Having Words With: Russ Klein of Arby'sHaving Words With: Russ Klein of Arby's

Russ Klein has a lot of marketing experience. Before taking over as chief marketing officer at Atlanta-based Arby’s last year, he served as global marketing president for Burger King and held marketing positions at 7-Eleven, 7-Up and other consumer brands.

Klein says he is not a marketer who jumps at the latest trend. Rather, he has developed an eye for playing the long game.

A self-proclaimed brand turnaround specialist, Klein aims to take 3,400-unit Arby’s to the next level of success. And he said it all starts with one simple mantra: Know your customers, and target them.

What is the biggest mistake a marketer can make?

I joke with our board that the second-most fatal decision a company can make is to misidentify its target audience. If you do that, everything else is just a waste of money.

The most fatal decision you can make is one that will cause you to run out of cash. But, if you make the second-most fatal mistake, you’ll go back to the first — you’ll run out of cash.

I don’t let anybody out of the room when I join a company until we’ve agreed that this is the first puzzle we’re going to solve. It’s not about knowing your consumers demographically. It’s about knowing what their value systems are. It’s about identifying the opportunities for your company and the consumer to connect on their values.

How do you find your target consumer?

I’m a huge fan of using ethnographies [the branch of anthropology that deals with the scientific description of specific human cultures] or using social scientists to uncover those belief systems in the life of our users.

We want to find the consumers who make a disproportionate contribution to our profits, who love us back and who move markets around them. You’re looking for a consumer group who is willing to be your advocate.

What has been the most exciting or challenging part of your time with Arby’s?

Over its history [Arby’s] has had some missed opportunities. We really want to be sure that we’ve been taking a disciplined approach to our market opportunity and our source of business.

When I joined I was very confident in the brand’s ability to transform itself into a big brand of the future. There are a lot of QSR brands out there that are structurally stuck in a business model that’s becoming less and less appealing in the marketplace, whether it be a brand that is focused only on burgers or only on fried foods. We’re really distinguished by our freshly prepared sandwiches, hot or cold roast turkey and our fresh hot roast beef sandwiches.

There’s a palette for innovation and an opportunity for us to occupy a market place that’s in line with what consumers want: fresh food that they crave. It’s a very exciting prospect to be involved in transforming a brand like Arby’s.

What are some of the most important technologies available to modern marketers?

Everybody’s talking about big data and the power of big analytics. A lot is possible now. My caution there is not to focus on what’s possible, but what’s relevant. It doesn’t make sense to build a cathedral of analytics around your business if you don’t have a culture that will adopt and operate in a way that honors that kind of focus.

A lot of people are jumping in to big data and the idea of analytics, which they should be looking at. But I don’t know that there’s enough discrimination about what’s going to have a return on investment.

How important is social media marketing?

At Burger King we created a micro site called “Subservient Chicken.” Being Burger King, the idea was to communicate “Having Chicken Your Way,” and the agency had a great idea of having a chicken out there who will do whatever you want it to do. At its time, it was a brilliant piece of digital development. 

For me it uncovered the idea that you can share a voice online through buying banner ads and sponsoring things, or you can generate your own content. If you generate your own content, that is a less crowded playing field in terms of trying to get attention. Social and digital media are here to stay.

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