Ep 16: Clicks 2 Bricks with Yum! Brands CMO Ken Muench
Relevance, ease, and distinctiveness – this is one of the pillars of growth for today’s guest, who refers to it as his RED system. Ken, is the CMO of Yum! Brands, which has more than 50,000 locations across KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and the most recent addition to the portfolio, Habit Burger. Ken has a unique role in working across each of these brands with more than 2000 marketers operating in 140 countries. All the numbers are big when it comes to Yum!, and Ken is the person who has to wrap his arms and his brain around all of it. If you're looking for a conversation about marketing strategy, with a heavy dose of marketing theory, then you've come to the right place. In this episode, Ken shares the size and scope of the Yum! Universe, how he repositioned the KFC brand in post-apartheid South Africa, and how physical availability, location, and speed translate directly into sales in the fast-food world. He also shares the impact of COVID on Yum! Brands, both positive and negative, and the effect of the recent social justice movement on Yum!’s individual brands, as well as his thoughts on creativity and technology, and the power of combining emotional power with distinctiveness and consistent messaging. Tune in today!
Key Points From This Episode:
Ken’s fun fact: He was born in Mexico City, and they called him the Undercover Mexican.
Ken explains his role at Yum! Brands, which he describes as a center of excellence.
Collider is an agency that Ken founded, which helped Taco Bell turnaround their business.
More business consultancy than a marketing agency, Collider doesn’t even get into creative.
Ken gives listeners an idea of the size and scope of the Yum! universe – it’s the largest restaurant company in the world.
Yum! adjusted to virtual communications long before COVID, since it’s such a large company.
Some of the ways that Ken works with individual brands to empower them in their marketing.
Ken tells a story about repositioning the KFC brand in South Africa when they were seeing negative sales in the country.
With 140 countries, most of Ken’s work is outside of the US, but it’s an integrated business.
Ken talks about the RED system he created, which is Relevance, Ease, and Distinctiveness.
In the fast-food world, physical availability, location, and speed translate directly into sales.
Yum! Brands has four pillars of growth, RED being one of them, which determines how each brand measures, and how they are trained.
The research that Ken did during COVID lockdown – from on the ground to digital ordering.
Ken talks about the global reckoning for brands to do the right thing that COVID initiated.
The effect of social justice and the outcry around George Floyd had on global brands.
Safety as a priority, as how companies treat their employees, became a focus for consumers.
From fast food to fast good – it can mean more ethical, green, involved in the community.
Ken has seen resilience among consumers since the outbreak of COVID and a growing need for comfort brands that evoke safety.
As a brand that has numerous big brands under its umbrella, there is internal competition.
Ken talks about maintaining consistency of alignment with employees through the franchisees.
Ken's thoughts on creative and technology – sometimes, people get distracted from the creative by focusing on technology.
Combining emotional power with distinctiveness, ownable, and consistent messaging.
The biggest shift Ken has seen in multiunit retail marketing is the sheer access to data.
Ken's reaction to Generation Z – it’s a good marker for where culture is right now.
Ken’s reaction to influencer marketing – sometimes dangerous and overblown, be careful.
Tweetables:
“My background is strategy, advertising strategy, and the people that we have hired, our anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, they’re people that really know the consumers, data experts, data scientists. We just have the skillset that allows us to go into a business. Take a good hard look at the marketplace, figure out where consumers are, where they're heading, why they’re engaging with a different brand, or not engaged with a KFC or Taco Bell, whatever the case is, and how to address that.” — @KenMuench [0:06:35]
“We set on a journey that lasted several years to understand what were the most successful and most impactful levers in marketing that we just had to pull, and separate sort of the good stuff from the BS, because there’s certainly a lot of BS out there. What we created was a system called RED, Relevance, Ease, and Distinctiveness, that we believe is 98% of what you need to do in marketing.” — @KenMuench [0:16:47]
“Suddenly, they start looking at companies, and say, “What are you doing with your employees? How responsible are you? Are you doing the right thing? Are you doing the wrong thing?” And this massive bit of attention is focused on the companies. Brands that screwed it up, and brands that were predatory, or brands that didn't seem to care, they paid a huge price.” — @KenMuench [0:23:00]
“I think, in some cases, people have been so fascinated by what technology can or can’t offer that they’ve forgot about the bigger branding issue.” — @KenMuench [0:35:30]
“You tend to want to like reinvent the wheel every time you do something, and that's just so damaging to a brand. Instead, if what you're looking for is a formula, that's very breakthrough, but that you can repeat over and over and over. Those distinctive brand assets that you hit over and over and over, that's where the magic happens.” — @KenMuench [0:39:00]