Carl Loredo is the Chief Marketing Officer of The Wendy’'s Company, the 50 year-old fast food giant that now has 6,700 restaurants around the world and a marketing reputation as good as their famous burgers. Do we have to mention, "Where's the beef?"
Carl has been at Wendy’s for over six years, holding the role of CMO since 2019. He has worked in tech, consumer goods, home decor, and even a stint at an ad agency. Originally from Texas, he now makes the Buckeye State his home with his twin children.
This episode is all about how Wendy's maintains their edge, while listening carefully to their customers at the same time. Carl discusses how Wendy's stays up-to-date with trends by leaning into Twitter and gamer culture. Also, you will hear how Carl and his team stays true to Wendy's long-held values.
CMOs often hold one of the most innovative and challenging roles in business today. Those who excel can operate at the highest level to drive growth and create value for their organizations. To learn more how Deloitte helps bolster the value CMOs deliver, visit www.cmo.deloitte.com.
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Check out this episode's transcript below:
Jim Stengel:
What's the first brand, Carl, you remember making an impact on you as a young boy?
Carl Loredo:
Southwest Airlines, probably. I have a big personal connection to Southwest. My parents were divorced and so I spent many a day flying back and forth on Southwest between Austin and Houston. And as I got to know the brand better, the brilliance behind what Herb Kellerher was up to was pretty amazing. He said, "First of all, I'm competing with buses, not other airplanes." You want to talk about a guy that had all kinds of headwinds in his face, the likes of American Airlines and Braniff with a bunch of politicians in their pockets, making it almost impossible for him to run an airline and saying, "You know what? I don't care. We're going to make this happen." I think a lot of what we experience even today with them, goes back to the heart of who they are and the attitude. I used to travel all over the world. I've got status on just about every airline and my favorite one to get on is Southwest.
Jim Stengel:
Hi, I'm Jim Stengel and I help major brands find their purpose and activate it, and the profits followed. For seven years, I was the global marketing officer for Proctor & Gamble, where I oversaw the marketing of hundreds of brands. You may not know it, but the CMOs, the chief marketing officers of all of your favorite brands are trying to connect you with your favorite products and services through purpose. And on this show, I delve into how they do it. My guest today in The CMO Podcast is Carl Loredo, the chief marketing officer of Wendy's, the fresh never frozen burger chain started by Dave Thomas in 1969 in Columbus, Ohio. Wendy's now serves up burgers, breakfast, Frosties and more in 6,700 restaurants across the world with sales across the franchise operation expected to grow 6 to 8% in 2022. Wendy's has a longstanding history of advertising and marketing creativity. Remember Where's The Beef?
Jim Stengel:
Wendy's brought us the first modern drive-through, a partnership with Fortnite that won a Grand Prix in Cannes and on and on. Carl and team recently made headlines with their cleverly designed Wendyverse in Meta's Horizon Worlds. My guest Carl has been at Wendy's nearly six years, three as CMO. He has both an undergraduate degree and an MBA from the University of Texas Austin. He has worked in tech, consumer goods, home decor, and even a stint in an ad agency.
Jim Stengel:
Carl is a father of teenage twins. And even though he lives in the Buckeye state, he is a Texan at heart. Ask him someday about his pickup truck. This is my conversation with Carl Loredo. Carl, I don't want to intimidate you early in this recording, but I have dug deeply into the Wendy's archives and I have a quick five question quiz for you. Are you game for that?
Carl Loredo:
I'm game, let's do it.
Jim Stengel:
All right, the first question is what famous CMO at Wendy's was a jumper on his college water skiing team?
Carl Loredo:
Oh, that might be Mr. Juan Carlos Loredo, otherwise known as Carl.
Jim Stengel:
Oh, well that's that sounds like a boondoggle.
Carl Loredo:
I'm feeling better about this quiz now. So keep going, this is great.
Jim Stengel:
This is the easy part. That was the easy one. That was the layout. Second question. How many commercials did your founder Dave Thomas appear in beginning in what year? This is like NPR, right? This is these impossible questions.
Carl Loredo:
Yeah, I love it. I know it's hundreds. And I have to imagine that started in the mid '80s and legend has it, that we kept getting a lot of feedback from the agencies around the performance of the actors. So, that was one piece as well as the franchisees. So, they finally just put Dave in the work and it was really hard for folks to complain about that. But yeah, I know it was hundreds. I think it was in the neighborhood of like 800 ads that Dave was in, which is pretty impressive.
Jim Stengel:
Well, you got that one right. 800 and 1989, so that's a score for you. All right, third question. What year did your first mobile app launch?
Carl Loredo:
Well, that was a couple of years ago. So, we were out there and it's pretty amazing if you think through what was going on in the midst of the pandemic, all the things that we had going on, we had loyalty roll through right after we got rolling in '01. So, it's been a very wild ride for us as, as you think through all the things that had to come together. And we were out there with the app before that, but really, as it got rolling to drive that forth, it was crucial for us right after pandemic in midsummer of 2000.
Jim Stengel:
2012 was actually the year of your first mobile app launch, which is just incredible. I mean, you guys had this heritage of creativity and innovation, which we're going to talk about later. The fourth question, Wendy's is the biggest brand partner on which live streaming interactive service?
Carl Loredo:
Well, that would be Switch.
Jim Stengel:
Good, good. I hope you get that one right.
Carl Loredo:
Yeah, no, it's been an amazing partnership for us and hopefully we can talk a little bit more about it, but as I think about gaming and in particular, the engagement we have with our consumers, it's pretty fascinating to think that gaming is now overtaken music and entertainment combined. And my son's 14, he plays a lot of Fortnite, Madden, you can imagine. And it's been fascinating where I'll walk in and he'll be watching something. In the early days I was like, "What are you doing?" He's like, "I'm watching Ninja play this game." And I'm like, "First of all, who's Ninja? Second of all, you're watching someone else play a video game? Why are you wasting your time with this stuff?" And as I've come to understand more and more about the gaming culture and all those components to be a part of that, what we were able to do with Fortnite and ultimately, to be the biggest brand partner, but to have the number of folks that participate with us in the gaming world as a player, versus us forcing our way into gaming has been a really, really cool way to engage.
Jim Stengel:
Last question and this goes way back. What was the sales lift from one of the most famous ad campaigns in history, Wendy's Where's The Beef?
Carl Loredo:
Yeah, so Clara Peller with those famous lines of Where's The Beef. And it's interesting if you think about the challenger with charm that we've always been, just another great example of that type of work. I think legend has it that we saw about a 30% lift as we got that work out there and really just to show that, to the extent that you can engage with the right consumer in the right way and give them a meaningful message that they can resonate with. It really can move the needle and that's our job, right?
Carl Loredo:
So I know that you've done a lot of that in your career and ultimately my goal is to break the financial models around here too, each and every day with the work that we do. So, that's the name of the game and certainly that ad and that campaign is legendary for us, but also I think just indicative of what great marketing all the way around can do for a business. That really changed the course for Wendy's as a brand.
Jim Stengel:
Yeah, it's a great proof point. I was very, very new at P&G at the time. And we used that case to again, show the skeptics, even in a place like P&G that great advertising and great concepts can lift a business and that was a ... and you're right. 30% plus was the lift from that campaign, which even at that time on your scale, that was a big move.
Carl Loredo:
Yeah, it's pretty impressive stuff. We tell the legends and you probably know the stories better about all of the trade models that you guys had at P&G. And I use that example with my marketing leadership team every day. It's like, hey, you can go invest a lot of money in trade, but ultimately our job is to be able to move the needle well beyond that. I think I hear that if you couldn't do that in a year at P&G, it was time to find something new to do.
Jim Stengel:
More or less.
Carl Loredo:
So, we certainly know that's the goal for the programming that we put forth as well. And that's what we're here for every day.
Jim Stengel:
Well, Carl, that's five questions. I'll give you a five out of five on that.
Carl Loredo:
All right, thanks.
Jim Stengel:
Good start to the podcast.
Carl Loredo:
I appreciate it.
Jim Stengel:
You lead an organization that by all measures is highly innovative, fast, seemingly fearless, extremely consumer-centric, has a great sense of humor and is now the number two burger chain in America. So Carl, you lead an amazing group of being first on so many things, trying so many things, getting results, endless creativity. So, I want to start with that big question. How do you do what you do?
Carl Loredo:
Well, first of all, appreciate it.
Jim Stengel:
It's true. It's absolutely true.
Carl Loredo:
Well, we've done some great work and I'd start with, we have an unbelievable team here at Wendy's and I'd be remiss in suggesting that any of those results aren't a part of everything that this group is doing together. I think that's a big part of it right now, is collaboration matters more than ever. We've been through a bunch, over the course of my time as a CMO, I think my hair has gotten almost completely gray at this point. Not all the way there yet, but it's amazing how much grayer my hair is. But all of us working together with clarity about who we want to be and where we want to go has mattered a lot.
Carl Loredo:
Look, first and foremost, you got to know who you are as a brand. And we have a lot of clarity around that. You talked about it, but we've been a challenger at heart since the inception, Dave Thomas started with the idea in 1969, that consumers deserve better. He just said, "Look, I don't want to be for billions now, millions back then. I want to create an amazing product that I'd be proud to serve to my family." You think about the fact that he didn't name it Dave's, he named it Wendy's. I have a 14-year-old daughter as I mentioned at the beginning. To name anything Ainsley's, I can assure you, I know what that would mean at the heart of it. And that's where it started. That's the drumbeat and the heart of this brand.
Carl Loredo:
But I think us being able to build upon that, we are a challenger. Our competitors have bigger budgets than we do and so we have to think differently, act differently. And that's what we do here. Whether it be the way we work together, the partnerships that we have with the folks and operations, our franchisees, what's going on throughout our crew as well. That matters as much as any programming we're putting out there that people might think of as traditional marketing. And so, I think that collaboration is also one of those key points in how we've been able to accomplish what we have. My partner in crime, our chief operating officer, his name's Deepak Ajmani and he always says, "None of this is real until it's real in the restaurant." And how true is that?
Carl Loredo:
So, we can be out there with a powerful message talking about an unbelievable hamburger, but what matters most is what do you put in your mouth when you're done and when you come into the restaurant and get that experience. So, I think all those things have really come together and all of us here at Wendy's, it always starts with the consumer first. They're who we think about when we walk in the building and it's what is a part of every conversation that we have. And as we leave for the day it's all about that consumer, and knowing that they're busy, they're on the go, they've got all kinds of challenges in their life. If we can be that moment of joy for them, when they come and grab Wendy's at our restaurant, or maybe pick up their phone and laugh at a funny tweet that we have out there, or the way that we engage in Twitter, or Twitch, or the likes of Fortnite, it's that authenticity, I think that's been able to build this brand over the right way.
Carl Loredo:
We've always been who we are and just really leaning into that versus trying to be something that we're not, and it resonates well with people. So, I think it does give us the latitude, Jim, to do things that others can't, but we are fast. We do things that some may feel seem in some ways big risk, but I'll tell you, it's all based on a core strategy of knowing who we are, what matters to our consumers and starting with amazing food. And because of that, I think it gives us a very clear path to what's in and what's out of bounds. I think that that's at the heart of what makes our marketing really good and ultimately, the results that you talked about.
Jim Stengel:
You talked about your team immediately when I ask you that question. I'd like you to go there a little bit for us, Carl. Tell us about your team, how are you organized? What are the capabilities that you're striving to make stronger and stronger? So, go there with us a bit. Tell us a bit about your team.
Carl Loredo:
Unbelievable team in the marketing leadership group. We've got a core group that has decades of experience in marketing across the board, and also decades of experience with how to engage in a franchise and restaurant community as well. I think all those things really matter a lot.
Carl Loredo:
We have folks that run media and partnerships that have worked at the likes of Coca-Cola, Warner, really ultimately understand what it takes to be a great brand partner, but also drive partnerships and what's going to get the media teams to click and why does that matter? Because we don't buy anything off the shelf from any of our partners. And we probably can be the most frustrating partner that someone has, or we can be recognized like we were a couple of months ago by Fox. They asked me to come out and talk about how we do partnerships to be examples for the rest of their clients. Ultimately, what we recognize there is our ability to make their programming better, find ways to drive the storylines, make them more engaging. We can do a lot for their business as much as they can do for ours.
Carl Loredo:
And so, I think having that within the team matters a lot in our media and partnerships lead. We've got someone here that runs all of our brand national calendar. She's been in the business for a long time, worked for Wendy's for almost a decade, and literally has a myriad of experiences throughout the building, but also just a great brand partner as well. And then, I've got someone that runs all of our local and thinking about how do we take all this programming all the way down to the restaurant level, which matters a ton too. You've got to find ways to be able to take these big programs, make them relevant to our crew, find ways to get folks excited at the restaurant level and more than our consumers, even for something like a March Madness, how do we drive all that engagement with our crew, our franchisees, et cetera.
Carl Loredo:
And then as you might imagine, we've got a great team in the PR side, I've got a finance lead that's been around the business for a long time and each and every day I'm saying, "Hey, where's the business moving? Where are the insights behind that?" And it all actually starts with our insights team and ultimately come in and saying, "Look, here's some things that we're seeing in the business. Here's what's going on with the consumer. Here's what you may or may not be gleaning from all the data you're seeing in the news about what's going on with that consumer each and every day. What are the ways that we can insert ourselves in an authentic way to have a conversation with them? Engage in a new product that might be of interest?" All those things.
Carl Loredo:
So, it always starts and ends with the consumer around the team. So, backwards to forwards, making sure that we're starting from that inside piece. But I feel like we've also built out a great leadership team all the way around that, to then go partner with a nice group of people that can ultimately build that out as well.
Jim Stengel:
Carl, I've heard you describe yourself as a fixer and a chooser. You like to fix things. You like challenges, you like turnarounds, and you choose very carefully the big stuff that can make an impact and I think I'm even using your words there. So, I want to talk about the chooser part. I mean, you're a fixer and a chooser, that's not easy. I'd like to hear about your process for deciding the big things and how do you stay true to that?
Carl Loredo:
I appreciate the question and it is core to how I engage every single day. I've always been in roles that were underdogs. I love those components. I think if everything's perfect, what's, where's the energy and excitement come from around that. But look, when you get to a company the size of Wendy's, I just think that there's organizational momentum that you have to be really mindful of. And I started my career out of graduate school at PepsiCo. You want to talk about organizational momentum, there's a lot there. And it was a great academy experience to learn a ton, but just each and every day, there's just stuff that's going on. If you don't pause a moment to say is what I'm working on, right this second, the most important thing to be working on? You could look back a year later and go, "Wow, did I really focus on the things that were going to drive the business?"
Carl Loredo:
And that's how we start our marketing leadership team meetings. That's how we engage in the business. And candidly, over the last two years, there's unfortunately been a lot of times where we've had to pivot and said, "You know what? For right now, I don't know if those are the right focus areas." But as a team, again, it starts with a consumer. What are some core insights that we believe that either the category or Wendy's may be missing on? Are there things that they don't know about us, products that we might want to engage in? And where do we think the biggest bang for our buck can be in terms of driving engagement?
Carl Loredo:
I think the best example of that is our French fry launch. So, that's actually a four year project in the making. And the reality was that the core insight behind that was cold and soggy fries suck, let's just be clear about it. And the thing that goes out of not only our window, the most, but McDonald's window the most, Burger King's window the most, name a QSR, is French fries. And interestingly, as we looked at our product scores, it was one of the lowest performing products. Now, not because we're not necessarily doing a bunch of stuff wrong, but because people have high expectations and French fries are actually pretty fragile. They're great right out of the fryer, but stick them in a bag, they can get to the point where they're not that great.
Carl Loredo:
So, we talked earlier about a great lunch at Wendy's can make your day. Sticking your hand in that bag and pulling out some cold and soggy French fries is like absolutely the worst experience in the world. So we just said, "Look, can we admit to ourselves that we can do better with the product, the way that our teams at the restaurant are making them? How that actually is experienced by the consumer?" And if we can get that right, think about how many people we can impact by just that one product. So, we can talk about the next new flavor of hamburgers. We can talk about a new drink coming out of the freestyle machine, but what could be the biggest thing that we could impact? And it was fries.
Carl Loredo:
And the reason that it hadn't been worked on or hadn't been solved was because it was really hard. And so we had to work through everything, from the product itself, to the operational procedures. We spent a bunch of time in the restaurants with our teams to really understand all aspects of it and then go out and have a conversation with the consumer and convince them that what they may have thought was the best, isn't anymore.
Carl Loredo:
And I know you've had plenty of experience with that back in your P&G days as well. And to get a nearly two to one claim over what was perceived as the best fry out there was huge news to us and we knew we had a great product, but to understand that and figure out the right way to go engage with the consumer was really important. So yeah, I think that's a great example of go pick something big, go lean in, do the work, put the investment behind it and don't let off the gas. I think that's the other thing that a lot of us can get distracted by too, is well, what's the next thing. It's like, the next thing is French fries, more of it, because it matters. So, that's a big part of what we're a great focused on.
Jim Stengel:
It's a great story and you'd have to be in a cave not to know that you have done that. Your campaign was really, really powerful. Give us an idea of how many things do you focus on at any given time? Is it two or three? Is it five or six? I know what your day is like, there's stuff coming at you all day. How do you stay true to the focus areas of big impact?
Carl Loredo:
Yeah, great point. It should be five. It's probably 10 right now, to be perfectly honest with you. But one thing I will share, and my team will chuckle when they hear this, but one of the things I ask them about on a fairly regular basis is whether you on your calendar or you have an assistant that helps you with that, are you having that dialogue with them about what your time ought to be spent on? I think there's two things that indicate focus. One is money and two is time. I think if all of us take a step back and take a look at our calendar and say, "Well, you're saying family's important to you. Well, that probably should be one of your big focus areas. Are you doing right by yourself and your family?" But then when you get into the work side of it, if you said, "Hey look, if somebody took a look at your calendar, would they be able to ascertain what the biggest focus areas are for you on the business right now?" If the answer is they can't in looking at a couple of weeks of what you're spending your time in, I think that's a true indicator that you're missing something. So, that's a great exercise that I certainly go through each and every month and something I encourage my team to do as well and I think it helps a ton.
Jim Stengel:
You and your team are always trying new things. So, you must have had a few mishaps, a few missteps, a few failures, because you're just always experimenting. So, how do you handle things that don't go well and can you give us an example of that?
Carl Loredo:
Yeah, I think we got to find ways to fail fast and look, we talked about, it always starts at, at the beginning with consumer and insight around something. So, I want to make sure that we're making smart bets, but there's absolutely things that we've put out in the marketplace that haven't performed quite as well as we like to hope. One of the examples of a platform that has worked really well for us is our Made to Crave platform.
Carl Loredo:
So, premium sandwiches, particularly in the environment we've been in the last couple of years has been fabulous. Nobody can put products like that out there, but there's been a couple of flavors that we put in tests as an example that we thought were going to be unbelievable. I'm from Texas, I happen to love queso. The team came to me with a queso burger, it was unbelievable. It had green chilies in it. Based on probably a little bit of personal bias, it was like, "Hey, let's take these great results and go give it a whirl." And the reality was it didn't do quite as well as we would've liked. I think you got to learn from that and say, "All right, where might have we missed here? What was the canary in the coal mine that would suggest that we could have done better in it?" But I think that's an example of one where we were able to pivot quick, learn from it and nobody got fired because of it. It was like, "Hey, we're going to have some big wins and we're going to need to find ways that we can fail efficiently to where it doesn't cost us a bunch of money or a bunch of time."
Carl Loredo:
I think other examples would be, in the breakfast business, we knew that we needed to get in and get in fast with a scale breakfast that was better than the rest of the competition. But we knew that there were aspects of the menu that ... and our competition that we weren't going to be able to get out there with immediately. And so there are places where we know we can do better, but it's because we've been efficiently thinking about how do we build on the momentum that we have. So, those are probably a couple of examples of where we've been able to jump in, learn fast and ultimately pivot quickly.
Jim Stengel:
The other side of that question, and we've already talked about this a bit, Carl, is when things go well really well, how do you handle that? I mean, I guess fries is an example of that. You feed it, you invest more in it. So tell us about when things are going really well, how you handle that as well.
Carl Loredo:
Yeah, you hit on it. Breakfast would be the other example of it. I mean, we created a billion dollar business in the middle of COVID, which is just ... I don't know. I pause on that once in a while with the gang like, "I can't believe we did this."
Jim Stengel:
Yeah, [inaudible 00:23:14] we've done that.
Carl Loredo:
Absolutely. And it was because we did all the work to make sure that we had a better breakfast and told a great story about it. And the breakfast that was out there was pretty tired, been around since '72 with not much innovation in it. And we knew we could bring a lot of Wendy's to that and we have. Fresh cracked eggs, amazing bacon that we're cooking in the restaurant every morning. And that's where we double down. I think there's an easy temptation to say what's the next thing. And sometimes the next thing is more of the same thing, breakfast, fries, the world of those components have been big ones for us. And there have been times when we have something take off and then it's like, "Hey, I know we got things playing on the calendar. It's time to have a communication with the system to say, 'Well, we're going to maintain what we've got going on.' "
Carl Loredo:
And that's where we have a great partnership with our group of WENAP, which is our franchise board, and ultimately being able to have a direct and honest dialogue with them as well around what we're thinking, why we might be making adjustments along the way. Spicy Nugs when we brought that back, well first of all, let's talk about an opportunity area with the consumer. We took Spicy Nugs off the menu. It was done for operational reasons before I was a CMO, and boy, did we hear about it. And I think one of our other superpowers is listening. We heard the consumer every day saying, "Hey Wendy's, giant mistake for taking Spicy Nugs off the menu."
Carl Loredo:
It was funny the day that we all, as a group, came together and said, "All right, we need to make this change. We need to get it back on the menu." And once we actually saw the momentum that was going from the announcement, the relaunch, really leaning into it, we had planned to be on air probably for eight weeks and next thing and on, we were on for three months because there was just so much momentum around that. So, you got to win with the winners and ultimately in this business, you can do all the testing in the world, put it in as many test markets as you want, but you're really not ever going to know until you get it out there in full national scale. And so, that's where we just got to be smart about where we place our bets and hit a lot of doubles and triples. And once in a while you get a home run and if it's just a single, get done with it and move on to the next thing.
Jim Stengel:
I recently had a guest on this show, Kristin Patrick at Claire's, also ex-Pepsi. And she talked about every brand that she has worked on in her career has had culture at the center of the brand. And that's one of her criteria, I think for choosing where she works. Your brand certainly is in the middle of culture, and you are just really creative, really fast in gaming and social in culture. Can you give us some ideas, some tips, some insights for those listening who would like to build a team that is responsive and consumer-centric and experimental as your team is? It's hard to think of a brand that is as quick, and as funny, and as strategic as your team is in being present in the top cultural issues of the day. So, tell us a bit how you do that.
Carl Loredo:
The first thing I'll say Jim, is we've had a number of key leaders come in and talk to us about what we're up to and Fortune 50 companies. The first thing that I say is, "Please, please, don't try to be Wendy's," because the reason we're able to do what we are is because we're clear about who this brand is, what we're all about. We are a challenger with charm, but we've also spent a ton of time being very clear within our teams, within the agencies, about how we're positioned. Interestingly, I think you could walk around the entire restaurant support center, and they could probably rattle all off the brand positioning for you, which I won't share in full detail here, but it also flows down to the restaurant as well.
Carl Loredo:
So, the language that our ops teams use, our trainings teams, et cetera. And so the clarity about who we are matters a lot. So, that makes it a whole lot easier to have a briefing with the agency to say, "Look, let's have a conversation about X program and how we want to go have an engagement around it, or in the midst of all the challenges and the positive things that are going on as well, how we're going to participate in that." So, you think about roast day as an example, we literally created our own holiday that people tune into because they're excited and they think it's fun to get roasted by the Wendy's brand.
Carl Loredo:
I could name off a hundred brands that it could ruin their brand to go try to do that in the day. So, I think that's a great example of where being true to who you are leads to the engagement you have, but we've been able to identify some very clear guardrails in terms of how we want to engage, there's about 20 of them, to say what's on and off limits. Where are there some places that we've seen challenges within the rabbit hole, so we want to avoid those like the plague, and then be able to have the trust with the team to say, "Look, you guys are all stewards of this brand." And there's no way that I could approve every tweet that goes out of this building. By the way, there are plenty that we talk about before they go out, but you got to have trust in the team. I think, it's one of the key things that I would point to in terms of the success we've had and I've had as a leader, is you got to be clear about the strategy. You got to be clear about how you want to go accomplish that. And then you got to have trust in the team to say, "All right, I can't stand over you at every moment of what you do."
Carl Loredo:
And that's whether that's a brand person that's coming up with the next idea in partnership with R and D, or someone that's sitting there with the keys to the kingdom and the passwords to our Twitter handle and they're going to put some stuff out there. But we do have a great team and with great leadership here in the restaurant support center, but with our agency partners across the country, and we've gotten into a great rhythm over the last three or four years, but we've had a few missteps along the way, but overall, the team just really does a great job.
Carl Loredo:
But hopefully, that gets to the question. I mean, I think you can't be quick without knowing who you are. I think a lot of the things that came through in the midst of COVID, some of the choices that we made in advertising, the way we engaged, The New York times article that I took out about Where's The Beef, because we had a beef shortage because we use fresh beef and others don't, I think someone without ... or a team without the clarity, could have walked into some really icy waters there to say, "Well, just this one time, might we consider something that isn't within our core standard, because it's COVID and does that give us the latitude to do so?"
Carl Loredo:
It's like, hell no, this is the time to really lean in and say, "You might just find a chicken sandwich at Wendy's today, here's why. And if you're finding hamburgers, other places you might want to ask yourself where that meat's coming from, because it isn't in the US because there isn't any." So, I think that's the nature of how we make that be successful. So, I just go back to, for all the brands out there that are trying to figure it out, do you have a brand positioning and could everyone on your leadership team and the ops leadership team and folks that work around you be able to rattle that off, to have that much clarity around who you are and then get to all right, now how do we want to go communicate that outwardly? Because if you're not clear about that part, you can get messed up pretty quick on the other pieces.
Jim Stengel:
Do you have any non-obvious lessons in ... I mean, you operate in a large organization, as many of our listeners do, on ensuring the clarity of that positioning is understood and believed in by everyone in your system? Because they both have to be true. They have to understand it and believe in it for them to act on it. Any lessons in doing that? Because you do it very well at Wendy's.
Carl Loredo:
Yeah. If you walk into our boardroom right now, the first thing you see is, I mean, a giant wall of words that's our brand positioning. That's how much it matters to us. So, literally at the heart of many conversations, if there's something that we're challenged with or we want to push on, et cetera, it's like, let's turn around and have a look at this and say, "Does it fit within that?" So, that's how much it matters to us. And we've been able to get to some shorthand-
Jim Stengel:
[inaudible 00:31:20].
Carl Loredo:
... to make sure that the agencies and everyone else have clarity around it, can talk about it. But this idea of we got your back around here matters a bunch and you can pretty quickly get to, is that the right thing to do in marketing? Is that the right way to treat a customer? When somebody's calling into the call center, do we have their back if we ask them 8,000 questions before we refund their money? There's a lot of that can help you be really clear about who you are and then, all right, how do we want to react, respond, or act in the middle of this stuff?
Jim Stengel:
As I read about you in prepping for this and listen to you a lot, actually, you reminded me of another great leader in quick serve. And that's David Novak, the former CEO of Yum! Brands. He's all about trust. He's all about bringing people with you. I think he even wrote a book with that title. He's about building a culture of recognition and appreciation. He's about being brand and consumer-led and he is of course, about marketing innovation. So, I'd like your reaction to that because honestly, it's authentic. As I was reading about you and listening to you, I thought, "He's got a lot in common with David," who I do know and I admire, and I think he's been one of the great leaders in our industry at large, even beyond quick serve.
Carl Loredo:
Yeah, I'm flattered. I certainly have studied him and a lot of the way that he approached the work and these jobs as marketers, I think it is about all of those things coming together. You do have to be collaborative. You really have to start with a consumer, but ultimately find ways to bring others along. And ultimately, there's no way sitting in this chair, or in the other chairs of my colleagues around the country and the world, you can't do it all yourself. It's impossible. I think there's a lot of different ways you can get people to get work done. One is with the stick and I think the other is with the carrot and more importantly, folks understanding and building together with you, the vision of where we're going, because how much better does that feel if people feel like they're being listened to and they're a key part of what's going on?
Carl Loredo:
I mean, I firmly believe in the idea of the wisdom of the crowd and you get a bunch of smart people together and you take the time to sit down and listen to one another and beat stuff up and have a healthy argument, you're always going to end up in a better spot. What I know about David, although I've never had a chance to meet him and I really would love to, I think there's a lot to be learned from his vision of thinking about things that way. And look, every time I walk into a meeting, do I have a perspective? Absolutely and the team knows that, but I would say that if they were all sitting behind me, they would tell you that I can be convinced otherwise. We have rational conversations about our approach to the work and more often than not, it's about what we come up with together versus some idea that Carl came up with.
Carl Loredo:
But I think that matters a ton and then my hope would be my cross-functional partners would also tell you that in a strange way, as a marketer, I have a ton of empathy for what's going on around this building and ultimately what it's like to work in a restaurant as a crew member. I worked in the landscaping business back before I ever went to college in the summer heat in Houston, Texas. I know what it's like to work hard. Ultimately, getting down to the empathy around what that is like for a human being each and every day that's coming into work, we can have the best programs in the world around here, but if we're not finding ways to have that roll through the teams here or all the way to the crew, it's hard to be successful. But yeah, I think a lot of those things that you mention, I've modeled my behaviors around and I'm not always perfect at it, but certainly try.
Jim Stengel:
Who have been some of your most influential mentors in your journey here?
Carl Loredo:
Hey look, I'd probably start with Kurt Kane who's the president here at Wendy's. I've known him for a long time. We met back in our days at PepsiCo. He was working on the Doritos brand. I was running the NFL at the time and our partner with the NFL was the Lays brand. And I was like, "We got a brand in this building that there's a lot of crunch and energy around." It seems like it fit better with the Doritos brand. So, I reached out to Kurt and a great relationship was formed and over time we parted ways, but was excited to come and work with him. I think he's a great marketer and has become an amazing president here on the Wendy's US business as well and has taught me a lot along the way.
Carl Loredo:
So, he's one that I would point to. I learned a lot from Steven Quinn, who is the CMO at Frito-Lay when I first joined. Back in those days, to walk into Stephen's office, you could imagine as a wet behind the ears ABM, there was fear, trepidation, and a lot of excitement that went into one of those meetings. He was just always a gracious leader. He was one of those guys that, it started with the team and worked its way up, versus the other way around and I always appreciated that. But he was the one that really ingrained in me, how much are you thinking about the consumer? Have you really thought through this the right way?
Carl Loredo:
I'm reminded of a story, I was working on the dips business. Somehow I was reporting to Steven, which is just ... take that on for a minute. We had had some changes at Frito at the time and so there were a couple of open holes. He and I were talking about trying to grow this half a billion dollar dips business, and I think I'd been out of business school for a hot four months or something like that. We were talking about a project and he said, "Well, where do you want to go with this thing?" I said, "Well, here's what the research is suggesting, got this insight but really ... " He said, "What do you need?" I said, "Well, I could use another a hundred grand to go do some more research." He said, "That's interesting. How much time have you spent in a grocery store in the last month?" I was like, "I don't know. I went shopping there last week."
Carl Loredo:
Steven's point was, "Well, what's your perspective on what's going on with the consumer and have you validated it yourself just by watching yourself and being a little bit creepy about it? And yeah, the research is interesting, but go form that hypothesis before you dig into all that stuff, as much as anything, because you're a smart guy, you got eyes, ears and honestly, if you just take a minute to listen with all of your senses and what's going on in the grocery aisle, you might find some things that two years' worth of research might not have gotten. And by the way, there's some art and science to what we do as marketers."
Carl Loredo:
So, just really appreciated that as sort of the beginnings of my career at, at Frito-Lay and felt lucky to be able to work and partner with him as well. So he was great and my first ... I guess he was a VP or a senior director at the time, he ultimately became the CMO of Walmart and then ran Sam's Club for a bit with Tony Rogers and he's always been right there for me in my career as well. And may have been one of the guys that called us about the digital and social work we were doing too. So, we've had a chance to exchange positions and teacher and student a few times too. So, appreciate all those guys for what they've taught me.
Jim Stengel:
How about mentees, Carl? Because I know you love to mentor people and I think you've even been part of the Adweek program, as I have as well. So, what about mentees? Any mentees or any topics you've talked with mentees that are particularly insightful or interesting for you?
Carl Loredo:
Yeah, I was a part of the program last year and actually Christian and I still talk once a month, which is awesome. I signed up for it again this year and really excited to get rolling with it, but it's been interesting. When folks have called and asked for advice, I find that it often starts with this conversation around social and, "Hey, I'm trying to learn how to grow in this one aspect of marketing. Don't have a ton of experience around it. Are you willing to share?" And more often than not, we get back to some of the things that you and I talked about at the onset, so I won't repeat them, but just saying, "Look, let's get back to clarity around who you are and your overall strategies, then we can get to tactics."
Carl Loredo:
So, that's a big part of what I've shared. I'd say across my career, whether it be old folks that I worked with at Frito-Lay, the agency side, and then ultimately even coming out of Craftmade, there's a number of folks along the way that again, maybe you'd call them my mentees, but sometimes they're my mentors, but it's just folks that I feel like we can share in experiences, be honest and challenge one another around things that we're working on to say, "Hey, did you think about it this way?" Or, "Let's get back to the basics here," because I think in the hustle and bustle of everything, we're up to sometimes we forget those pieces, so it's good.
Jim Stengel:
Your career path was a pretty traditional path to CMO. You were at Kraft, at Dell for a bit, Frito-Lay, Craftmade as CMO, until you went to an ad agency before joining Wendy's. So, what was that about? Why did you make that decision after a pretty long and successful career on the client side? And then you bounce back to a prominent client. So, tell us about that.
Carl Loredo:
Yeah, no, I appreciate the question. It's funny you say that it's traditional. I feel like people look at my background and they go, "Wait, you have a BA in fine arts and theater and dance. Where you a dancer? How in the hell did you end up becoming a marketer?"
Jim Stengel:
Well, not totally traditional.
Carl Loredo:
But no, it's funny. I even bounce back to that. I went to college to ... I thought I was going to be a technical director and produce shows and whether that be moving, building-
Jim Stengel:
You're sort of doing that, you're sort of doing that.
Carl Loredo:
... physics, hydraulics, moving stuff on and off stage. The show must go on with lighting and sound, guess what I do every day? So, I had a bunch of friends in college that were economics majors that gave me a bunch of crap about it. As it turns out, I think it was probably the most applicable undergrad that you could have for what I do every day. But yeah, look, Kraft PepsiCo, those academy pieces, being able to move on to become the chief marketing officer at Craftmade, a couple things happened. Quite candidly, we went through a hostile takeover attempt at Craftmade. We were a publicly traded company on NASDAQ and one of our strategic competitors loved what we were doing and decided they wanted to own us.
Carl Loredo:
So, we fought it off. It was right in the middle of the giant housing downturn that was going on and that was a big piece of the Craftmade business, but the board and all of our shareholders believed in what we were doing. And so we fought it off and then they came back, I don't know, probably eight months later and said, "All right, if we're willing to do it the right way and give you a fair price, we still think this could make sense. Would you do it?" We said, "Yeah, that's our fiduciary duty, of course." And so that led to some opportunities to think about what would be next.
Carl Loredo:
And to be honest, the ad agency had always been a bit of a black box. You write a brief, you flip it over, at the time you faxed it over, nowadays, we can send it via email, but to be able to have that dialogue and ultimately understand what all that ... How do you really, and truly go engage with the consumer each and every day? Was just something I felt like was necessary as I built out my overall career. Because again, I'd had this ... as you think about a lot of the brands I worked on, the opportunity to be on the challenger side of a variety of businesses that may have been big brands, but struggling a bit or trying to find their way, but that engagement with the creatives to try to figure out how do you help them understand the business challenge and what you're trying to accomplish from a creative perspective, I just was really excited about the opportunity to go do that. So, that's how I ended up there.
Carl Loredo:
It was an unbelievable step in my career because ultimately ended up leading a creative team, probably 80, 90 people, the overall team that we had, across a bunch of different businesses and ran our multicultural practice at the marketing arm. So, I just feel like I have a lot of that to fall back on, particularly when we're having a tough conversation with the agency, or we're struggling to kind of get to the same place it's like, "All right, well, let me think about what their approach is here. Why might they be thinking about it this way?" But more than anything, just to work through the craft of the marketing side too.
Carl Loredo:
It was a great four year piece and ended up at Wendy's innocently enough by calling on one Kurt Kane to say, "Hey, we may have some opportunities to help you out as an agency." As things happen, one conversation led to another and a year or so later, I ended up coming to work here, but it's been a great journey and this is just such an unbelievable brand, Jim, I feel lucky every day to be here.
Jim Stengel:
Yeah, I agree.
Carl Loredo:
It's awesome. So, it's been a cool journey and ultimately to have landed here with all those experiences to help me continue to work with this team and find ways to grow, every day despite, I don't know, hurricane force winds that have been in our face for the last couple of years. So, we're looking forward to just a light breeze, or even a heavy breeze would be fine but if we could get out of the cat five, that would be nice.
Jim Stengel:
Yeah. You've served on the Spotify board of advisors for a while. How has that experience helped you in your day-to-day job as CMO?
Carl Loredo:
Yeah, it's been awesome. Sometimes we can get myopically focused on the challenges of our own brand. So, I've had a chance to sit on their board as well as the Twitter advisory board as well and I think, both to hear the challenges that they're facing as Spotify and Twitter, as well as the rest of my compadres that are a part of that discussion too. So, I think just to be able to have empathy around what's going on around us and then be able to help them with, as someone that's buying a product from you here are three or four things I would love to see and oh, by the way, how can we be better partners? It's just nice to be able to have a moment to have those kind of engagements as well.
Jim Stengel:
Carl, let's move to the creative brief. And my first question is you have teenage twins, a son and a daughter, what's been their best advice to you about Wendy's?
Carl Loredo:
That's a great question. Well, I tell you, they're always looking over my shoulder, looking at rough cuts and they've got a lot of advice about those. My daughter's number one piece of advice, which actually came to fruition, or is going to in about two weeks, was she had a chance to try the strawberry Frosty last summer and was like, "You better get that thing in market," and we have. So, we're excited to get that out Memorial Day, so that's probably the biggest piece.
Carl Loredo:
Gage has given me a lot of advice about gaming. And so, I admittedly am not the best at Madden. He still can beat me every time we sit down to play, but whether it be early learnings around Twitch, a lot of the engagement that's going on in the world of gaming, he's been a great advocate for young folks that are truly engaged in new platforms and those types of things. Then even as we have gotten into the metaverse, he was the first one to throw an Oculus on my face and say, "Hey, you got to check this out. What are you guys going to do in this world? Because you've gotten it going on with Twitch, but you got some work to do over here in the world of Oculus, so what's next?" Obviously we got to some great stuff with the likes of Meta around that, but those are the big ones from the twins.
Jim Stengel:
Good lesson in getting your kids involved in your work. I always did as well and it was always helpful for a lot of the same reasons you're talking about. Just keeping you in touch with what's emerging, what's trending, getting a much younger point of view. I think it's always important wherever we are in our career.
Carl Loredo:
Yeah, no doubt. Ainsley's definitely going to become a marketer. Gage still has his eyes set on being a major league catcher, but we'll see how it goes.
Jim Stengel:
Hey, keep going. That's great. Hey, I know you referenced this earlier, a lot of CMOs visit you for advice because you are so innovative and experimental and successful. What is your most frequently deliberate advice to them? Is it about understanding who they are and staying true to that? Or is it something else?
Carl Loredo:
Yeah, that's the biggest one. So, I won't go into it too much more since we've talked about it, but look, like I said, I feel like there's a lot for us to think about as leaders of these businesses around just organizational momentum. You asked about some of the people that have influenced me a lot. Todd Penegor has this statement, that man, it rang true with me, which was, "Hey, let's all be the leaders that we've been waiting for." You start getting into these roles and you're looking around for who's going to fix something that you're complaining about at dinner with my wife, Kelly. And she's like, "Hey, you're the guy, go fix it." I appreciate that perspective from Todd, where he said, "Look, you're the guy, you guys are the leadership team. If you've got something that you feel like we can do better-"
Jim Stengel:
And Todd is your CEO, of course, for our listeners.
Carl Loredo:
Yeah, "Time to look in the mirror, let's get going." So, those are similar things that as I've had conversations with my peer set, we talk about that a lot. And there's a lot of pressure in these roles to deliver every day, particularly for those of us that are publicly traded and you got to keep your eye on the ball for where you're going for the next three years. And the other piece then that we've talked a lot about, particularly in the last couple of years, are people. I'd be remiss if I suggested that we're in a business as usual situation and we've gotten pretty darn good at the likes of hybrid. We all worked in this building every day, two and a half years ago. That's not the case anymore, but our teams have been through a lot.
Carl Loredo:
I think there's been a lot of self-reflection, a lot of thinking about what's next. So, we got to find ways to build culture. The culture of Wendy's was always here in this building since Dave built it. And now we got to figure out other ways to do that. But that's been a big topic of conversation too, just to say, "Hey, we've got great folks, great teams, been through a lot. How do we make sure that they're making it through the other side as better human beings, better family members and better marketers? We don't get to have the benefit of standing around a water cooler or walking down a hall and saying, "Hey, do you see how we have that conversation with the agency? Well, you know what I said? Do you know what it really meant?" That type of stuff, some of that soft touch is really hard right now. So, we've been chatting about that quite a bit.
Jim Stengel:
What's your favorite pickup truck ever?
Carl Loredo:
Oh, I got to tell you, I'm a GMC guy, but my truck's a 2015 four door and Kurt always says, "You can get him out of Texas, but you can't take the Texas out of him." Here's a brand that's done some work over the last decade, because I would've been caught dead in a Ram 10 years ago. And for all my friends that are out there that are on the Ram team, just hear me say, it's probably my next truck because you guys have done-
Jim Stengel:
Oh wow.
Carl Loredo:
... an awesome job. And so I'm looking for a three quarter ton Ram, that's probably my next one.
Jim Stengel:
Who's been the greatest inspiration in your life? We'll end on that question.
Carl Loredo:
My grandfather worked for Boeing and actually worked for the NASA space organization. So, he was a big part of my life growing up with my parents being divorced and my stepdad passed away when I was relatively young. He was just always the guy that I could call for advice about life, advice around business. But I think he just gave me the benefit of seeing a guy who not only had a great professional career, who I believed did it the right way, but also was an example of a good family man too, and figured out a way to balance those things. So, for all the things that he did, the lessons he taught me along the way, I would say it was my grandfather.
Jim Stengel:
All right, well listen Carl, we'll have to have a strawberry Frosty soon.
Carl Loredo:
Yeah, let's do it.
Jim Stengel:
I'm looking forward to that. Carl, thank you.
Carl Loredo:
Appreciate it.
Jim Stengel:
That was my lively conversation with Carl Loredo. Three takeaways from this one for your brand business in life. The first takeaway is know who you are and ensure everyone in your organization, in your system, share that understanding and believe in that understanding. Wendy's does this about as well as anyone. When I asked Carl about how he does it, he said, "You walk into our boardroom and who we are is on the wall and we make every decision based on who we are."
Jim Stengel:
Second takeaway listening as a superpower. This company, and this culture just listens all the time. The consumer is part of every conversation. Because they listen so well they react to what's happening in culture and they immerse themselves in new platforms, new technologies and new ways to engage with their consumer.
Jim Stengel:
Third takeaway, the next best thing is sometimes more of the same successful thing. Carl talked an awful lot about personal focus and focus on his leadership team. He talked about how they developed these amazing French fries and when they talked about what do we move on to next? They said, "Let's not move on. Let's keep feeding the successful introduction of their improved French fries." So, as you're out there and you're managing your business day to day, think about what's working and maybe feed that more than moving on to quote the next best thing.
Jim Stengel:
That's it for this episode of The CMO Podcast. If you found this helpful and entertaining, I would be so grateful if you could share our show with your friends and I would be super happy if you subscribe, so you can be updated as we publish new episodes. If you really want to help, leave us a five star rating and a positive review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. The CMO Podcast is a Gallery Media Group original production.