Tech-Savvy Coach: Teamwork and innovation rule the roost at Newk's

Earlier this year, Denise Pedini stepped into a new office with a new title at fast-casual brand Newk’s Eatery. The brand’s former senior vice president of guest experience was tapped to take on the role of CMO for the restaurant chain with more than 100 locations in 15 states. 

Pedini is a tech-savvy marketer with a history of building awareness and increasing traffic for locations at brands like Pizza Inn and Pizza Hut. She’s been busy this year implementing technology tools as well as marketing and menu innovations for Newk’s.

For example, Newk’s has partnered with kea, an AI-generated answering system that takes orders and payments for the one in 10 orders that Newk’s gets over the phone. The brand is also rolling out new drive-thru restaurant prototypes and testing strategies for simplifying operations and increasing productivity through streamlined menus, tableside ordering, and enhanced loyalty programs.

Pedini acknowledges that the seven-member team around her is key to the brand’s marketing success. She calls them the “Mighty Seven” and applies a “be a coach, not a boss” philosophy that relies on encouraging, motivating, and listening while also stepping in and helping when needed.

“We are an incredible team that does everything in-house in a highly collaborative environment,” she says. “We buy our own media, shoot our own commercials, and create all our marketing collateral. Everyone on the team is an expert in his or her own role, and I am so blessed to have them all.”

With Pedini behind the wheel, look for more marketing innovation at Newk’s in the coming year.

Describe your role as CMO. As chief marketing officer at Newk’s, I have the privilege to lead the marketing team and report directly to the CEO, Frank Paci. My job is to build awareness and fandom for the brand while building sales and traffic for our restaurants.

What’s the most challenging part of being a CMO today? In today’s economy, increasing traffic is the most challenging. We spend a lot of time developing creative ways to engage our guests with different deals and marketing tactics to increase those numbers. One hundred percent of my focus is working on this challenge and helping our restaurants achieve their sales goals.

How has Covid-19 impacted the way you have led your brand’s marketing efforts? I believe Covid has changed the customer. Prior to Covid, we had guests that enjoyed the experience of dining in at restaurants. Today, I feel they still do enjoy that experience, but guests are more apt to use takeout, curbside, and delivery, and we’re glad to see those channels are trending much higher compared to pre-Covid. Our marketing efforts and messages are now geared toward the many ways you can get Newk’s and making it convenient for our guests to do so.

What are the three most important keys to being an effective CMO leader today? 1) Be a coach, not a boss. A coach encourages and motivates their team to play their very best to win the game. Assess your players on your team and play to their strengths. Guide and teach them on how to be effective in their role and how they can help their teammates. If you have a player down, be willing to step in and help the team accomplish their tasks. Be a leader that listens to the team and gathers their ideas and opinions when making decisions. 2) Data-driven decision-making. As they say, “It’s all in the data.” CMOs should always have a handle on whether their marketing is working and if it is effective in reaching the company’s goals. I highly recommend marketing departments include a business analyst to assist in collecting this data for the CMO to make informed, data-driven decisions. 3) Agility and adaptability. The marketing landscape is constantly evolving with new technology and trends. CMOs need to be agile and adaptable to stay ahead of the curve. At Newk’s, we’re constantly looking at new ways to improve our business through the latest technology.

How do you prepare a marketing plan and execute the strategies? First, we evaluate our research and data to see what guests love from us and want us to feature on our menus. We look at financials, such as cost of goods and menu mix of items that have performed well in the past, to determine the LTO marketing calendar. Once we have our LTO feature approved by ops, culinary, supply chain, and leadership, we promote this calendar using marketing tactics that we know generate sales and build awareness for our brand.

How do you measure marketing results and effectiveness? Because we mainly rely on digital marketing, we use Google analytics to measure results from our digital marketing tactics. We also use other platform partners to help us increase our placement with SEO, buy effective media channels for OTT, and know what our guests are saying about us. These tools provide answers to questions we may have regarding why traffic and sales are fluctuating system-wide and at the store level. We measure success by ensuring traffic and sales are up, guests are happy with their experience at our restaurants, and our ROI and ROAS are high.

Discuss your core consumer marketing strategies and objectives. We embrace omnichannel marketing to reach customers through various touchpoints, including social media, OTT, email, website, app, and our loyalty program. Because we have limited budgets, it forces us to be creative to ensure our dollars work as hard as possible for the brand. To accomplish this, we use targeted digital media tactics versus traditional marketing mediums. With these tactics, we can target our messaging and ads within 20 miles of every location.

How do you go about creating a “customer-centric” marketing and brand philosophy? Understanding customer needs, preferences, pain points, and behaviors are crucial for effectively tailoring our marketing strategies. Currently, we are focusing on CRM systems to gather customer feedback and create personalized marketing campaigns to gain frequency and retention.

Describe your marketing team and the role each of them plays. We are the “Mighty Seven” in the marketing team at Newk’s. This consists of our Digital Director Chris Lueking, Marketing Manager Madison Newcomb, Creative Director Ted Campbell, Digital Marketing Manager Lindsey Miller, Digital Designer Emma Gulitti, and our LSM Coordinator Matilyn Skinner.

Why is it so important for the marketing department to have a personal touch when it comes to helping the brand connect with franchise prospects? Our franchisees are extremely important to us, and we want potential franchisees to know that every marketing touchpoint is consistent and within our brand standards and core beliefs for the brand. When looking for franchisees, we explain why Newk’s is a great choice for their investment by creating detailed communications about what they will get with their adfund dollars and how we will help them build awareness and traffic for their restaurants.

How does this help your franchise sales and development effort? We bring a very personalized approach to working with potential franchisees. We meet with them in the discovery phase and run through all the marketing support and where their adfund dollars will be applied, so they understand how the company will support them in marketing on a national level. We also work with them from the ground up until opening to ensure they get off to a great start in the Newk’s system. Our commitment is to support each franchisee in every way possible to ensure their short- and long-term success.

What ways/tools do you rely on to do this? When a new franchise restaurant opens, we help guide them through marketing plans, local store marketing tactics, and strategies to ensure they build a solid customer base. We help them create their social media accounts and develop relationships with the chamber of commerce and with local schools and universities. Building their loyalty program is another key driver in helping sustain guests and increase frequency. We provide them with our loyalty program marketing materials, training, and support to have a successful program.

Do today’s prospects expect more from the franchise marketing department? What, and how do you provide it? Franchisees look to their corporate headquarters to provide training and support to run their businesses. Our entire marketing team is dedicated to helping our franchisees do just about everything, from creating flyers for a fundraiser event and marketing materials for catering to full local store marketing plans to help them build goodwill in the community and drive sales and traffic.

How is today’s consumer and marketing data helping you fine-tune your marketing initiatives? We are 1.5 years into our loyalty program. We now have some great first-party data to analyze and utilize in targeting more segmented messages to our guests. For emails, we have gone from sending one blanket email to our entire email file to customized messages that fit their spending pattern, frequency, and even their favorite item at Newk’s. This allows us to send personalized messages and offers to our guests focused on what matters most to them.

Describe the evolving role of social media in your brand’s marketing efforts. Social media has evolved from just having a Facebook and Twitter page to becoming the core source of marketing strategies for brand awareness, digital media advertising, customer support, and relationship building. We also leverage our social channels as a center of communication for community building and local event promotions. We utilize all these attributes in our marketing strategy at Newk’s.

How do you work with other internal departments, and does technology help? At Newk’s, we work as a close-knit team. We understand that it doesn’t matter how amazing we think a strategy may be. If we can’t execute at the level that we and our guests expect, it doesn’t make it past the planning stage. Any promotion we develop on the marketing front is communicated and sometimes approved by Ops as they are the ones that need to execute the promotion, Supply Chain to ensure we have enough ingredients for the promotion, and Technology to ensure we can execute it on POS, online, and in our app. We always make sure to have full alignment when moving forward with an LTO or even a coupon offer if needed.

Do you see vendors as business partners? Why/why not? Absolutely. We consider anyone we work with an essential part of our success. Coca-Cola, Dr. Pepper, Punchh, Champion PR, and White Unicorn Agency are some of the incredible partners that we work and collaborate with daily to drive awareness and traffic to the business.

How have marketing strategies/tools changed over the past decade? How have you adapted? Years ago, TV, radio, print, and outdoor were the main marketing tools we used to develop brand awareness. Now, digital marketing is the primary means of reaching our customers in a more personalized way. Because we have smaller budgets than most, our entire marketing strategy on a national level is through media, such as social ads, paid digital advertising, SEO, connected TV, emails, re-targeted advertising, and CRM loyalty strategies.

What advice would you offer to aspiring CMO executives? First, understand every aspect of your business. Be your customer. Know how your marketing is going to affect traffic and awareness. Analyze the results with your team and make shifts if something is not working. Hire people who are experts in their field and will make your department perform at the highest level. Frequent research is very important to understand your customers and how they evolve. Conduct surveys every six months versus once every two years. Finally, love what you do. Find a place that has a great culture and respects you as an employee—and a company that loves its customers.