PHOENIX -- Forbes publisher Rich Karlgaard led a panel of executives whose companies represent winning brands yesterday during the Outlook Leadership 2007 event at the Wigwam Golf Resort & Spa. He spoke about course corrections and the fact that every industry has its own Google likely to rattle the foundation.
Yet as Karlgaard introduced his panelistsG.J. Hart of Texas Roadhouse, Marlene Coulis of Anheuser-Busch and Danny Roden of Chevrontalk of branding veered in an altogether different yet related direction.
We're in a [image-nocss] people business, said Grant, CEO of Texas Roadhouse, Louisville, Ky., which has grown to 275 full-service restaurants in 44 states. If we take care of our employees, they'll take care of our guests. Our brand gets defined every day by getting up and believing in it.
Texas Roadhouse, which has staked out its turf with high-quality scratch-based foods, invests in its peoplehourly servers, bartenders and restaurant managerswith excessive training and other tools to make them feel part of the brand. Furthermore, the company invests heavily in the communities it serves. As a result, Texas Roadhouse has become the local hometown favorite, said Grant, and benefits from an extraordinarily high level of repeat business, with full waiting lists every day of the week.
Our goal is to be the employer of choice in the restaurant space, he said, adding that many of the workers it seeks to hire are in the crucial 18- to 24-year-old bracket. That doesn't mean we necessarily have to pay more. [Our employees] may be selling steak and potatoes, but at the end of the day, they're feeling like they're part of somethingand that's what drives them.
While Texas Roadhouse differs greatly from the average convenience store in nearly every aspect, Grant underscored a point that convenience retailers can appreciate: His customers are creatures of habit and seek quality and consistency above all else.
All the panelists, in fact, spoke about the role consumers play in building a successful brand. Innovation starts with the consumer, said Coulis, vice president of brand management for Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc., St. Louis. That means getting close to customersand retailersto learn their need states and create products that resonate in terms of taste, style and image.
For example, Coulis spoke about how A-B used feedback from its Latino consumers to develop a product that mixes its heritage Budweiser brand with tomato juice. The in-development product, to be marketed under the Chelada brand in a partnership with Clamato, will go to market nationally in January 2008.
Maintaining a solid brand, of course, means having to make the occasional course correction. That's how one Outlook attendee put it in a question to the panel by way of a new text-messaging capability. Grant said that soon after Texas Roadhouse's founding in 1993, three out of its first five restaurants failed because it misjudged locations. This led to a refined site-selection process, which was instrumental in the company's turnaround; in 2006, the company reported roughly $1 billion in system-wide revenue.
You make mistakes, said Roden, vice president of North American marketing for San Ramon, Calif.-based Chevron, but that all helps with your learnings and makes you better. Roden cited the short-lived Foodini's experiment, which the company launched in the late 1990s as an answer to home-meal replacement.
In addition to innovation and brand refining, talk of competition also emerged. Improvements in technology and changes in consumer needs will continue to spawn new and powerful competitors. This will challenge long-established brands, Karlgaard suggested, but as long as such brands evolve along with their consumers, they should survive and ultimately grow stronger.
Look at Google, said Karlgaard. Google is just nine years old, and in that nine years, look at the heartburn they've caused in our industry.
In terms of brand, panelists agreed, it all comes down to making connections with consumers. Consumers today wantand companies such as A-B are giving thema million choices of expression, according to Coulis.
Consumers want more variety, they want more choice, said Coulis. It's about making sure you're always a step ahead of the curve, and making sure it's hitting the mark.
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