Taco Bell’s Sean Tresvant on Lifestyle Branding, Loyalty & QSR Growth

Thanks for having me.

Like you said, it has an incredible alumni. For me, when I came in, I just wanted to learn brand marketing. I started very early in my career in sales. I went to Campbell Soup as a salesperson. I saw the brand managers talking and I said, 'How can I do that?' They said, 'To do that, you have to go back to get your MBA.' I went back, got my MBA. Prior to finishing my MBA, my sister moved to New York and we're really close. So I decided to move to New York and that's how I got the Pepsi job. Incredible company, incredible brands. My first brand at Pepsi was Pepsi One. I think I killed that brand quickly, but I learned a ton. They have incredible intellectual horsepower at Pepsi, incredible brand knowledge, brand acumen. So just being part of great brands, great people, great leaders, great coaches put me on a trajectory to where I am today.

Yeah, and we worked closely together when I was running my agency, Mr. Youth, and we did a big launch for Mountain Dew. We were talking about when we did that campaign, it was Mountain Dew's first user-generated content program. And when I look at when you were at Pepsi, 2000, 2005, it was a different world. People don't realize the internet just started in 2000. Facebook was just starting, there was no YouTube, there was no iPhone. So when you think about our careers, which we were both in the workforce a similar time frame, the changes that we've encountered since your time at Pepsi and early in your career have been dramatic. How have you been able to keep your finger on the pulse of the changes in technology and consumer behavior?

I think for me, the biggest thing is staying curious. As you said, change happens and it happens fast, whether it's consumer change or technology change. I pride myself on staying curious, whether it's listening to podcasts like yours, reading up on data, having mentors and coaches who are teaching me. You have to stay current, you have to stay curious because the consumer moves fast, technology moves fast. If you're not staying up, you fall behind. One thing I've learned in my career is you have to stay at pace with the consumer.

I would tell you I'm a kid from the Pacific Northwest. I grew up in Seattle, so Oregon's really close. Growing up playing sports my whole life, I played basketball at Washington State. Nike was always a dream job. It was a job that if one day I could work at Nike, I have made it. I knew a guy. I was playing in a summer basketball league in New York. He said, 'Hand me your resume.' So that's how long it was. I handed him my resume. About a year later, I got a call, and about a year after that, I was working at Nike. So it was a dream come true. When you look at what Nike is, it's the PhD of marketing: the brands, the people, the legacy, the storytelling. It was everything that I aspired to do in my career, and it was a great 15-16 year run at Nike.

I think two things. One, there's a lot of barbershop arguments. He was the GOAT, the best of all time. He changed the game off the court with his style and his flair, and he changed the game on the court, winning six NBA championships. I don't know if that'll be done again. So it's a little bit about who he was off the court and who he was on the court. He created basketball culture, which turned into hip-hop culture, which turned into music culture. And then the Jordan brand is just a scrappy brand, and that comes a lot from who he is as a person. It's a brand that has a little bit of a chip on its shoulder. They're the little brother to Nike, but incredibly entrepreneurial, incredibly scrappy, and want to win. And not only in basketball. Think about you and I growing up, it was a basketball brand. Now it has women's, streetwear, culture, apparel. It's becoming a multi-dimensional brand, which is helping it stay relevant with consumers.

Yeah. And I think for Jordan, Nike is the V12 engine. It's performance and it goes. Jordan, you want to have a little bit of, like you said, 50/50, a lot of performance but a lot of style. It's the brand that when you put it on, people say, 'Those are Jordans.' So it has a style element, but absolutely 100% performance as well.

Probably the decision of my life, right? And you see athletes doing that. Joe Montana left the 49ers before his career ended, and so did Michael Jordan himself. Not to compare you with Michael Jordan, but maybe you're the Michael Jordan of marketing. What precipitated that decision and what was behind that?

Yeah, it was a lot of things. Like I said earlier, I like to stay curious. I had an incredible 16-year run at Nike. I grew up there, had a lot of friends there. But I found myself not running into work anymore. And I'm one that wants to run into work, stay curious, and continue to learn. I got a phone call and I picked up the phone.

I wasn't looking. I got a phone call. I picked up the phone. At first it was a recruiter talking about would you be interested in a job? This job is in the QSR industry and it has to be Taco Bell. I never thought about that. I never thought about QSR. We want you to meet some people from Taco Bell. One of the first people I met at Taco Bell was the current CEO, Mark King. I don't know if anybody's met Mark King, but he's an incredible personality. We had about a two-hour conversation in Portland. It was just about the magic of Taco Bell. People don't realize how big Taco Bell is, how global Taco Bell is. It was a great conversation. Mark and I hit it off. I met a couple other people. It has incredible culture. I took the leap of faith as the global chief brand officer at Taco Bell. Great run. Two years later, things worked out where I'll have a new position as CEO in January.

Well, I'll take it back even further. Taco Bell is 61 years old. The founder, Glen Bell, he was tacos in a burgers world, and that's different. That DNA has lasted for 60 years. That's the way we think about Taco Bell. We want to embrace different. We want to tap into culture. We don't even consider ourselves just a QSR brand. We consider ourselves a great brand. That is the mentality of a lot of the people who create the magic at Taco Bell. We want to embrace different, push culture forward, always be doing something that's zigging versus just doing what the competition does.

Yeah, it's a huge part. Digital means a lot of things. It could mean in-store for us, which is really important with 7,500 plus restaurants. It could mean digital on your phone, or it could be how you access the brand. When you go into a Taco Bell, there's a kiosk, which is a digital experience, and obviously there's third-party delivery, which is becoming ubiquitous in the QSR space. We look at it through all those lenses. It is an experience, capital E. Whether it's the team members' experience in making their life easier, the customer's experience as they come into physical locations, the drive-thru experience, or great digital content on your app, or ordering through a third-party aggregator, we're focusing on all that because that's what matters to the consumer. It makes the transaction a lot easier for the consumer.

It's really important. Probably the one place we want to really leverage it is this idea of loyalty. Loyalty will be big for us. We're learning on the fly. We're good, but we want to be really great at loyalty because we're such an amazing brand with a lot of assets and history. We can tap into culture. Really leveraging loyalty to our advantage is the next step for us, because consumers expect personalization.

And especially if you have digital as a core part of the overall consumer interaction at your locations, it provides opportunities to provide that personalization. You know the type of food somebody tends to order, if they're a family or they usually come with a group of friends, and maybe that will customize their experience. We know you ordered a taco last week and Taco Supreme is your jam, so we're going to make sure you get that. We have relationships with LeBron James, Devonte Adams. We can feed the beat, we can serve you on multiple different levels: yes, of course the food, but also what other experiences can we give you from the Taco Bell brand?

From partnerships, I think they're just extensions of the brand. The word I'd use as we think about partnerships, whether current or future, is authenticity. I heard it a lot at the conference today. For us, it has to be authentic. I'll give you a couple examples. Doja Cat was great. She brought back the Mexican pizza. The way that whole thing came about was that she tweeted us to bring back the Mexican pizza. It wasn't us going out and saying, 'Hey, we'll pay you X amount of money.' It was a really authentic relationship. She loves Taco Bell. We created a partnership, a collaboration around how to bring it back.

Well, you see the tweet. As great marketers as the team is, how do we leverage this? Doja Cat just tweeted at us, 'Bring back the Mexican pizza.' The team went to work on a really great journey from that tweet all the way to bringing the Mexican pizza back. It was really coordinated, cadenced at the right level to make sure it was a great story of how it went away during the pandemic and came back, and she was really the person who brought it back. Or you look at a person like LeBron James. During COVID, him and his family celebrated Taco Tuesday. Little did we know at the time, Taco Tuesday was trademarked, so you couldn't effectively use it if you're a business or a person. Not by Taco Bell, by another entity. We got in touch through some mutual connections. 'Hey LeBron, would you like to help free the Taco Tuesday trademark?' Of course I would. So that was another cool idea, another authentic partnership. They're people who love the brand. Let's partner on how we can do stuff together that are really exciting for the brand. Sometimes you go out and reach out to people, but for us, it's all about authentic connections to our brand, not just somebody off the shelf.

It's a great question. I think what the team and I talk about a lot is be nimble. As we talked about earlier, technology changes, consumer changes, new platforms come, new platforms go. We like to say when there's a big idea, let's not let it go to waste. LeBron was a big idea, and lucky enough it was early in the year where we could shift some things around. It's all about delivering. If this opportunity is bigger than that opportunity, let's do that opportunity because we think it'll deliver more than the opportunity we currently had on the calendar. The team is great, nimble, and for us, take advantage. If you're going to be center plate of culture, you have to take advantage when it comes in real time.

They're watching that right now.

I'll put it like this: TV is dead. Long live TV. As a brand, we are shifting digital. Of course we have to be digital because that's where our consumer is. But when you look at how we're going to reach consumers, there will be an amount allotted to TV. It's mass. We're on a lot of sports TV. It's where our consumer is. But we're getting a lot smarter on how we reach different audiences at different times and different platforms. Digital is the way. When you think about how we come to life, yes, we'll have films on TV, but when you think about social, paid, audience segmentation, all the different platforms, connected TV, we're being really smart about how we allocate the dollars for the biggest return on our consumer.

Our social team has done a great job listening to micro-influencers, not the Doja Cats, not the LeBrons of the world, not the Devonte Adamses, but we involve them in the brand. The brand lives on the sidewalk. We do a lot of great things with micro-influencers. We actually did a campaign a while back where we included our micro-influencers. We said it's free delivery, $0 delivery. We used them on the campaign on TikTok, and it was our highest performing TikTok for the month. So while we're going to play at a lot of different levels, the mass level with mass influencers, the cult of the brand, the fans of the brand are really important too. Using them to drive the brand is important as well.

Matt, somebody told me a story that if you're human, you've eaten a piece of chicken, a hamburger, or a piece of pizza. People probably around the world haven't tasted Mexican food. So our big challenge in the countries we're playing in today is awareness. It's to teach them the cheesy, saucy, melty, spiciness of Taco Bell. In the UK, for example, we're in the UK, they're starting to get it. But a place like India or China or Malaysia, it's a little harder. You have to drive education, drive awareness. How do you even eat a taco in some of those countries? Is it sideways? Is it a lunch thing? Is it a dinner thing? How many do I order? The team believes Taco Bell as a global brand is doing really well in the US. How do we continue to gain momentum internationally? It'll all be through education and awareness of the brand. It has such a magical cult following like you said in the US. How do we translate that, first about the food and then about the brand? Those two things together we can be very successful internationally.

A huge opportunity for us.

It's good. For us, we might not be first mover advantage, but we want to learn quickly. This idea of curiosity, I think for AI, I do believe it will change the way we as marketers view the world, interact with the world, interact with consumers. But for us, when you think about a QSR, there are many applications you could use it for. You could use it creatively, in the kitchen, for franchises, and all those things in between. We've got some things working and testing on how it can relieve stress in the kitchen, ordering, voice ordering on the drive-thru menu board. Those are things we're looking at. Also looking internally, how do we make sure we're staying up to speed on what we can do with it creatively? What is the RGM in the restaurant? How can they use it with their staff? There are so many different applications that you don't rush to one thing because for our business, you have to look at how to use it across multiple different venues or applications to make sure it is effective.

It's a great question. Let me unpack it a little bit. For me, one of the most important platforms that I came into and want to continue in my next role at Taco Bell is this idea of leadership. I think leadership separates good companies from great companies and great companies from extraordinary companies. A lot of people miss the plot on leadership because they worry about the function. If you don't have great leadership, you're not going to be a great brand or business for a long time. That is my belief. So I spend a lot of the day with the team. How do I block and tackle for the team? What can I do to clear the path for the team? Where can I work with the franchises? Where can I work with the different functions to bring people together? Leadership is probably where I spend most of my day, just making sure the team is inspired, confident, and ready to go do magical things for the Taco Bell brand. My day role now is I oversee brand marketing, innovation, architecture and design which is our assets, and FIT which is our food. No day is the same in my world. A lot for me is continually driving the brand. It's about results. Whether you're a marketer or a CEO, you have to deliver in this new world order. How do we make sure we're hitting our numbers? What can I do to help the team hit our numbers? And then a lot is working with the franchisees. We have an amazing franchisee community. We've been entrepreneur of the year three years running. Making sure we keep a great partnership with the franchisees is important. I spend a lot of time with them making sure we're on the same page and moving forward together.

Yeah. And that's why it's such an important partnership. What we're thinking about at the RSC or what they're thinking about in their original markets, they're meshing together. Nine and a half times out of ten it is. But when they're not, we need to make sure we're on the same page about how we're thinking about current day and the future. That's where I spend a lot of my time.

Well, in Portland and now LA, I go into a lot of Taco Bells. We go a lot with the franchisees and just make sure how we're feeling about the brand, how we're feeling about the experience from a consumer standpoint. Probably the most valuable part is hearing from the team members. When you think about the size of the Taco Bell brand in the market, how many team members we have, they're our biggest brand asset. Hearing from them is really inspiring. You have Taco Bell brand called a family, and you have team members who have worked at the same Taco Bell for 25 years.

They will tell you it's a family. They will tell you, 'Hey, I've left Taco Bell maybe once and I always come back because of the way the brand taught me.' They take pride in their work. It is such a sense of pride to work for Taco Bell. It is truly inspiring. When I first started at the brand, I went out to stores with a couple friends, toured, worked in the kitchen a little bit, and talked to whether it's an RGM or a team member or somebody at the drive-thru. 'Family' came up consistently, and this pride working at Taco Bell. It was just like nothing I've ever heard before.

That is a great question. I'm probably different than most. I really don't look at the piece of paper.

I know you like their resume, where they went to school. I know it's a thing to get in the door, but I know you went to Harvard and you speak six languages and you had 15 internships. That is all great, but as you know and I know, once you walk through that door as an employee, what kind of teammate are you? Do you like to roll up your sleeves? Do people like to work with you? It's the intangibles to me that get people further than the tangibles. There's a lot of Princeton, Harvard, Northwestern, nothing against those schools, MBA grads that when they walk in the door, maybe they don't want to roll up their sleeves, maybe they don't want to come early, maybe they don't want to stay late. I always tell people the resume, the piece of paper is great, but it's the intangibles that get you further when you're interviewing them. I have a gut feel for it. It's how they speak, how they talk, how bad do they want the job? Do they expect you to do all the talking or do they tell you about themselves other than all the work experience they had? To me, the intangibles get people further than the tangibles.

No, we're a hybrid model. I think today, me personally and the Taco Bell philosophy is work from home. Hey, you're going to get your work done. Similar to how tech has changed the workforce, working from home, I don't think you need to be sitting in front of a computer. It's probably not as effective anymore. I do think you need to be in there's something about team and culture and being together. So we try to do that through think weeks and collab weeks at Taco Bell, which has been really effective. When everybody comes in for off-sites, we come in and talk about the business, the brand. We have guest speakers. That's really helped bring people together and gel them together so you can see, meet, and work together. But again, it's not five days a week and it's not every week.

Yeah. I had my daughter just graduated college. I asked her, 'Where's your headquarters?' She looked at me like I had four eyes. 'We're virtual, Dad.' Once the pandemic hit, we just started hiring people all over the country. The genie is out of the bottle. Even if we want to not be remote, there's nothing you can do. You got to figure it out that way. I do feel that for the younger employees, they need exposure to senior leaders so they can learn. Fostering that is incredibly important. That's why I think the collab weeks and think weeks, bringing everybody to Irvine to the campus where they can see people, everybody's encouraged to come in. I come in, everybody comes in. They learn, they see, we can talk. There's office time, but also a lot of social time before work, after work, which is really important for everybody to make sure they see what the culture can and should be within the brand. It's hard to do that over Teams.

In retrospect, I think if you ask my team, some of them are here today, I'm an approachable leader, a curious leader, and an empowering leader. I think those three things, I try to talk to everybody, teach everybody, treat everybody the same. I feel like I'm very approachable. No matter what level you are, let's talk. I want to teach you and I want to learn from you. I want to see how your experiences at Taco Bell are and I want to give you my journey at Taco Bell. I also feel like I'm empowering. I don't have all the answers, especially as I step into my new role. There are things I need to learn, and I'm vulnerable enough to ask people the things I don't know. I'm two years into the QSR industry. The franchisees are teaching me a lot. The people at Taco Bell corporate are teaching me a lot. I'm trying to be vulnerable and learn a lot from this experience.

Absolutely.

Well, it's funny. When I started at Taco Bell, there was a tweet. The tweet said, 'Taco Bell at 1:00 a.m. has a $200,000 G-Wagon, a Chevy Cavalier, a moped, and a minivan that never had its oil changed. And they're all craving the idea of Live Más.' I think that defines our brand so perfectly. It inspires me every day. It's what we all strive for because Taco Bell is that perfect brand that is mass. It's a melting pot that everybody wants to enjoy.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much.