Published on September 14th, 2021 📆 | 4532 Views ⚑
0How technology transformed the CMO job
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From left: Moderator Neil Culbertson, Vincent Sjwazkowski, Deena McKinley and Trish Giordano/Photo by W. Scott Mitchell.
A restaurant CFO once told Deena McKinley that marketing is âthe people that pick the pretty colors.â
That, of course, has never been trueâand certainly not these days. The industryâs rapid adoption of technology has transformed marketing into a data-heavy job that overlaps with virtually every aspect of the business, from sales to IT to operations.
âThe CMO role has migrated from commercial shoots and more of the creative planning role,â said McKinley, CMO for Papa Ginoâs Pizza and DâAngelo Grilled Sandwiches. âItâs become more data-driven and more of a data role, and itâs because all of the technology is so well-targeted toward the restaurant industry because of all the consumer data we get.â
McKinely spoke during a panel at this weekâs FSTEC conference, hosted by Restaurant Business parent Winsight. She was joined by two other restaurant CMOs, who echoed her assessment of how tech has changed what they do.
âIâm finding more and more of my role is moving into [tech],â said panelist Vincent Sjwazkowski, CMO of Blaze Pizza. Blazeâs digital road map, for instance, is owned jointly by Sjwazkowski and CTO Chris Demery. âItâs definitely different than I think Iâm used to working as a marketer.â
The vast amount of customer information now available to restaurants is a big reason for that change. For Blaze, consumer data has been a driving force behind the fast casualâs upcoming rebrand.Â
âIt isnât just based on pure opinion,â Sjwazkowski said. âThere is data, and there is a lot of work thatâs gone into it, and thatâs getting it 80% of the way there.âÂ
The other 20% is reserved for the traditional marketing workâthe âart partâ that goes on top of the science, he said.
Not only does data help shape marketing strategy, but it also provides evidence marketers can use to sell that strategy to leadership. Everyone in an organization might have an opinion on what an email or push notification should look like, said Trish Giordano, chief sales and marketing officer for Earl Enterprises. But the only thing that matters is whether those messages convert customersâand the data keeps score.
âAs long as you have the data to back up those conversions, youâre not selling anymore,â she said.Â
Data can help restaurant operators understand the reasons for marketing decisions as well.
âWeâre asking them to do things at the restaurant level that sometimes they question,â McKinley said. When you have the data to back it up, âit gets buy-in. And when you have buy-in at the restaurant level, it makes execution much easier as well.â
Technology has changed the job in more mundane ways, too. Giordano recalled the first time the staff held a virtual meeting over Microsoft Teams: It âcould have been a comedy scene,â she said.
Gone are the days of walking down the hallway and grabbing the team members you need for a meeting. All of that collaboration is mediated by technology now, Sjwazkowski said, and not always for the better.
âItâs become much more complicated, I think, to actually manage the day-to-day.âÂ
But technology has also set the stage for some big marketing wins. Blaze began using a customer relationship management platform to segment its audience and send more personalized emails. That got a whopping 50% of recipients to open those emails.
âThatâs basically free marketing,â Sjwazkowski said.
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