How Chili’s used creativity, culture and customer experience to create one of the greatest turnaround success stories - George Felix

12:07Uncensored CMO Host:in any of the stops I've been, I think having that history, you know, there's a shorthand there, you know, when you've worked with someone and you've been in the trenches with them that I really appreciate. But also blending, you know, the people I've worked with with new talent that I, you know, that I'm just getting to know has been a real recipe for our success.

12:26George Felix:Now, a little sidebar, because you kind of mentioned it earlier, you did the turnaround on Old Spice, didn't you? Back in your career. Now, I think everyone listening will know this incredibly well-known campaign, The Man You Wish Your Man Smelt Like, which was us. Just quickly explain the insight behind that and how that performed.

12:45Uncensored CMO Host:It was unbelievable. So I was an assistant brand manager, so I'd just come out of business school. I had interned on Old Spice the previous summer, so coming in, and I was the ABM working on body wash, which was not doing well. And so huge competitive launch coming in from Unilever. It was Dove for Men. So this massively successful women's brand was going to be launching a men's brand. And so we were basically trying to come up with a campaign. P &G calls it ProFence, a proactive defense, a campaign to counteract this competitive launch. And so the insight, we thought, yeah, this is where having great agency partners is important.

13:25Uncensored CMO Host:The brand guys thought, oh, we know it. Like, if you have to say it's for men, it's not for men. That's got to be the angle, right? We're going to deposition this women's brand coming into the men's category. Our agency, much smarter than us, they looked at the brief and they latched onto one stat that could have been a throwaway on the brief. But it was that 60 % of men's body wash is purchased by a woman. That could be a mom, a wife, a girlfriend. And so their insight was, okay, if this is your enemy, this is who you're going against, that's already a lot of those 60%. A lot of those women are probably already buying Dove for themselves.

14:00Uncensored CMO Host:They're going to make it very easy for them to buy Dove for their guys. we for the first time as Old Spice need to talk to both men and women and that unlocked an entirely different direction for that that particular commercial and so if you recall in that commercial the first line out that he says is hello ladies right which is completely different Old Spice never talked to women before and so you know the man your man could smell like so it was intentionally talking to women but also he was a guy that guys thought was cool yeah and so it

14:31George Felix:Casting was very good in that sense.

14:33Uncensored CMO Host:And yeah, Isaiah Mustafa was incredible. He's had an amazing career since then. But threading that needle of both a guy that women would love and a guy that guys also loved, the humor and all of that stuff, it was just incredible work from Widen and Kennedy, and it was just fun to be a part of.

14:50George Felix:There's a great example of the element of surprise. It was totally unexpected for Old Spice to do that. Yeah. Very, very funny, and it landed the point brilliantly for both audiences in a very clever way. You didn't have to choose between the audience. Men loved it. Women loved it.

15:03Uncensored CMO Host:Well, and it's funny, you know, hindsight's always 20-20. So if you show that ad to people now, they're like, oh, my gosh, you must have known right away that thing was going to be amazing. Quite the opposite. We got the rough cut and it was like crickets in the room.

15:15George Felix:Oh, was it?

15:16Uncensored CMO Host:Yeah. Like, you know, our agency, they were in Portland and we were in Cincinnati. And like they had to like come back on the phone and be like, hey, is everything OK? We're like, oh, hang on, hang on. And we didn't know. like, you know, he was talking really fast and there's all this stuff going on. And we were like, I don't know if this is like, can we slow it down? Can we do all these other things? And we actually went, um, my brand manager is a guy named James Moorhead. He took me and the other ABMs out to a bar that night and we split into two of us went to one corner and two of us went to the other.

15:46Uncensored CMO Host:And we just bought people drinks. And one, one group was men, one group was women. And we said we were from a market research firm and we just watched them. We bought them a beer if they, if they'd you know watch the commercial and we were watching them watch the commercial love that and then and then uh we reconvened at the end of the night and we were like god the guys all loved it they were laughing at this part they loved this line the women loved him they couldn't stop talking about you know and so then it gave us the the confidence to say okay we weren't crazy like you know let's not overthink this we got something here and go so i think i think the moment i i

16:19George Felix:thought wow that has got into the kind of hall of fame was that if you remember the tide ad on the Superbowl a few years ago where they ripped you off, didn't they? They sure did.

16:28Uncensored CMO Host:Now that's another PNG brand. So they had the advantage I'm sure of like collaborating with Old Spice on that. But, uh, but yeah, I mean that was, and that was in the early days. I mean, this, this really dates me, but we had just launched our Facebook page, like the Old Spice Facebook page, like months before that, I think we launched the YouTube channel with that ad. So like it was at a time when like virality was very different than what we know it to be now. And it was one of the first, I think, ads that truly did go viral in the social media age and that pass around. Because even to this day, I think people, it gets covered in advertising publications as one of the best Super Bowl ads.

17:07Uncensored CMO Host:It actually never ran on the Super Bowl because we really couldn't afford it. Old Spice is a pretty small brand. But it got passed around so much that weekend on Facebook and other platforms that by Monday morning, people, when they were talking about what ads they loved, it just kind of seeped into. That's genius. Yeah, so.

17:25George Felix:You won the Super Bowl without even being on the Super Bowl. Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's amazing. I love the fact you went down the pub and got people to kind of rate it. I think that's a really good example of the importance of being close to customers.

17:37Uncensored CMO Host:I think so. Like, you know, I think sometimes we, as marketers, like, you forget that essentially what we're trying to do, we're trying to evoke a response, an emotion, and, you know, There's going to be all these ways to measure things and test things and say, should I show the product for this many seconds here or when should I put it in? But at the end of the day, you need people to actually stop and take notice of it. And so that's kind of the rawest way to measure that.

18:03George Felix:Now, I heard you say a phrase the other day, which I really like, which was sales overnight, brand over time. And you talked about how you kind of raised the investment for Chili's. How do you sell that into the organizer? How do you get the organization alongside? So I think one thing that almost everyone listening to this will know to be true is that every year marketers are having to cut the budgets back. They're going to do more with less. You know, people look on with envy at what you've managed to achieve here. What's the secret to building a good case for brand investment?

18:30Uncensored CMO Host:Well, I think starting that framework, and it's something I learned previously when I was working at Yum, our CEO, Greg Creed, talked about that all the time, that that's a marketer's job and you have to be doing both. Right. I think that's the, that's the trick, right? You can't really say, you know, don't worry, the sales are going to come in a couple of years, right? Like that, that's not going to work. But you also can't be so short, short minded, you know, or so focused on short term sales that you jeopardize the brand in the long term. So I think, you know, using that as a starting point was helpful for the organization to know that we are going to be doing a mix of things.

19:07Uncensored CMO Host:And some of these things absolutely have to be driving short, you know, sales overnight. And in our business, that is foot traffic into our restaurants and that is top line sales. Right. And we control the menu merchandising, too. So it's like once we get them in the restaurant, how do we show them all the stuff we're most proud of and the stuff that, you know, we know they're going to have a great experience on. And so that is like full stop. That is our job. Right. And I think sometimes marketers complicate or muddy the conversation by not starting there. Right. If you start with some of the other, you know, other softer marketing metrics or things like that, the conversation tends to go sideways.

19:46Uncensored CMO Host:And so I think just being very clear and owning that is our job at the end of the day, like we are responsible for that really inspires accountability and confidence. with my cross-functionals, whether it's my CFO, my CEO, COO, whoever it is. But I think also then explaining like, hey, we are also going to be investing in things because if we can build this brand and we can change the way people feel about Chili's in the long term, that is going to be a multiplier effect on top of that. And thankfully, I have a leadership team that I sit on that is very supportive of that. And a lot of them have long histories at Chili's.

20:25Uncensored CMO Host:And so they remember when Chili's was that brand, right? They remember the heyday of this brand. And so they know the power. When we are a brand that's in the cultural zeitgeist and we are a brand that is beloved like that, they know what happens. And so we're not going to get back to that by just talking about a 1099 price point all the time. We're going to have to do things that might not show you a sales return tomorrow. but it changes the way people think about our brand. And so that was really the starting point of it. And both our leadership team and our board were very supportive. Now, again, like I said, we had to take one, you know, we didn't go from 30 million to 100 million overnight.

21:06Uncensored CMO Host:You know, we did one campaign to show, can we drive people into our restaurants? Can we drive the sales lifts? And as we saw that, then we got the confidence to say, okay, let's continue this investment.

21:17George Felix:You just touched on something that I think most marketers forget, which is the power of not necessarily nostalgia, but using what the brand was in the past to help shape what it will be in the future.

21:28Uncensored CMO Host:Yeah.

21:29George Felix:Because so many brand managers want to change everything, right? For sure, yeah. But actually, I quite respect how you're using the things that you're famous for in the past.

21:39Uncensored CMO Host:Yeah, and honestly, it's somewhat a function of my career path. I just, I didn't like intend it to be this way, but I've worked on a bunch of heritage brands, right? Old Spice, KFC, Pizza Hut, Chili's. And so I think, you know, now having done this several times, like this idea of reviving legacy brands is really fascinating to me. I think it's really interesting. And as a marketer, when you think about what brands mean to people, I think legacy brands are a really fun challenge because like that's the whole thing, right? Like the whole like idea of a brand is like something that gives you irrational like loyalty to it or love for something, right?

22:18Uncensored CMO Host:I used to, I remember, I mentioned it before, Greg Creed, our CEO at Yum, he was like, why are brands important? He's like, who has a watch in the room? And everyone would raise their hand. And he's like, well, why do you have the watch you have? Because you can get a watch that tells the time for 10 bucks, right? But why did you pay$100 for yours or$200 for yours or whatever? It's because of a brand, right? Like the function of that thing is telling time, but the brand aspect of it and And the feeling you have when you wear it or the look or whatever it is makes you feel differently. And so I think, you know, we call, I call this exercise digging through the attic.

22:57Uncensored CMO Host:That first part when you get on a brand like this and digging through the attic to find, like, what was the, what are all those things that, like, are absolutely core to this brand that when it was at its best made it special, made it unique. And finding those things. And, like, my attic at home, there are things in there that I would, like, never want to part ways with. And there are other things I'm like, oh, my gosh, why did I hang on to this? Right. And we can leave those behind. But, you know, I'm kind of old school in the sense of P &G trained that, like, you have to start with your brand on a page and you have to define that.

23:30Uncensored CMO Host:And I think finding those things that made the brand special in the past are part of the distinctive elements that you want to bring forward. Now, the trick is how do you bring them forward in a way that isn't just looking backwards, but it's relevant today?

23:45George Felix:I totally agree. I worked on a brand called LucasAid in the UK, which is the equivalent of Gatorade. Okay. Imagine Gatorade. It'd be the equivalent there. And we had this big brand relaunch to go through because of sugar tax. And we went back in the archives for 80 years. And we discovered that the reason the brand existed was that doctors were noticing that kids were dying in surgery. They didn't have enough energy to recover.

24:07Uncensored CMO Host:Okay.

24:07George Felix:And they invented this glucose mix to give to the kids to basically get the body to kind of, you know, recover more quickly. And they saw this massive increase in kids surviving surgery. I mean, I was like, what a story is that?

24:21Uncensored CMO Host:I did not think you were going there. No, I know. Exactly.

24:24George Felix:Neither did I. We just went to the archives. And we ended up this positioning, energy beats everything. In that actually energy is the source of what you overcome any challenge in your life. And it was just like, wow, we've just uncovered this amazing insight. amazing insight, but it required us going through the archives in the factory and in a dusty room that everyone had forgotten about sort of thing. Totally. So I'm with you on this. I think, you know, because the turnover of marketers and, you know, we just lose that legacy, don't we? Yeah. That brands have.

24:54Uncensored CMO Host:I also think, you know, we run into the trap of like, well, if we're trying to appeal to a younger audience, then we can't go back to, we can't go back to the past. It has to be new or we have to chase a new trend. And I think there's, there's like, Like with brands that have histories like that, there's always something that is timeless. I just believe that. Otherwise, the brands wouldn't be what they were, right? And it's really like that to me is the fun part of like how do you find that thing and then, you know, spin it and reposition it so that, you know, in 2026, it's just as true as it was in the 90s.

25:28George Felix:And also you're tapping into some latent awareness of the brand and latent emotion that's already there. You're just uncovering it as well. Yeah. Yeah.

25:35Uncensored CMO Host:Yeah, like walking away from that. Exactly. Now you've got to build everything from scratch or you can actually tap into it. Totally agree.

25:43George Felix:One of my colleagues, actually, Orlando, who wrote a book on advertising and how it works, actually nostalgia and tapping into things from the past are one of the most emotive, he would call them right-brained features that you can possibly use as a brand.

25:56Uncensored CMO Host:Yeah. So you're crazy not to use them if you've got them. Totally agree.

25:59George Felix:Now, talking about advertising, I need to check something with you because I think I heard this, right? that you managed to pitch an idea to Mischief, your creative agency, and they bought it, which I just thought was amazing. Is this true? You pitched an idea to Mischief and they made the ad for you.

26:17Uncensored CMO Host:Okay, this is true. I just want to also be clear, that's the only time this has ever happened. So I don't want anyone to get any misconceptions that I'm like a big idea guy or creative. So this was right really early when I started here. It was in that process of how are we going to get back on to be an advertiser? How are we going to go talk about this brand? And we have this thing called the three for me. You basically get a bottomless drink, our bottomless chips and salsa, you know, a nearly half pound burger and fries for 1099. But there's other options you can you can kind of pick you can get different starters and get different entrees.

26:54Uncensored CMO Host:And so part of it, we're going to we're going to go on with very kind of traditional food focused advertising that kind of explains what the offer is and all that. But we also, in a sense, wanted to do a bit more brand building and start coming back with a brand voice that we thought had been missing from Chili's. And so at Chili's, we take our food very seriously. We don't take ourselves very seriously. So it was like, how do we start to bring some of that sense of humor and voice back to the brand? And so I was talking to my team. And, you know, I'm a kid that, you know, I love 90s music, you know, something that, you know, a lot of nostalgia for me.

27:28Uncensored CMO Host:And I was trying to, like, figure out, like, how do we explain this meal? because it's a little complex. You've got to make some choices and all of that. One night I woke up and I, for some reason, thought of the old Brian McKnight song. And he counts. He counts like one, two, three. He goes all the way to five. But I was thinking, wow, it's kind of like we need to figure out something like that where it's like we need to tell people there's steps to this thing. You've got to pick your drink. You've got to pick your appetizer. You've got to pick your entree and all of these things. things and so I just kind of like I was using it with my team as like hey this might not be the right idea but it's like hey what if we had Brian McKnight come back and sing his song but we changed the words so he was explaining how to order a three for me and I just kind of kept using that as like we need to find that idea and then I called uh I called up Mischief uh who I'd worked with at tinder when I was the CMO at tinder prior so I knew you know Greg and Carrie and the whole team there.

28:25Uncensored CMO Host:And I was like, Hey, I think, you know, I think we're ready to like actually start doing something again. If you guys are, you know, game to, to jump in with us on this. And, uh, and I gave, I gave them this idea, not saying this was the idea, but just like, this is kind of like a, you know, we want something like that. And, uh, God, they were, they were like, you know what? I think that's just the idea. I think we just try and do that. And, uh, so it's like the one time in my career but i can i can claim that and and those guys are so good gravely they took you know a very shell of an idea and they made it um so fun and and it was a great first step for us in this journey to to get chili's back you know back into the advertising game well i dug i dug out the

29:06George Felix:scores on this one actually on the system on database as well which you'll be very very very pleased to hear so star rating out of five 4.8 so very very so very very emotional it creates a lot of happiness, a lot of surprise as well, as you expect. What I think is a textbook as well, was that within the first two seconds, 80 % of the audience knew exactly who they were watching. They knew it was a Chili's advert as well. And that's very hard to do. So the fact that you opened in the restaurant as well was brilliant. And I dug into the qualitative feedback as well. And this, I thought, was really helpful given what you said.

29:43George Felix:The number one reason that people gave for the emotion they felt was the three for 10. And I was thinking, you know, we tend to think of price as a rational thing. But actually what you made, you made the deal an emotional thing. That's why they responded. Cause I was like, oh wow, I can't believe it's, you know, three for 10, 10, 10, 10, I should say. And then it does a lot of things that I think we often forget. So it's, you know, the humor's there, the music's there, the celebrity's there. All those things are brilliant ways of kind of creating emotion.

30:12Uncensored CMO Host:Yeah, I love that. I love the note on the, on the, on the three for 1099 being, you know, driving the emotional connection. I think that's what we've, we've tried to do is take things that are very functional and, and also find like the insight that, that helps drive more of an emotional connection. So very fun, but the mischief, the mischief team.

30:30George Felix:Well, huge credit to mischief for not binning the idea on, on, you know, on first pitch. They are great.

30:36Uncensored CMO Host:Jeff, you know, the strat, Jeff McCrory is like the best, you know, on the strategy side. So I'll, I'll take the one, but they've got so many more, so many more.

30:47George Felix:Well, sticking with Mischief, I had dinner with Greg on Monday, and he just made a little comment. He said, I wish every client was like George, which I thought was lovely. You obviously have a great connection. You worked together at Tinder, I think, didn't you as well?

31:01Uncensored CMO Host:We did, yeah. I worked with Mischief. I brought them on at Tinder, and then they also do work for us here.

31:06George Felix:So what's been the secret to establishing such a good working relationship?

31:11Uncensored CMO Host:I will say like, I've been very fortunate. Um, if you go all the way back to when I was an intern at Old Spice or an, or an ABM there, uh, I worked with, uh, I got to work with widening Kennedy in Portland and I was kind of spoiled to be honest with you, like for that to be your first, like exposure to an ad agency. I realized now at the time I didn't know any different, but I realized now was, was pretty rare. And, uh, I credit a lot of it to, to the people I worked with there that taught, you know, Wyden worked with Old Spice very differently than the other creative agencies at Procter & Gamble worked with their brands.

31:48Uncensored CMO Host:And what I appreciated about it is that they, they had a very, when you work with a great creative agency, they, they should have a very strong opinion on things. And, and they, they wanted to understand our business at a deeper level. Um, but what it taught me was that when you're, when you're working with, with agencies like that, you have to let them do their thing. Like I, like you're the expert at certain things and you're bringing them on because you want their outside perspective on how to solve your business problems. And I think what I've seen too often happen is that you kind of suffocate the creativity with an agency, right?

32:24Uncensored CMO Host:And you, you put on too many mandatories or you, you tweak an idea to death that started off great, but you, you kind of water it down. And I think with, I just learned, and it wasn't me, I was an assistant brain manager, but just watching the way that my brain manager worked with them, or even at that point, Kevin was our marketing director, you could see there's a certain point where you pull back. There are certain things you have to push for, but you also need to pull back and be willing to give and take some chances with them to get to bigger ideas. And so that experience kind of gave me belief that creativity could solve business problems.

33:00Uncensored CMO Host:And if you work with the right people and you work with great creative agencies and you let them do their thing, more often than not, you're going to get better output. And so I've tried to carry that through my career, and it's no different now with Mischief. We work with another group called It's Advertising Time. And I think we have an inherent trust of, you know, here's what we need to accomplish here, the mandatories that we're going to hold very dear to us. But we're going to leave you enough room to have that creative freedom to do what we think is breakthrough work. And I think sometimes I've seen it a lot.

33:37Uncensored CMO Host:I think sometimes clients can't help themselves but kind of get in the way.

33:41George Felix:Totally agree. Your trust point is so spot on. And you sometimes need to know when to get yourself out of the way.

33:49Uncensored CMO Host:Sure.

33:50George Felix:And just give them the freedom. I think the best work I've ever been involved in has had the least input from me. And the work where I've been intimately involved because it's politically sensitive or there's a lot riding on it, and then you end up being safe.

34:03Uncensored CMO Host:Yeah.

34:03George Felix:And the work suffers. The other interesting thing, actually, is the tenure of your relationship as well. We did some work actually when I was at System 1 called the compound creativity. And it was all about how creativity compounds over time. It's a difference between campaigns that run a long time versus a short time. The difference gets bigger. But there was an insight in there as well, which was that those that change their agency regularly effectively reset the creative. And those that had a consistent relationship with their agency over time saw this big gap emerge between them and everyone else.

34:37George Felix:So there's something about the compounding effect of relationships that you have with people as well as the work.

34:43Uncensored CMO Host:Yeah. And I mean, I would agree with that from my personal experience, you know, without the without having the data. But, you know, I'm, you know, Widen and Kennedy, I think, still works on Old Spice. But I mean that when you when you looked at, you know, whether I was there or, you know, any of my other brands, I think that like there's there's a lot that you build up. One is just knowledge of of the people. You build a trust amongst the people. Certainly, there are some people that come in and out. But when the core players are together for a longer period of time, you build some trust there.

35:17Uncensored CMO Host:I think the understanding of the business is very important. And the best agencies that I've worked with are very curious. They want to know the sales numbers. They want to go spend time in a restaurant or talk to a franchisee or whatever it is. Right. So I think anytime, you know, if you if you change, then you're resetting all that and you're starting from zero again. You got to relearn. So I think a lot of that makes sense. But and then and then I think the biggest thing I think is when you get into a groove with with an agency or agencies that really understands the voice, the tone and creative like, man, that is like you save so much time and you start to get the conversations you have are very different.

36:01Uncensored CMO Host:It's less about, you know, like you're not debating the same things that you are in those newer relationships. You're more just like building on each other and figuring out how do we make this thing bigger. And I feel like we're really fortunate. You know, those two groups, It's Advertising Time and Mischief, have been on Chili's basically the entire time I've been here. And the shorthand we have now is really good. And I think, you know, the work shows in the work.

36:27George Felix:I love that. And almost when you're in that situation, you don't, the ideas just come. Exactly. You don't have to wait for a brief. It's just like, we've got an idea. That's exactly right. Because you just know.

36:38Uncensored CMO Host:Yeah, it's like they know. They're like, you know, I mean, they come. One of the things I love is all of our agency partners come. Every year we do a general manager's conference. So every restaurant has a general manager that runs that restaurant. So we have over 1 ,100 restaurants in the United States. And so once a year we get all 1 ,100 of them together for a week. and we come together and it's a huge celebration, big culture driver. We celebrate the work they're doing, all of those things. And we bring our agencies to that because we want them to feel, one, we want them to feel they're a part of our team, but two, we want them to feel the culture.

37:12Uncensored CMO Host:We want them to hear and interact with our general managers and, you know, coming out of that. Now our agencies are getting involved in actually putting that conference on. They're like, we have creative ideas for that. Like they're not even, no end consumers ever going to see it, But they're like, if that gets our general managers fired up, let's go do it, right? And so, like, we're, you know, and there have been ideas that come from that of, like, okay, now we understand this better, you know, and now we design all of our team member uniforms and all of those, like, the T-shirts and all that stuff.

37:41Uncensored CMO Host:And so, like, the definition of marketing, I think, has expanded here a bit more than, you know, where I've been in the past. And I think it's because the people that are working on it, whether it's my team internally or agencies, are completely bought in.

37:54George Felix:Well, I like the idea of applying the same creative craft to your internal audience as you do the external audience. Because imagine if you fire up the internal audience to the same extent, right? Right. That's going to pay back many times.

38:05Uncensored CMO Host:Well, and it's something I've learned in this role is, you know, we talk, you know, and I've heard you talk to many CMOs about, you know, effectiveness and what are the things we can do to drive better effectiveness. And I think there's all these things we can do, right? The marketing sciences, I'm a big fan of that. And I try to apply that. But honestly, the thing that's driven the best marketing ROI I've ever seen is a great experience, right, in our restaurants. There's nothing, like, that can have a bigger impact on that.

38:33George Felix:Oh, you touched on something. So I'm just doing some new research for Cannes this year. Okay. Which is all about the startling power of surprise. Okay. So we did, Adam Morgan and I did The Extraordinary Cost of Diet a couple years ago. And we're coming back with the answer now. So, you know, if the problem is advertising is too dull, what's the answer? And we've really locked in on the power of surprise. But what's really interesting about it is that surprise is based on your, it's called this reward prediction error. But basically, our brains are prediction machines. So we anticipate an experience.

39:08George Felix:And surprise is the variance to what I anticipate experiences. So if you exceed 100%. So advertising builds an expectation of an experience. the difference to the expectation and the in-outlet experience is where the surprise comes. And going back to System 1 database, we looked at every reason on the database that any consumer is given for being surprised. And the outliers by far are the experience of the brand compared to the promise, both negative and positive. So if you have a really high expectation of a brand that it under delivers, you get this extremely negative surprise and the reverse happens.

39:44George Felix:So you just think tying together consumer experience, customer experience rather, with the brand promise is where the biggest surprise can happen.

39:52Uncensored CMO Host:I love that. And I think it's been really the secret sauce of this whole turnaround is I think some people think it's been marketing led. And I think marketing has been a big part of it. But honestly, I would say it's really been operations led. And it starts with our CEO and our COO and all of us on the leadership team. We get into restaurants. Like we are in restaurants. We do listening sessions with our team members all the time. And before we turned on advertising, we were on a mission to, you know, how do we better staff our restaurants? How do we better maintain our restaurants? How do we make it simpler?

40:26Uncensored CMO Host:You know, if I own the menu and I want someone to deliver, we call ourselves chili heads here. If I want them to deliver chili head hospitality, right, which is like exceed your expectations when you come into a Chili's. but our menu is so complex that, you know, you're worried about, you know, all these different things that you don't make all the time. And, and, and I, I've got you doing all these processes that aren't adding value to the guests. It's not really fair for me to ask you to do that. So we've cut 25 % of our menu over the last four years. We've simplified all these things in our, we call it our heart of house, our kitchens, um, where, you know, processes that weren't really value adds for the team member or the guest, you know, our technology works better.

41:05Uncensored CMO Host:We've done all these things and And we're staffing our restaurants more. So now, hopefully, when you go to Chili's, there's someone at the door that opens the door for you and says, hi, welcome to Chili's. And gets you to your table really fast. And the chips hit your table fast. And you got a cold margarita really soon. And all these things. And now our team members can focus on taking care of the guests, which is what they show up to work wanting to do anyway. And so we've invested a lot more money in that side of the world than we have in marketing. and I'm completely supportive of it because as a leadership team, when we talk about where we want to invest, sure, I want to increase our marketing spend year over year, but there's a certain point where I'm saying, I think we're okay with this much because I'd rather put the investment in if we can get more bussers that are cleaning tables faster and we can get more people into Chili's or more bartenders so we can get more drinks out faster.

41:56Uncensored CMO Host:So I think this idea of really understanding the full, the full business and the impact that the operations and the experience can have to make your marketing better is huge. Um, we have this mantra here that marketing brings the guests in and operations brings the guests back. And like that to me, you know, is a, it shows the partnership we have of like the job we have to do. Once we get them in the door, we pass the baton to our team members and they're doing an amazing job of serving great food and it's a fun atmosphere. it's lively and they have a good time. And that's really, you know, because I think we've all had examples probably where we had, you know, what we thought was good marketing.

42:38Uncensored CMO Host:You drive trial, the experience, it's that negative surprise, like you said, you're not coming back, right?

42:45George Felix:Totally. Well, I've got some good feedback for you. So producer James and I were at Chili's Gate by the Gate D15 in Miami Airport yesterday. So we thought, you know, we're on our way to see you. We're going to test everything. Yeah, yeah. And a big shout out to Jesse, our server. Okay. Did a great job. Good job, Jesse. But what was interesting is that the menu is even tighter at the airport.

43:08Uncensored CMO Host:It is.

43:09George Felix:Now, rather than that be a disappointment, what did Jesse say to us? He said, we care so much that you don't miss your plane that we want to make sure that everything is on the table in 10 minutes. That's great. So he'd taken a negative, which was, oh, we can't get the quesadillas or whatever, and turned it into a positive to say, we only do what we can make in 10 minutes so we don't make you late. and leave you disappointed.

43:28Uncensored CMO Host:There you go. Which is a great example. There you go.

43:30George Felix:Yeah.

43:30Uncensored CMO Host:Love it. Love it. All right. Well, I hope it was a good experience and we'll have to get you to one of our non-airport locations soon, hopefully. And yeah, it's great.

43:39George Felix:Well, James got me doing the TikTok craze, which is the mozzarella stick. Would you call it? Yeah, the cheese pull. The cheese pull, right? I failed the cheese pull dismally, but James did a much better job of this. Okay, okay. I think he's going to go and give you, he's bringing the evidence here.

43:55Uncensored CMO Host:Let's see. You need to be the judge of this.

44:02George Felix:promising start it fails about and then yeah unfortunately not bad i'm gonna give that one

44:07Uncensored CMO Host:like uh let's see out of 10 a scale of one to 10 i'm gonna give that one a six i can't i'll tell

44:14George Felix:you that not bad not bad that's my first time i'm not gonna anticipate a million views on tiktok

44:18Uncensored CMO Host:from this but uh but but pretty good have you counted how many views there are of cheese balls It's, uh, it's, uh, I don't have the current count. It's literally like hundreds of millions though. It's, it's insane. If you would have told me like four years ago that the triple dipper or fried mozzarella was going to be a key to like, you know, this brand turnaround, I would have told you you're crazy. But, uh, I think it's another good lesson for marketers. Like sometimes the thing that you're, you're talking about and you're like, Hey, I want you to go buy this. your guests sometimes will tell you they actually love something else and they find something else really fun about your brand.

44:57Uncensored CMO Host:And I think if you're willing to go with that and then, you know, try and figure out how you can, you can bring that more, more to light, then there's a huge opportunity there. So that was something that really started organically from our, you know, our fans. And, and now we, you know, a few years later, the triple dipper makes up, I think 17 % of our total sales.

45:18George Felix:Wow.

45:18Uncensored CMO Host:But it's an item that's been on our menu for decades, right? None of it was new. It was just, I think it really resonates with TikTok culture. It resonates with how younger people want to eat with variety and dipping and just the experiential nature of that item. And it's kind of just taken on a life of its own.

45:34George Felix:I wonder if there's a world record for this.

45:38Uncensored CMO Host:We need to, you know, it's a good idea. We need to probably formalize this and determine who has the best cheese ball.

45:44George Felix:Yeah, you need to get evidence how far you pulled the cheese. That's amazing. Well, this is a really important point, isn't it, in terms of cultural relevance. So what are the top ways a brand can create cultural relevance?

45:57Uncensored CMO Host:I mean, I'll say just from my experience on the brands I've worked on, I think it first starts with setting the conditions and the environment on your teams that this is something you're going to do and you're going to prioritize and you're going to make important.

46:11George Felix:because what I hear from a lot of, you know, you know, friends and colleagues in the industry or

46:15Uncensored CMO Host:people is that, you know, it's almost a, it's too much of an uphill battle. And so when the, when that moment comes and they want to move fast, they don't have that alignment and that agreement that this is something that's important. And so what I try to do with my team is, you know, one, just stress the importance that we, like, that is a goal of ours. We want to be a brand and culture. We want to be a brand that is in that, in the cultural zeitgeist and talked about and popping up on, you know, SNL or late night or, you know, people saying, did you see what Chili's just did? And in order to do that, you have to make it a safe place for people to take swings and do that.

46:49Uncensored CMO Host:You have to set aside budget. You know, that's the reality of it too, right? Like if you don't set aside any money for it, but you say, I want to be a brand and culture, well, how's that going to work? Right? So we, we set aside, you know, money for what we call culture pops. We don't really know what they're going to be. Some, some of them going into the year, we have some rough ideas, but a lot of them are kind of still to be determined. And then, uh, some of them are low spend and, and, and, you know, they're just social swings. Others might be bigger spend. We might get a celebrity or something like that.

47:18Uncensored CMO Host:But the other thing I would say is, is you got to take a lot of swings. Um, I think sometimes brands that try to do this and they're like, this is the one thing we're going to do this year. Well, guess what? Like, yeah, there's so much pressure on it. Like we were talking about before, like, I'm probably going to get too involved. I'm probably going to water down the idea. And, you know, we're going to kind of suffocate that one and it's not going to, it's not going to go. Whereas I think if you take a ton of swings, you're going to miss a bunch, which is fine. Again, that has to be okay too, right?

47:47Uncensored CMO Host:You have to like create that environment where if you try something and nothing happens, that's okay. You're going to learn from it and move on. But the more swings you take, the odds of hitting a big one are going to be, you know, much higher. And so I think like, to me, a lot of this, at least from my seat is creating a culture and an environment that enables the teams and agencies to actually go do that. And then you leave it to the experts to go.

48:09George Felix:It's such a good point that with social media, isn't it? Because like you, you work really hard on an idea that's super polished and then nothing happens. And then something that you spent no time at all is very rough. Yeah. Suddenly takes off. You just don't know. It's very unpredictable, isn't it? Totally.

48:25Uncensored CMO Host:Like you really, there's, I mean, I could go on and on about ideas that I thought were amazing

48:30George Felix:that I was like, ah, this is going to be a big one.

48:32Uncensored CMO Host:And then something like the cheese pole, which I would have never guessed, has now turned into this crazy thing. So I think you just got to be willing to kind of go with it. And when something takes off, like how fast can you move? And does your team feel empowered to go move that fast?

48:48George Felix:Now, one idea I saw that I absolutely loved, because it really involves your distinctive assets and it's a good partnership, is what you did with Tocova's. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And for anyone who doesn't know what they are, because I don't know what they are as well, we're talking cowboy boots.

49:03Uncensored CMO Host:Cowboy boots. Yeah, they are a but not just any cowboy boots. I mean, they are a like to covis is just an amazing brand. They are a Western lifestyle brand. I think Western lifestyle cowboy boots, cowboy hats, all of that culture. I mean, we live here in Dallas, so it's we're closer to it, but it's becoming a bigger thing. I think you saw it with Beyonce and her, you know, her whole tour and all that. And so Tecovas is a, like a rocket ship brand, they are going to be just absolutely huge. And so as we, this is another idea from mischief. They brought us and we do these big briefs, we call it branded everything briefs where it's open, you know, just, you know, hey, celebrate things about Chili's like no product tied to it, just bring us a ton of ideas.

49:48Uncensored CMO Host:And one of the ideas they brought us was called booth boots. And so part of an iconic Chili's experience is sitting in a booth. It's kind of this like maroonish colored, you know, kind of leathery booth. And so the idea was to take the material from a Chili's booth and make, you know, amazingly great handcrafted cowboy boots. And so we reached out to Tecovas. They're amazing partners, totally game. And so we took some old – they took our material. they have very high standards they're like well we're not going to make boots that don't meet our standards so thankfully our booth materials are apparently very high quality so pass the test with tecovas that's good yeah and so and then we used this design that we saw from an old picture at chile's that our founder it was like a kind of a chili pepper vine design that was on one of his shirts from like the archives and they created this incredible design so we made boots and a belt all out of the Chili's booth material.

50:50They sold out in, I think, under two minutes.

50:53George Felix:That's insane. It was remarkable. Can you reverse the collab and get Tecova's to brand your booths?

50:58Uncensored CMO Host:That's a pretty good idea. Okay, after this, I'm going to call Krista, see what she says. Because that would be great.

51:05George Felix:I mean, it's an up-and-coming brand. It's premium. Great signaling would be great, wouldn't it?

51:10Uncensored CMO Host:Yeah, but it was awesome. And like I said, for a brand like Tecova's, I think they saw the value. We're both Texas brands. And they saw the value of appealing to the Chili's audience the same way we did with them. They were absolutely awesome. Amazing.

51:23George Felix:I did a CMO survey recently, which was not surprising, but it might surprise some people. And I discovered that 91 % of CMOs only control the 1P promotion.

51:35Uncensored CMO Host:Okay.

51:35George Felix:And they don't even have much influence over the others. But what's interesting about your role is that you do have an influence over pricing. You do have an influence over products. How do you influence, I guess, the product part of the mix?

51:47Uncensored CMO Host:Yeah, it's a really fun part of my job. The structure here is that all of the culinary and beverage and drink innovation sits under marketing. And so we have a whole part of my team that is just focused on innovation, the innovation pipeline, and then we have the culinary and beverage teams. And so every week we spend time in our test kitchen. We're behind the bar. And so we're really responsible for defining what's the three-year roadmap on innovation. And so having that integrated into marketing is, I think, a huge advantage in that we really control from the very beginning of the idea all the way through the go-to-market.

52:30Uncensored CMO Host:And that can be the promotion of it, the advertising of it. It can be the way it shows up on our menu and our merchandising, like every part of that. And so it's, you know, it's different parts of my team that hand it off through the process. But to me, it's been really a really powerful thing for us. And I think, you know, it's not that marketing runs that whole thing. It is a cross-functional effort. And so, you know, every step of the way, supply chain, operations, finance, IT are all brought in because, you know, we just launched a brand new chicken sandwich, the Big Crispy. To launch that, I mean, we've been working on that for two years, right?

53:04Uncensored CMO Host:And we have six different sandwiches. But it's all the things you don't think about, right? Like, you know, how hard could it be to launch a chicken sandwich? Well, you've got to think about, okay, what's the capacity in the kitchen, in the area where the fryers are, if we're going to sell a ton of chicken sandwiches that we're not currently selling? Operationally, how's it going to work? What's the procedure to build it? Does the tech work in the restaurant? Like all those things that you don't think about. And so it's a huge cross-functional effort. But the fact that marketing is really leading that through from the beginning to the end, I think gives us a pretty big advantage.

53:39George Felix:I think that's huge. I mean, one bit of advice I'd give to any senior marketer is think, act like you do own everything. Correct. Effectively, it's marketing. We create the vision. We create the strategy. We understand the customer. We represent the customer when decisions get made. So our job is to kind of organize all the resources and help us realize the vision. And I think that's something that marketers tend to get frustrated about. Oh, I, you know, I'm just the last bit in the chain. Yeah. Think about yourself as the first bit in the chain.

54:10Uncensored CMO Host:Absolutely. Even if that's not the remit of your role. I mean, I take it a step further. I'd say like some of the things I've done that have made me a better marketer here, but also given me more kind of credibility with my peers and other functions is just understanding, like getting your hands dirty in the restaurant and understanding the operations more and spending time with our team members or spending time in the kitchens and all of that. And so like thinking of, thinking of marketing outside of what you would traditionally call marketing, but really taking an interest in those other functions and understanding how marketing can play a role there and then educating them as far as, you know, what, what you're doing, I think we'll just build more of that trust, even if the scope isn't technically yours.

54:54George Felix:And we talked about three for me, didn't we, earlier? Yeah. And that's kind of touching on pricing. I think I've even heard you use this phrase before, actually, about the sticker shock you get. Particularly, by the way, if you're British and you come to America, that sticker shock has just got even bigger, by the way. Yeah, I bet. It's so expensive, isn't it? Have prices gone up, or is it just perception of things being more expensive?

55:16Uncensored CMO Host:Well, I'll tell you, you know, a lot of what we've been talking about for the last few years has been driven by just what we've seen from people on social media. And particularly, we've gone pretty hard at fast food. And it's because we see people basically every single day in drive-thrus holding up receipts. Like, how did I just spend$50? Or how did, like, I can't believe I'm getting this bag of food and I had to pay this much money. And so, you know, I do think prices have gone up. I think there's also, you know, there's shrinkflation is something you hear a lot about right now. And really, like, what we're doing is we're using fast food as a foil.

55:54Uncensored CMO Host:to talk about how great our value is right and we're really proud about the food we serve how much food you get the price point that you get it at and i think when you start to see this like groundswell of people talking about how frustrated they are with the other options out there and their prices have now come to a point where they're actually comparable which we wouldn't have guessed you know several years ago that we'd be comparing price points at fast food to a full sit-down experience at chili's all of a sudden that gives a very helpful frame of reference for people and for us to talk about our value.

56:25Uncensored CMO Host:So I do think prices, you know, in general have risen, but also there's a lot of pressure right now in the economy, right, whether it's, you know, gas prices or just all the things. People are having to make choices. And so our big thing is, you know, value. You know, we think fast food's kind of broken their promise of being the best value and all of that. But we believe value is more than just a price point. It's what you get, you know, what you get for what you pay. And so for 1099, I'd put our meal up against anybody's because -

56:55George Felix:That is very, very competitive.

56:57Uncensored CMO Host:Yeah, and it goes beyond the food. We think the food's amazing, but it's because of the chili head hospitality and it's the music and the restaurant and you're in a fun place and you're not eating in your car and all those things. And so for us, value goes well beyond. I think sometimes, especially in the United States, you got a lot of restaurant brands and fast food brands that are throwing out$1,$2,$3. Well, what are you getting? Like, what are you getting for$1? It's great that I only paid$1, but if it's not something I'm excited about, then that to me doesn't actually mean value.

57:31George Felix:Yeah, and I can confirm the portion sizes are very generous as well.

57:36Uncensored CMO Host:Well, again, I'm glad.

57:37George Felix:Yeah, James and I are pros, but even we didn't quite finish yesterday

57:42Uncensored CMO Host:when we had one, so. Glad to hear.

57:44George Felix:Yeah, no one's going to go hungry, that's for sure. You've got this thing called barbell pricing, haven't you, as well? which is quite an interesting, I've not heard of that concept before.

57:52Uncensored CMO Host:Yeah, so again, I think that's part of like, you know, us, we want to be known for everyday value. Like no matter when, you know, we're open 363 days a year. And so any day you come into a Chili's, you don't have to have a coupon. It doesn't have to be at a certain time or day of the week. You don't have to use the app to get the offer. Just come into Chili's and we're going to have something that at an entry price point, If that's all the money you have to spend, you're going to get a great meal. You're going to get a great margarita. No questions asked. Now, for those that might have more to spend and want more variety or more options, we're going to have things that are maybe at a higher price point, still an amazing value, right?

58:31Like our baby back ribs, you know, the full rack of ribs hangs off the plate.

58:36Uncensored CMO Host:They're so big right now. They might be at a price point that's somewhere in the$20, you know,$25 plus range, but for what you're getting, it's still an amazing, it's an amazing deal. and I talked about our premium margaritas, whether a Don Julio or a Casamigos margarita, if you go to an independent bar and get a margarita like that, you're going to pay, I don't know,$20,$25. At Chili's, it might be$13,$14,$15, right? So we want to have something for everybody, but that barbell is we're always going to have that opening price point that if that's what you can afford, you are going to have a great meal, but we always want to give a variety of options.

59:15George Felix:Well, going back to the element of surprise, actually, when we were ordering our drinks, we were surprised that the quality of tequila were being offered. It's like, oh, well, you've got those of you. So I think that exact thing playing out. So you get the surprise at the bottom end and you get the surprise at the top end.

59:27Uncensored CMO Host:That's right. And even, you know, our$6 margaritas, we use great spirits. A Lunazul tequila, which is a great tequila. But, yeah, you know, if we're going to be the number one margarita seller, we've got to have a good range of tequilas.

59:39George Felix:Talking about baby back ribs as well, that was a fantastic ad as well with boys to men. So anyone listening, check that out. That's very, very funny. In fact, it was the highest scoring on the system on database I could find.

59:51Uncensored CMO Host:That was a lot of fun. That was very funny.

59:54George Felix:The takeout of that one was a surprise that everyone had when she just took the order for Baby Back Ribs and walked off and ignored them. That's right. That's very funny.

1:00:01Uncensored CMO Host:That's one of those things we found in the attic that we definitely cannot get rid of. Everyone loves that song. So we've got some fun stuff coming up with, you know, more things with that jingle coming up here in the next few weeks. But it's just synonymous with Chili's.

1:00:16George Felix:Well, that's another lesson that you've touched on a few times in this conversation is doubling down on the things that work. You know, not being too proud to admit that, you know, that's working. It might be a cheese pull or baby wet ribs and run with it and put some money behind it.

1:00:29Uncensored CMO Host:Absolutely.

1:00:29George Felix:Maybe to round off, what would be the most important attributes of a successful CMO, would you say?

1:00:37Uncensored CMO Host:I think being curious is very important. So the way I would play that out is being curious when you're talking about your business and learning other aspects outside of marketing that we talked a little bit about, asking questions of your agency and your team to understand different perspectives, your consumer, your team members. I would also say just never settling, I guess, or always kind of trying to push forward for what's next. And I think as the CMO in an organization, you have a responsibility to kind of push things forward and kind of be provocative and push the organization forward, obviously in a way that feels on brand and all of that, but kind of instigates different thinking and growth.

1:01:23Uncensored CMO Host:And I think that's something that, again, as a CMO, if you can play that role in your organization and deliver that, I think you start to gain the respect and credibility amongst the rest of the organization. I love that. That's really good.

1:01:38George Felix:I did a study last year called Confessions of a CMO where we did this, but off the record. Because often the best conversations happen before the camera starts. So we phoned up and we ended up concluding that actually there's not much marketing that happens in the CMO role. And we kind of came up with six alternatives to the marketing. But one was mutiny, creating chief mutiny officer. The other one was chief momentum officer. So back to your point is you have to create that tension in the organization to get it to move to the next level. But then you have to create the momentum that makes that change kind of follow through.

1:02:12George Felix:Both those things are really important. And your first point actually on curiosity, I would say, is the single most cited reason from every CMO conversation I've had. Really? Is, yeah, the ability to always stay curious, recognize you don't know everything. Yep. Always reflect the customer insight when decisions are being made. And always ask questions of other people to get everyone else thinking and remaining curious. So that plays out very well. Totally.

1:02:36Uncensored CMO Host:Totally. I think the, and it's something I think I can continue to do a better job of is like that empathy for our guest or our consumer and making sure that like they're represented early enough in the process is something that I think there are times I've done it and other times where I could have done a better job on it.

1:02:53George Felix:All the time. I always remind myself of that because whenever you do that, decisions become simple. Yeah. There's nothing complicated when you're, you know, in the restaurant seeing how it works. Well, of course, that's the answer. Yeah, we can't let this go on. Exactly. It's really obvious. Yeah, absolutely. Amazing. George, thank you so much, mate. It's been an absolute pleasure.

1:03:10Uncensored CMO Host:This is awesome. Big fan of your show. I appreciate what you do for the industry too.

1:03:13George Felix:Thank you. And I really appreciate the tequila as well. Oh, anytime. Anytime. It's never too early for a margarita. The first time and hopefully won't be the last.

1:03:20Uncensored CMO Host:Yeah, absolutely.

1:03:21George Felix:Awesome. Thanks, man. Thank you. So I hope you enjoyed that episode of Uncensored CMO as much as I enjoyed making it. Now, by the way, I've got a new newsletter. So if you'd like to get my thoughts on the one thing that I take out from each episode every week, then do subscribe to the One Thing newsletter. I'd really appreciate it. Also, I have another podcast. Just launched Uncensored Renegades with the fabulous Cori Marchesotto. She is one of the world's best CMOs. She's an absolute rock star. Every week we pick one topic, spend 20 minutes trying to fix it. So check out that. It's in your feed, Uncensored Renegades.

1:03:56George Felix:And finally, I want to give a huge thank you to my sponsor, System One. They generously provide so much support for this podcast. It would not happen without them. So big thanks and lots of love to System One. I'll see you next time.