company, they can't be measured, they, a sort of rejected. In my mind is, they're the most important things. And just so, it's anyway, so just because you can't measure it doesn't mean it's not important. And just because you can measure it, doesn't make it important.
[00:24:26] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: Okay. So you told us what you would say to the CEO.
[00:24:29] What would you say to the actual Head of Marketing coming into a company like that? Or maybe finding themselves all of a sudden waking up and saying like, "Oh gosh, like, I don't think the value that I see in marketing is valued by the rest of the organization." What's the marketers...
[00:24:47] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: Yeah.
[00:24:48] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: Besides, don't say leave the company. That's, we're not allowed to say.
[00:24:50] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: No, no. I'm not going to say that. It's interesting because often, but, you know, I just said, I spend most of my life in marketing. And, the one thing, well, in the spirit of I'm terrible, I'm the world's worst speller. Okay. Which is another reason why I wasn't going to write a book because, you know, everyone, everyone who knows me knows I can't spell.
[00:25:08] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: We do have spell-check now, Greg.
[00:25:09] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: You know that my children used to make fun of me, and even when they were like five and six. And the joke is I've got a 20-month, 21-month old grandson. And the joke is whether he or I would win a Spelling Bee. But anyway, that said, luckily I was good at math. And so if you think about a lot of the non-markets in an organization, think of the marketers as the creative wacky doodle come up with an idea people, but they don't have any business sense. Right. And so, I was always focused on not just bringing an idea forward, but bringing an idea forward in the context of its commercial, either viability or how it would impact the organization. And so, after a while, I was lucky enough to build a reputation amongst all the finance guys, "Oh, Greg knows his stuff. Right. He knows his numbers." Now, did I pass accounting in my degree? Yes. Am I sort of, am I wouldn't, I'd be a terrible accountant 'cause I don't even really know debits and credits and I really couldn't do the balance sheet. But, I do know the middle of the P&L, I do know, cost of goods and cost of sales. And I do know what the flow-through is on an incremental dollar. So I think marketers to build credibility in an organization have to be more than just the creative geniuses all the ideas people. I think that you can demonstrate you have commercial acumen. I think that goes a long way to people listening to your idea. And again, it's not about accounting, and it's not about balance sheets, but you do need to know that P&L of your brand. And you do need to know if I squeeze it here and push it there, and what happens from a profitability point of view. And I think that builds massive credibility. And if you're, if you can be seen as creative and know your numbers, boy, that is a, that is an entree to the organization. Listening a lot more to what you've got to say to the organization.
[00:26:52] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: Absolutely. That's your ticket to ride right there. The art plus the science, or saying, understand the math and the creativity. Yep.
[00:26:59] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: No, that's true. And so you're right. But back to the book, what we wanted to do was to attack, I think some provocative things. Because I think what happens, my favorite example is, you know, every brand needs a purpose. Right. And I think it often comes from CEOs and not marketers, and they're at their CEO meetings, everyone's saying, "Oh yeah, we need a social, I read we need a social purpose. I read we need purpose." So they come back and tell a poor CMO every brand is going to have a social purpose. And the answer is that's the most stupid thing you could possibly do. And I'm sure people will disagree. That's okay. However, my caveat is, if social purpose makes you distinctive under the red R.E.D., then go for social purpose. But if social purpose is just to keep the CEO happy or because you think it's politically correct, but it does not make the brand distinctive, then stay away from social purpose. So there are brands, you know, I mean, Dove, I think Dove and, I ran the Dove brand a hundred years ago when I was at Unilever. But, you know, it was always about real women. They'd done a much better job of marketing since I left a long time ago. And so, this whole idea of, you know, supporting real women and, and, and empowering real women, that, that is a social purpose that Dove owns. It also makes Dove distinctive. Because I remember back in the good old days, you know, Oil of Ulay, came out with the campaign for Proctor, they use actresses, and we always use real women. So, there's this, there's always been this fundamental belief in empowering women and recognizing and using, and, and celebrating real women. That is a fundamental part at Dove. That's my Dove distinctive. It makes sense. Patagonia, Oakley, I mean, there's, there are brands where social purpose makes you distinctive, have social purpose, invest in social purpose, drive it. But if that's not why you exist and just because the CEO told you, you need a social purpose and you go and spend any money on it, you're wasting your time and your money.
[00:28:51] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's what, so the R. your relevance. The R, the relevance. You talk about social and cultural relevance.
[00:29:00] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: And functional.
[00:29:00] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: So how, help our listeners understand? Yeah, I understand what.
[00:29:04] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: Yeah. I think one of the, one of the, you asked interesting question earlier, which is if I become the new CMO, you know, like what do I do? Right. Whether I got promoted or whether I'm bought in to fix a bit of a train wreck. One of the first things to think about is, "What is my issue? Is it an irrelevance issue? Is it an ease issue? Is it a distinctive issue? Is it two of them, or is it all three of them?" Because I also found when I was running Yum! that we would go into a business that was incredibly distinctive. And they will be doubling and tripling down on distinctiveness, but not addressing the problem, which was the brand wasn't relevant. And so, before you even start, the first thing you've got to do is, "Okay, this brand, whatever brand I've got, you know, responsibility for, what's its issue?" And hopefully it's only one of the letters, but if it's more than one of the letters, the other thing is you can't attack all three letters at once. And I actually think the letter that, if you were, if you had, you know, if you were given a train wreck of a brand to look after, and the question is, do I do after relevancies or distinctiveness, I think you've got to make the brand relevant. I think the first thing is, you've got to make it relevant. And you're right, there are three parts trough elements. There's functional relevance. So there's two parts of that, which is one is, it actually has to do when it's promised to do whatever that functionality is. But it's also in life, I've found that people get so hung up on functional differentiation. We should ban the word differentiation. Then we'll come back to, the replacement word is distinctive, but anyway. And so what happens is, because I was at Unilever, right. So we would make a shirt white, and Tide would make it whiter, and Wisk would make it white, and Tide would make it whiter. I'm like how white does a white shirt have to be? Right. And so everyone was getting, everyone, I think a lot of marketers get caught up in the functional, like call it functional differentiation. And we, I was call it functional relevance. The other thing is, if you can give consumers more access or reasons and ways to use your product and brand, that makes you more functionally relevant. So a good example, at Taco Bell, you can go to Taco Bell and through the drive-through, or you can have it delivered or whatever. But in a lot of supermarkets, we now make, they now make Taco Bell chips. So, you know, you can go to Kroger or, you know, Tom Thumb, and you can, you can access the brand through a CPG product called chips. So you also, you can buy Taco Bell kits in supermarkets. And so this functional relevance is, you know, just what we call customer usage occasions, which is, can you give the brand more usage occasions? So that's, and also, it has to deliver on the functional promises. The second one is cultural relevance. And, I actually think of all of them, this might be the one that is the most important. And if you get it right, it's like a big, big sort of gust of wind in your sail. And if you get it wrong, it's like throwing the anchor out and you're still trying to, you know, drive the boat. Right. And, I think that not a lot of him, not enough importance is put around this whole idea of, "Do you, are you really part of the cultural code that whatever the cultural code happens to be at the time? Or, I, have you missed it?" I'll give, I'll give you a good example. And we use it in the book. There's a couple, but my favorite is South Africa. So there's the KFC business in South Africa it's a pretty big business. It's probably over a thousand restaurants now. And it was around in apartheid time, and one of the things I was most proud of is, even during apartheid we never had a whites and non-whites entrance to a KFC. We only had one way for everyone to come in. And that's a story we should have told a long time ago, not the point. Anyway. So when Nelson Mandela gets out of jail, and, sort of apartheid is abolished, there was this whole sort of idea of the rainbow nation. Everyone coming together, and what better way to come together than around a bucket of KFC. Right. So it was like, perfect. And we marketed it and it was, it was really successful. We had a nice run. Then all of a sudden, the South started to like fall off. And so we, you know, the local people on the ground, and we sent other people and I did segmentation study. People like, "Oh, I wonder if the pricing is right." And then, you know, is the flavor rhyme with the chicken, right. You know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we tried to fix all those things, a bit like trying to fix the diet Pepsi, and nothing worked until Collider went in and identified that there had been a cultural shift away from the sort of a rainbow nation all of us coming together to young, black South Africans wanting to be sort of seen as independent and entrepreneurs and, you know, sort of the set, the people that set the cultural trends for them, for the next 10 or 15 years. And so, we had to move from, you know, everyone coming together, and grandma, and everyone's around a bucket of chicken, and everyone's kissing the babies to really embracing this cultural code of entrepreneurship, and enlightenment, and promise, and all of that sort of stuff. And we didn't change any of the products. We didn't change the packaging. We didn't change the pricing. We essentially got back on the cultural code, and the business just, honestly, just took off we got it right. So, I think making sure your culture and then social relevance is really are you, are you party talk worthy, and you know, are you a brand that when you go to a party, people talk about? And, it's really that simple. So if you go to a party and no one talks about your brand, you're probably not socially relevant. If you do, and it's funny because when I ran Taco Bell in particular, I go to parties and every, or everyone just wanted to tell me the thousand stories about Taco Bell. Right. And, you know, whether we bought the Liberty Bell, or whether we had pop-up hotels, or you can buy Forever 21 clothes. And I mean, all this sort of crazy stuff. Right. But it was a brand that was always in the social space. It was always being talked about. It was always top-of-mind. If you're a brand that is always top-of-mind that is culturally relevant and functionally relevant, guess what? You have got relevance absolutely nailed. So those are the three, those are the three parts to relevance.
[00:34:55] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: Right. And then next comes the Ease.
[00:34:57] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: Yes. So the funding story is, when we first did this, we were, we were internally calling it ERD, E.R.D. And then someone said, w, that's not very memorable. Why wouldn't you call it RED? That's a pretty good idea. We should call it RED not ERD. Anyway, so E, so ease is obviously an arguably, we made the comment easy, big, better. Now, a lot of people don't like that because they are like, "Oh, no better beats better." But I do think today that most consumers believe that the actual functional difference between products is not that great, right. Is Samsung better than Apple? Some will say yes, some will say no. But, you know, could they sort of do the same job? Does, you know, does one detergent wash your clothes really functionally any better? Probably not. Right. And so this whole question of ease was, you know, "Is it easy to access? Easy to, easy to remember? Easy to pay?" The whole thing. Now, the interesting thing about ease is you can't get consumed by what's going on in your category. And so, you know, the Pizza Hut people would go, "Well, you know, we're obviously competing against Domino's and Papa John's, right. So it's like, who could make it easier? And the answer isn't where the Domino's or Pizza Hut or Papa John's make it easy. The question is, how easy are you compared to Amazon? Because consumers don't bucket things into categories. Right? I've had an Amazon experience and it has been so simple. And then I go and have a pizza experience, doesn't matter which brand, and it's not as simple. Then you are not, you have not checked the easy box. Right? Because people got like, "Oh yeah." Well, you know, "In this category you're easier", that's not how we work as consumers. And so you've also got to be understanding in, for ease it's it is a bigger context than the category you happen to be operating in. And at the moment I would argue Amazon is the poster child for ease. Right. And so, you know, the question is, "Are you easy to access, easy to use, easy to remember?" All of that stuff, "Easy, easy to afford?" I mean, all those things, question is, is not are you easier than your competitor, your obvious competitor. The question is how do you compare it to someone like Amazon. And I think people tend again get consumed by the category and then not necessarily saying "No, but as a consumer, I had this Amazon experience and now I'm trying to have this pizza experience and it's a whole lot harder. It's not easy." You may be easier than your other competitors in pizza. But I think the gold standard it's got to be what makes things, and that's because we're fundamentally lazy. As humans we're lazy.
[00:37:27] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: Yeah.
[00:37:27] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: We are, no, we are lazy. And, you know, I think sometimes marketers go wrong when they just don't understand basic human behavior. Right. And so, I'm going to give you two examples that I always tell when I get a chance. Which is, you know, where people get consumed by this sort of rash, that they think we make rational and functional decisions. My belief is, every decision we make, every, I can't prove this, but every decision we make is an unconscious emotional decision. So I'm going to give you two examples. What is the functional role of a watch? To tell the time? Okay. How much does it cost to buy a watch that pretty much tells you the time? $10, $20, $5? Somewhere narrow. So what I usually ask, if I'm giving this as a presentation, I ask everyone, who's got a watch on, you know, to stand up and they can sit back down if they spent less than $20 on their watch. And no one spent less than $20 on their watch. The, my next question is, what's the functional role of a car? Was to get you from A to B, right? That's why you have a car. So if a Rolls-Royce and a Kia travel one hour at 60 m/h, how far do both cars go? They both go 60 miles. So if it's just, if the only reason we buy a car it's for functional reasons, we would all buy Kia as a no one would buy a Rolls-Royce. That's not what happened. Actually, I'll give you the third one 'cause I like this one. This is my favorite. What is, what's the biological reason for head, for hair on your head? Why, why do we have hair on our head? Answer is
[00:39:03] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: I have absolutely no idea.
[00:39:05] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: To keep you warm. Supposedly, by ,biology says, is to keep your warm. Well then, then what I do is I ask the guys, so if hair is just to keep you warm, that's the only reason hair exists, how much do you spend on a haircut? And guys spend, I don't know, 20, 30, doesn't matter, wherever they are dollars, right? So then I ask all the women in the audience, you can stand up and you can sit down if you spend less than $20 on your last haircut. And the answer is no, they spend a lot more. Right. Now, I'm not saying that any of these things are superficial. I am not implying that if you care about your hair, you care about the car you drive and you care about your watch, I am not saying you are superficial. I'm just saying though, the functional reasons are not why we do what we do. We don't buy, we don't care about our hair. We don't care about our watch and we don't care about our car just for functionality. We care because of the message that stands, or the message we want to say, or how it makes us feel, or all of those things. And if you only market to the functional stuff, like, you know, 10 pieces of chicken and 2 large fries, that's not why you buy KFC. And so, I, it's, it's one of those things that understand, as a marketer, understanding basic human behavior, how we make decisions, why we make decisions. You know, one of my favorites, you know, people like, what is the definition of a brand? And a brand is, in my mind, a brand is what we use to tell the world what matters to us. That's my definition of a brand. And so every decision we make, the shirt I wore, the shirt you're wearing, your hair, my, my lack of hair. It is all about, it sends a message to the world. And because we're essentially brands, I mean, humans are brands. Right? And so, I think marketers that get caught up in this whole functionality and they forget that's not really why we make decisions around brands. It's about a brand representing what matters to us. Then I think those are the not so good marketers. And the people that truly understand it, they're the great marketers.
[00:41:02] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: Yeah. Well, you're really circling around some great topics. I mean, this whole idea of function and distinctiveness over differentiation. I mean, we, in our industry and to the tech industry, we talk about the feature wars. We never want to get into feature wars. Oh, our technology's as good as yours 'cause this one has 10 of those features and 20 of those, and Arizona 3 of these and 4. No, we don't want that. We want the distinctiveness. You are so right. Like, getting rid of that talk about, just differentiating is just, it's not moving the, the bar, that's right. It's like distinctive. And that gets to what you're talking about with the emotion, the unconscious emotion. And one of the things I heard you say, the first time we talked, was, I think it was like the, not, "It's not about the emotional response, but the emotional connection", is that right?
[00:41:52] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: No,the other way around. It's not about making an emotional connection. It's about creating an emotional response.
[00:41:56] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: Response.
[00:41:57] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: 'Cause people talk about, you know, having, you know, loving a brand. Well, seriously, I'm sorry. You're going to love a car battery? Are you going to love the tires? I mean, ultimately, you know, you could even say, "Do you really love Taco Bell?" I mean, in the, in the spirit of what love is, right? So what, what you want is not so much. In my mind, to build an emotional connection between brands and people. You want to get an emotional response from people for using particular brands.
[00:42:26] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: Which honestly sounds easier. Like, if you think response versus connection. Connection to me feels like a heck of a lot of work.
[00:42:33] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: No, it's a really hard, it's a really hard job. And by the way, let's assume how many, you know, I don't know how many brands we all have in our lives. Lots. You can't make an emotional connection with every brand in your life. But can you, can you elicit an emotional response? So, you know, do I want you to love Taco Bell? No, necessarily. But you know, when you go to Taco Bell, does it make you feel happy? Do you, you know, do you get a smile? I mean, I've always said, "Go sit in a restaurant, a really good restaurant." First of all, usually people are not sitting by themselves. And secondly, most people are smiling. You know, the thing I loved about the restaurant industry is, we're not asking you to go to the dentist. You know. So, if we can't make you happy then we're really crappy marketers. Because, at the end of the day, you do this thing multiple times a day, you eat. Right. Whether it's breakfast, lunch, brunch, afternoon tea, it doesn't matter, you eat. And secondly, for a lot of people is probably the highlight of their day. I mean, if you've got a crappy job, and you, you know, enjoying the meal is part of the experience. So, you know, we, our job is to elicit that emotional response, not to try and force an emotional connection.
[00:43:43] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: Got it. I love that. I love that. And I do look forward to every meal I eat every day. And I'd like to go out and get that meal. and I want to be happy, and I want the people there to be happy.
[00:43:52] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: Exactly. And let's be honest, if you go to a restaurant, most people are happy. If you go to the dentist, most people are not happy. I mean, you know, it's just, I mean, it's just, again, it's just like basic sort of human behavior. Right. So, I, what I loved about the restaurant industry was you, you, you, you do it frequently, which is eat, and you can't delay eating, right. You can't say, "Well, I haven't got enough money. I'm going to delay eating for another two weeks." You know, if, if my washing machine is making noises, I will try and get as much out of my washing machine before I pay $500 or $600 for a new washing machine. You can't say that about food. You have to consume it. And you usually have to consume it in a fun environment. So, in my mind, it was a brilliant place to do marketing.
[00:44:37] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: Yeah. And the last thing on that distinctiveness, which you've touched on is, so if you break down distinctiveness, you have the word instinct in there, which you've said marketing is not about research, it's about instinct.
[00:44:53] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: Look, it is honestly both. Right. I mean, you'll never, I'll never, I'm not going to say it's a 100% instinct, and nor am I going to say it's a 100% data. But there is this massive trend right now. Maybe just I'm an old fart, and I, you know, it's time for me to move on, but there's this whole thing about data, data, data, data, data, data, data, to data, the data. Right. You know, it's sort of like, and I saw a funny thing yesterday, I don't know whether you've seen this, but it really caught my eye. It had a bunch of Legos, you know, just different Lego blocks, and it starts off with, you know, sort of basic data. And then they stack the colors, you know, the yellow ones and the green ones. And then sort of like, you know, you've done something to the data, but ultimately the end, it's what you build, 'cause that's the story. The only thing that really matters is the story. Whether you've got, you know, whether the data's all a mess, or whether it's in yellow blocks or whatever the hell you do with it. And I'm not, I'm honestly, I'm not knocking data, I'm not knocking it. But if you've all got access to the same data, then where does the great insights come from? And where is, it comes from human beings. Right. And so, I'll give you one of my favorite examples of, and there's also this thing. And it's, the difference between an insight and an observation. And I often think people use the word insight when they're really actually talking about an observation. So an observation is what's going on, and insight is why it's going on. So it's a quick story. So I don't know how many years ago, long time ago at Taco Bell, we realized that our drink incidents was declining amongst young teenagers. Right. So, they would come in for the food, but they weren't buying a drink. And everyone's like, "Oh, you know, we've got to drop the price of the drink. Drinks, they've got too expensive." You know, stories, stories, story. And, we dug deeper a whole lot deeper. And so, the observation was that our drink incidence was declining, and the sort of business school answer to that is, drop the price. That's sort of what if you went to school. Well, we all went to school, but if you just listen to what we got. Anyway, we dug a whole lot deeper. And what we realized was that these kids, 'cause they're smart, realize that they can get a free drink at home because mom and dad had been to the supermarket and they had bought, I would just make it up, a carton of Mountain Dew. So there was Mountain Dew in the fridge. So there, because they're not stupid, they're smart, they were like, "Well, I can't get Taco Bell food at home, but I can get a Mountain Dew at home, or I can get Mountain Dew at Taco Bell, and one at home is free, so I can buy more food and go and get a free drink. Free drink, this is what they call it. So knowing that you are going to get that, they can get a free drink. It didn't matter what you dropped the price to, in the restaurant, you would never have beaten free. Right. But what we did in, but what we did was, we created a proprietary version of Mountain Dew called Mountain Dew Baja Blast that you could only get at Taco Bell. Mom and dad could not buy it at the supermarket. And so, we launched Mountain Dew Baja Blast, drink incidents climbed. We didn't drop the price. And I think I, I was talking to some Pepsi friends the other day. I think it is now the largest or second largest selling beverage in Taco Bell, Mountain Dew Baja Blast. It outsells regular Mountain Dew. And so, to me, that's just a great example of, of two things. One, digging for an insight versus just an observation. But the insight also has to come from understanding what is going on in behave, like human behavior. And then, the solution of creating a Mountain Dew Baja Blast was a 10,000 point better idea than dropping the price. Because when we found out it was free, we would never have been able to drop the price low enough for it to be free. And so that, that, that's an example of, you can have all the data in the world, if you either don't have an hypothesis or you don't have any insight, then it is absolutely useless. And because everyone's pretty much got access to the same data, it comes back to who has the most, the best instinct of what that data is telling them. That I fundamentally believe in.
[00:48:46] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: It's such a great example because it also hits on your, your distinctiveness relevance.
[00:48:51] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: Absolutely. Yeah. It's sort of like, you know, and, yeah, so you got a Taco Bell, and that was my other thing was, you know, we, all, everyone was trying to make the food distinctive, and yet in every restaurant chain, if you sell Coke or Pepsi, whichever one you sell, let's assume beverages is 20% of the menu, 20% of everyone's menu wasn't distinctive.
[00:49:10] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: Yeah.
[00:49:11] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: But we made Taco Bell's menu, not just a food distinctive. We now made the beverages distinctive, which made the brand more distinctive. And I had a number of people, this was many years ago because we launched it, that would say, you know, when parents had children weren't old enough to drive. They're like, "I really hate you." I'm like, "Why?" He goes, "I got to drive my son to Taco Bellto to get a drink." I'm like, "Well, that's good work." Right. And he's like, "No, the pain in the you know where." So, and so beverages became, often people have said, you know, food's the dest, food is the reason for the destination. I think, one of Taco Bell's successes that both, food and beverage, became a, a distinctiveness that made it a destination.
[00:49:47] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I have something else that you say in the book that I want to, I find very productive, provocative, and it says, "Segmentation fails." I think the title of the section was why segmentation fails. Now segmentation, personalization, I mean, we talked about Amazon, sometimes I call it the Netflix effect, you know, all that kind of stuff. Like, getting to your audience and giving them an easy experience. Sometimes we talk about it in terms of you need to be able to segment. what do you say?
[00:50:18] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: Well, I think that, it's like anything in life, there's the extremes. Right? So I also have another example where a brand wasn't doing particularly well, and they did this massive segment. This is the umbre. I won't say which one 'cause someone will know. And they did this massive segmentation study, and they created eight segments. Right. And then they created marketing campaigns for eight segments. Now, all of a sudden, this massively big single brand became this tiny little eight-thing brand that was trying to be all things to all people through eight different messages. And it lost this whole reason for being. And the business went backwards and everyone was like, "Oh, we did a segmentation study and these are the segments." And, now that's, so here's another I'll use to Taco Bell because I, I probably don't miss. Taco Bell has a muse. A muse, a muse is like a 23-year old male. That is not the target audience, that is not who you buy media against, but it, sort of his attitudinally, w, who, who encompasses the, the brand. Now, Taco Bell was used from people from 17 to 97. Right? And it's funny enough, women use it just as much as men. If not like, you know, when I first went to Taco Bell, it was like, "Oh, it's this, you know, it must be 70% of sales must be the, you know, 18 to 24-year old muse. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you, if we'd have segmented this brand into a segment and just marketed to that, that would be a mistake. Right. But the brand, the brand muse, and what the brand stands for, and where it's at attitudinally, and what's happening in the brand muses culture, those things are critically important. And so again, I think people get caught up in, you know, "Oh, well, we'll do a segmentation study and that will help us." I'm not saying you can't, in a segmentation study, find insights, but you can't just literally go and market to every segment you create. The other thing is, most important is, you've got to create segments around, if you're going to do it, do it through... Not through demographics and all of that other sort of mumbo-jumbo stuff. Right. So, so, again, it's like, I'm not saying segmentation is terrible, horrible. It's a tool, but it's not, it's not a sledgehammer. And if it's used incorrectly, it can do the wrong thing. If it's used correctly to do the right thing, it can be useful. But, I've seen again so many people go, "Oh yeah, we did a segmentation study and now we're going to market to these six segments", and you know, the segments, they've got nothing to do with need states, and all this sort of stuff. And then I'm like, "Well, what the hell are you even doing this?" Well, because you can take the brand backwards, forget taking the brand forward. Take a beat, dig a deeper hole for it. So, it's like everything in life. It's like, if you think about the doctor. They have different instruments for different things. They don't just go, "Oh, well I got a scalpel. Well, not everything needs a scalpel. Right. And so, you can't use these instruments as as like blunt torture on a brand. You've got to use them where it makes sense to achieve what, but use it by starting with a hypothesis of what the hell is going to get fixed. Not, hoping the data will tell you what's going to get fixed because often there's so many things. I mean, I'll be honest. When I went to Taco Bell 20-something years ago as a CMO, and it had about seven years of transaction decline. There was a problem detection studies that are being done. We could have picked 20 problems. And a lot of organizations picked too many things, they picked 20. We picked one. Portability. And we just said, "We're going to get so much better at portability because of drive-through when people went in cars." And so we launched, you know, Grilled Stuff Burrito, and Quesadilla, and Crunchwraps. And that was, that was a huge success. And I think the smart thing about it was, we just picked one thing and we, w, we decided to get better at one thing, which was portability.
[00:53:58] You know, too many people. I, my favorite saying is like, "If I, if I gave you 10 things to do, and you do 7, at the end of the year we'll have an interesting discussion about, is that a good year or a bad year? You'll think it's good. I think it was average. If I give you one thing to do there's only, there's only two outcomes. You either did it, or you didn't do it. And then we have a discussion around not about, did you, or did you not do it, about why did you, or why did you not do it? And so, I'm a huge believer in great marketers get their brands focused, and not sort of shooting machine gun boards all over the wall and to hope that something will, will hit and have an effect.
[00:54:33] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: Yeah. Yeah. Focus is key. And, so here we are. Let's, you know, fast forward into the current times. We talked a bit, a little bit about at the beginning and alluding to, you know, restaurants have been through a lot the last year and a half, and now facing, you know, again, labor shortages, supply chain shortages, food shortages, costs going up in some areas. When I started this podcast a year and a half ago, I call it Restaurants Reinvented for a reason, because I believe there is the ability to reinvent ourselves. At no better time can people seize the reins around reinvention. What does restaurant's reinvention mean to you, and what do you think restaurants need to be doing today to really come out on top of a really difficult time?
[00:55:19] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: Well, I would say, I think every brand, whether it's a restaurant brand or not, should always be in reinventing itself. And it should be reinventing itself because culture changes, social norms change. You know, it's, you didn't, we don't live in a static environment. And the more things like culture and social norms change, the more a brand has to be courageous enough to change with it. And so, I think even in a good time, you know, it's funny when, you know, you get those moments. When you've had brands for 40 years, I've had them ups and downs, you know, it's, it's when you're in the up is when you really can be amazingly courageous. But a lot often people coach like, "Oh, the man's doing well. We'll just sit back, and we won't work so hard, and life is good." That's the time to really put the pedal to the met, you know to the metal, because you can, you can change so many things. But, I've always said a brand, a brand is never standing still. It's either going backwards or forwards. There is no standing still. And so, you are either, you know, making sure that you are all the RED letters, or you are not, in which case you're going backwards. When someone says, "Oh yeah, the brand standing still." Standing still means you're going backwards. It's only backwards and forwards. And so, I think that in the restaurant industry right now, I think first of all, culture is incredibly important. Right. Because you've got, first of all, you can't get enough labor. And secondly, it's turning over at unprecedented levels. And all of that will occur, I think because of culture. So, you know, restaurants, I know some are giving, they're shutting down for two days, they're, you know, they're doing all of these things. And it's really interesting. I, I think Nike has made a huge mistake by giving white-collar workers a week off. And everyone who works in their factories and retail outlets is not getting week off. That to me is a major fall apart. Which is, the question is what are you doing for the people who most interact with the customer? They're the people that need the most support and the most help right now. The people in the, in the restaurant support centers or the head officers? I'm not saying they're not working hard. I'm not saying they're under a lot of pressure, but they're not under the same pressure that frontline workers are. So, I think transformation is always culture driven. You know, the old strategy-structure-culture, I've always thought was culture-strategy-structure. And so, I think doubling down on culture, people, leadership, you know, just making it so that, you know, people have, both, the employee has a great experience and the customer. But, one of my other favorite sayings is, "The customer experience will never exceed the team member experience." And so, I think too often people go, "Oh, we want to improve the customer experience, but we don't improve the team member experience." So I think, yeah, so I think my answer is, you should always be transforming because culture and the context of life is, and norms are changing. And secondly, you've got to make sure you take care of the people at the front line. They are, the people that interact with the consumer are the people that matter most. And so, doing everything you can for them. So if you transform the brand and you don't bring along in the journey or you don't make it a better journey for them, that transformation is not going to work.
[00:58:15] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: Absolutely. And what role do you see technology playing in that? I mean, you joked at the beginning saying that, you know, you're terrible can mess anything up, but within the restaurant world this has become...
[00:58:25] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: No technology, don't get me wrong. I think if technology makes life, if it makes it the brand easier, if it makes the brand more relevant, if it makes the brand more distinctive, then I think technology is brilliant. And so, one of the biggest challenges I see with technology is, there's not enough distinctiveness in it. It's sort of like, it's almost like, "Oh, we all went and bought X and X works", but you know, you've got to make X work in a distinctive way for your brand. So look, I'm a huge look, everyone's investing in technology. I was spending before I retired, we'd spend more money in technology. I'm sure David Gibbs is spending even more than I was spending. So there's a huge investment in technology, but it's got to be technology to make your brand more relevant, make your brand more distinctive, or make your brand easier. And if it's not doing those three things, then, you know, you're probably not investing in technology in the right areas.
[00:59:16] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: That's exactly what we subscribe to here at Qu. So we try really hard to be distinctive, not another also ran. So that's a really good, good point to talk about, and I really appreciate all the insights and the stories you've shared with our listeners today. I mean, my head is just a buzz with ideas and, and hopefully the audience as well coming up with some, some new creative thoughts and transformational processes. So, so thank you so much. As we wrap here Greg, I would love to know like what the one thing is that you're most proud of over your career? As you look back at all that, you know, you've told us so many great stories today and, you know, what's the thing that really sticks with you?
[00:59:54] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: It's not any of the marketing things I did, which might surprise people. I think it was hopefully creating a culture in which people feel valued, empowered and courageous. So, yeah, I jokingly said I I'll probably never get remembered for Think Outside the Bun or Live Mas, which doesn't worry me. I think, you know, in retirement now, that we created a great environment that, we created an environment that was diverse and inclusive. I'm really proud of the fact that, I think senior, senior management for women went from like 28% to 48% in 5 years. And Tracy Skeans, who was my Chief People Officer, you know, we dramatically expanded, you know, maternity benefits, paternity benefits, annual leave, all of those sorts of things. So, yeah, I think, one of my favorite sayings is, "Ability is equally distributed, opportunity is not." And so I think, if you can create opportunity for everyone's ability, for them to maximize it, if they don't maximize it, that's their problem. But if you give them the opportunity and they take advantage of it, then I think the world will be a better place.
[01:00:59] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: Well, that's all music to my ears. So thank you so much for your great example of emotional leadership, emotional intelligence. And it really resonates because you're so approachable and you know, I just, I just hit you up on LinkedIn and was like, "Hey, I want to hear about your book. Come on the podcast". You said, "Yes." I mean, you're very approachable, and human and, and how you you're talking and interacting. And even the way the book comes across. So gosh, we need more leaders like you. and I'm so, so appreciative of your example within the industry where, you know, there is a lot changing, we do need a lot of examples like you. So...
[01:01:35] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: I appreciate it. It's lovely. Thank you for having me on the show. And I look forward to, hopefully we catch up in person, not in not in distant future,
[01:01:43] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: Yeah. If we can get out to, to a conference, that would be great. So, as a reminder, check out the book. It's Greg Creed, RED marketing, relevance, ease and distinctiveness. And it's got the goods, and there's so much good little information in there. So, again, Greg, thank you so much for your time and sharing all of your experience.
[01:02:01] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: It was fantastic. I enjoyed it. And continued success as well.
[01:02:05] jen--rr-_1_09-01-2021_133729: Thank you, and have a great day.
[01:02:08] greg-creed_1_09-01-2021_123729: Bye.