Hooters is a globally iconic, image-based, casual dining restaurant brand founded in 1983 in Clearwater, FL. The company consists of nearly 370 stores in total, which include domestic and international franchisees. The brand’s footprint counts 42 states in the U.S. and 29 countries and endeavors to serve great food in a fun environment.
Hooters’ tagline is Hooters Makes You Happy — and that’s the brand’s goal. Hooters wants to give its customers a break from the everyday routine and offers an escape featuring cold beer, chicken wings, and the legendary Hooters Girls, who deliver memorable customer experiences in a fun and engaging way.
Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Bruce Skala, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), HOA Brands, about how the responsibilities of the CMO have changed, successful partnerships with sports figures, and leveraging social media influencers to drive sales.
Hooters is a globally iconic, image-based, casual dining restaurant brand founded in 1983 in Clearwater, FL. The company consists of nearly 370 stores in total, which include domestic and international franchisees. The brand’s footprint counts 42 states in the U.S. and 29 countries and endeavors to serve great food in a fun environment.
Hooters’ tagline is Hooters Makes You Happy — and that’s the brand’s goal. Hooters wants to give its customers a break from the everyday routine and offers an escape featuring cold beer, chicken wings, and the legendary Hooters Girls, who deliver memorable customer experiences in a fun and engaging way.
Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Bruce Skala, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), HOA Brands, about how the responsibilities of the CMO have changed, successful partnerships with sports figures, and leveraging social media influencers to drive sales.
Good afternoon, good morning. It's Mark Johnson from Loyalty 360. Everyone's happy, safe and well. Welcome back to our Leaders in Customer Loyalty series. In this series, we talk to leading brands about what they are seeing and hearing on the front lines of customer channel and brand loyalty. Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Bruce Gala. He's the Chief Marketing Officer at Hooters America Brands. How are you today, bruce?
Speaker 2:Great Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Thanks for taking the time to talk with us. First off, we'd like to start these on a little more of a personal level, Get to know the individual we're speaking with. So we'd love to know a little bit more about you, your role, kind of how you got into marketing and your current role at Hooters. It would be great to know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I started off with the Coca-Cola company and spent about 13 years over at the Coca-Cola in Atlanta and moved around a little bit in sales and marketing. That led to an opportunity to run field marketing with Heineken. Usa Was working on the on and the off premise. Had the opportunity to really learn all sides of the business from that perspective, with the food service business being an opportunity for alcohol and making some programming opportunities with brand launches such as Heineken Lite, the role at VP of marketing came open for Hooters of America. I've been here for about a little over 10 years.
Speaker 1:Okay, awesome. For those who may not be familiar with Hooters, would love to know a little bit more about the restaurant, kind of how it came to be, kind of what you guys do and how you do it.
Speaker 2:for those who may not know, I'm hoping that it's a very small part of the population who doesn't know what Hooters is. We're a 40-year-old, globally iconic, image-based brand founded out of Clearwater, florida. We serve a lot of great food in a very fun environment. Our tagline is Hooters Makes you Happy, and that's our goal is to provide a break from your everyday and allow yourself to escape from reality. Have a cold beer, some wings in a fun environment and have the legendary Hooters girl serve you in a fun and engaging way.
Speaker 1:Okay, excellent. The task of being a chief marketing officer is changing pretty rapidly. I should say it has changed very rapidly over the last five years from being more creative focused and marketing focused, now we're looking at analytics, looking at technology, kind of a confluence of different things hitting the space. So when you look at that, how do you see your job evolving or expanding?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think one of the most important changes that have taken place over the past two years is the chief information officer and the chief marketing officer is in a really important partnership. That needs to happen, and I rely on data, I rely on information, to make smart decisions. The analogy we use is if it's a thousand-piece puzzle and we have 600 pieces, we know what the picture is going to look like. Let's go after it, let's take some directional steps and we can adjust as needed. But the data and utilizing IT and the capability of IT is an critically important part of marketing right now.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and what does that those changes when you look at data and working more closely with the CIO. What does that mean for you and your team?
Speaker 2:I think one of the marketing needs to work with IT in terms of layering in priorities. What is the IT's priority? And obviously you know they have their own list of high important projects they're working on, from POS to tracking, to really the technical aspects of our business. But how can we factor into their bandwidth of opportunity of what are they working on? And our team works very closely with the CIO all the way down to the technical managers on getting us the data we need to make smart decisions and making sure that the steps are in place before we execute something, that we can track it appropriately and take action.
Speaker 1:I think it's a very salient challenge Many brands. Right now we actually have a technology community that meets and talks about the different changes in technology. We're actually looking at some of the tech stacks that brands have and what's working and what's not working. Sometimes you bring on a new technologies you know and it says it does X, Y and Z and it may do a fraction of that. So it's really hard to understand technology. I think we see that in some of the research we do that brands really struggle with understanding new technology and new technology and it's actually going to work in their current stack.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I don't think it's a. You don't have to create the wheel right now. There's so much changing and there's so many success stories out there. We're keeping your finger on the pulse of what's happening in the marketplace and in the tech world is as much of what we do as anything else, so we're looking to expand upon best practices.
Speaker 1:That makes sense when you think about some of the challenges or opportunities. What kind of keeps you up at night? What's the biggest challenge you face as a CMO?
Speaker 2:I think right now the biggest challenge I face as a CMO is you know it used to be. You know, let's create our 30 second TV spot Right. The CMO would be forward facing mass communication. Right now it's really changing into what kind of content can we create that can be engaging to our future and our current guests, that engage with them and engage with us in a meaningful way? And a meaningful way is how does that link into loyalty, how does that link into check average, how does that link into limited time offer menus? How does that link into competitive set? So, as an image based brand, like Hooters is, we really lean into the fact that we've got something more to talk about than just food. We leverage our strategic asset, our most important strategic asset, which is the Hooters girl, to tell that story. So social media is extremely important. Leveraging the reach of our employees as well as our brand is a important role for the CMO to really understand. How can we tap into the true strength of our organization?
Speaker 1:Okay, you've kind of touched on this a couple of times with you know one of the opportunities for the CMO, especially now, is looking at increasing engagement with the customer, which can be done in a variety of ways. You talk about content, you talked about personalization a little bit from marketing campaigns, social media. You know kind of what works well for the Hooters brand in that regard.
Speaker 2:What works well is we have a number of different ways to reach the audience and reach the customers, and that is local store marketing, right? So what's happening in your local community? A lot of times you don't really care what's happening from a mass scale, what's happening in my local Hooters. So we tune in to our stores as our local social media accounts and we're telling the story come on down for karaoke night or a car show or whatever. And then we've got regional opportunities, then we've got national and we have global. So we try and stack our tactics and stack our messaging to reach the consumer of how they want to interact with us. Understanding what's important to them also is a big part of it. So if you're showing up on a Saturday night at 10 o'clock to watch UFC, I'm going to know that and I'm going to reach out to you and I'm going to target my messaging accordingly. So you're going to get messaging and communication from us in a fashion that's relevant to you.
Speaker 1:Excellent. Can you tell us a little bit more about some of your focus on customer engagement and the new sports focused initiatives and partnerships that you have introduced over the last year?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think Hooters is a fun, irreverent brand and we need to approach that in that kind of a manner. We have a few fun and brand ambassadors, john Daly being one of them, right? So John Daly everyone knows who John Daly is. He's a fun iconic, not your standard professional golfer by any means. He is off the cuff, fun and someone that really relates to our consumer. So John is a global Greek brand ambassador for us.
Speaker 2:When you're looking at who some of our core demo is and what their interests are, nascar is very important to us, so we have Chase Elliott as one of our primary sponsorships that we run the Hooters branded number nine car and that reaches that really important NASCAR audience who is very loyal, will engage with brands who support the sport, and Chase is a great guy from Georgia, where we were from, and it does a great for us and has been named NASCAR's most popular driver for the past several years and has a great lineage in the sport. On top of that, when you think about how we can remain relevant and new in the sports world, you know NIL is something that's very important to the marketplace right now and it's a hot topic of conversation and when we thought about how we can engage with NIL. We needed to do it in a Hooters way. We didn't want to sponsor one athlete. We didn't want to say, hey, you have a unique name, so let's go after you.
Speaker 2:Who are the unsung heroes? The guys who don't get a lot of credit but do a lot of the work? And if you go into a Hooters restaurant and you look around at who's sitting in the store, it's the offensive linemen. And it made a lot of sense for us to say, hey, you know what? We're not gonna just sign up one offensive linemen, we're gonna sign up the entire offensive line from certain schools which match from a demographic standpoint, near our restaurants and get those guys, the big guys who don't get any love, and give them some love, give them some attention. And they had a great fun time with it. We filmed a lot of different contents in our restaurants. They had the opportunity to earn some money, to eat some food and it was a win-win for everybody.
Speaker 1:That's awesome If you need a really good soccer player. I know a really good soccer player at the University of Akron. He's just kidding, All right, Always looking Excellent. So when you look some of the partnerships that you've introduced in 2022 and 23, how do you select some of these partnerships from an NIO perspective? You talked about the offensive linemen and not necessarily putting all eggs in one basket. How do you select the partnerships and how do you measure efficacy as well?
Speaker 2:We have to get a return on investment, and a return on investment can be put in two or three different ways. One is a true return on sale. Right, we spent X, we got Y as a return on sales. That's always the guiding point we want. We want to drive our sales.
Speaker 2:We're not doing this for PR purposes, but PR is an important part of it. Keeping our brand relevant and in front of that potential customer who likes wings, isn't a sports bar category, but has not maybe been to Hooters in a while. This is an opportunity to speak to that younger demo in a way that is relevant to them, because they're following a sports team and they may be very aware of the offensive line or not be aware of the offensive line, and this is a fun, unique way to engage with that crowd. Now, the idea was so popular that we were named NIL Brand of the Year at the College Football NIL Awards this past year and we made out brands like Adidas and other large, big budget brands with this unique idea. And again, it has to be a true, unique idea that mirrors well and matches well with the fabric of the brand, and this really did.
Speaker 1:You can tell us a little bit more about the award and what the brand of the year award at the 2020 NIL Awards ceremony meant?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we didn't have any expectations. We were happy to be nominated and when we went to the actual show and we listened to all of the big brands that were in consideration, we thought we had a great idea. But when we were announced as the winner, it was validation of what I think we're doing, that a good idea can trump budget sometimes and if there's any knowledge that I could be spoke here, it is really making sure that your idea matches with your brand and you execute it in a way and it'll grow and it'll go viral. And we got a lot of press out of this, well beyond what we were doing. It got picked up by local media, it got picked up by sports channels, it got picked up by USA Today, by ESPN, because it was a unique idea, something that hadn't been done before, and I think that's what we're trying to do is we're a unique brand. We can't do a lot wrong. The name of the place is Hooters. We're a fun place to go. Let's take some risks.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. So when you look at the NIL with college athletes, how does that contribute to building emotional loyalty and ultimately brand love? You talked about that regional, local, national. I would have a feeling that kind of plays into that a good bit.
Speaker 2:It's important.
Speaker 1:I mean.
Speaker 2:NIL is a way for the athlete to get some rewards. First and foremost, we want to make sure that we are, you know, good corporate sponsor and providing a win for them. But For these athletes, it's an opportunity for them to build their own brand equity on our back. We are we're a globally iconic, well-known brand and for someone to utilize us to build their brand and we all win together, it's important. At the end of the day, I want to drive traffic. The reason this NIL opportunity worked is because we're a great place to watch games and we wanted to provide the, the offensive line, with the, with the voice to tell that story.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. You talked a little bit about the NIL partnership you have with John Daley. I'm once familiar with him, His son a little John Daley. John Daley second joined in 22. You know what does the younger kind of daily enjoying what? How does that Enhance the NIL and I think.
Speaker 2:I think it does a couple things for us. First off, john Daley Juniors a, the son of John Daley he doesn't need a lot of introduction, right, your John Daley son and the fact that he is on scholarship at University of Arkansas. And it made a lot of sense for us to take that next step. As he is growing into his own and potentially Looking out opportunities after college, we wanted to partner with him. It made a lot of sense from a brand perspective, it made a lot of sense from an NIL perspective and extending what we're doing beyond football into golf and the college golf, and it made sense for PR. So it got picked up again from a viral standpoint, and you can think of some iconic photos of John, his son and two Hooters girls. That's gonna get picked up because it's a great image.
Speaker 1:Excellent. So you talked about Influencer marketing. You know how does that play a role in kind of again Cultivating stronger customer loyalty for Hooters.
Speaker 2:I mean, influencer marketing is really the hot, the hot buzzword right now. We are looking, continuing to look, for opportunities to partner with influencers that have the ability to get us in front of a new audience that may have never been to a Hooters, may have never had our food, has heard of it but doesn't know a lot about it, and these social media influencers have the ability To reach that audience that I want to reach in an effective, valid way, because you they've already got followers. I think the true opportunity exists to reward the social media influencers by Actualized sales. I'm more than willing to figure out a way to to reimburse someone at their driving sales. Again, with a globally iconic brand like Hooters, I don't need the brand recognition as much as I need the direct sales, and that's what we're charging these influencers to deliver.
Speaker 1:Excellent. So you talked about the measurement a little bit, putting kind of mirrors and seats. You know how do you measure kind of the influence of marketing. The same way measure outcomes, yeah absolutely yeah.
Speaker 2:so I want to create a unique QR code, a unique link that we can Punch into our point of sale and I can want to give the credit to that social media influencer for driving that person in and Purchasing a unique item, and that's my best way I can do it.
Speaker 1:Okay, makes perfect sense. So, when you look at the partnerships that you've had and what is the most successful partnership that you brought to market and what made it so successful, it's hard to start to rank them in terms of success.
Speaker 2:I think each one of them has their their own, their own separate objective of what. What is success I mean? Chase Elliott is a fantastic partnership with us. It's a huge Brand that gets on national TV. Yeah, the Hooters branded number nine car. It gets us in front of a large audience in a unique, fun way with an ambassador who is the most popular driver in the sport. Now you flip the switch to NIL. Nil does the same thing, but I'm on a more local level and on a fun level, with a group of guys who are really egging it on and getting in front of the camera for this for the same time. So they each this like, which is my favorite favorite kid. They all are special in their own way.
Speaker 1:Good answer to that one for sure. When you look at technology very importantly talked about a little earlier make sure the technology works and integrates Can be a complimentary. You know how, how technology or what role has technology played in kind of Hooters, influence or marketing campaigns?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's extremely important, and the reason it's extremely important is its eyeballs, it's tracking, its engagement, and content is king right now and we have a little bit of a step up versus other casual dining restaurants because of the fact that we're an image-based concept. I'm not just showing you a plate of wings, I'm not just showing you sauce or a or a chicken sandwich. You know, we have the iconic Hooters girl, america's cheerleader, is out there Engaging with you at your table in the restaurants and online and on social media. These individual social media influencers are doing a great job for us and telling the story, and technology Helps us track the success of what we're doing from a social standpoint, from a Engagement standpoint, from a sales standpoint. They're all intrinsically linked.
Speaker 1:Okay, when you look at customer data, very important zero-party, third-party, first-party being able to use that to increase engagement and increase personalization. You know how does who do you use the data sets? They have to help determine which influencer campaigns are producing desired results.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it goes back. I think the common denominator is demographic and understanding what. Who is the age? What time of day is that age group coming in? Who is the audience? What is the the male female ratio? What are their interest levels? What do they like to do? What are they like to drink? All that goes into, goes into the formula of who makes sense in terms of picking a social media influencer, and then also how, how we want to tell that message. We keep saying content is king and content is king. How do we tell that message in a relevant manner which makes sense? It's hard to talk UFC If you don't know what you're talking about. Right, you need to understand the sport. You need to understand why we carry that the fights at Hooters and why it's Different to watch a UFC fight at Hooters versus other locations, and because we're credible, we're relevant and we're engaged.
Speaker 1:Okay, when you look at other customer loyalty programs, customer loyalty efforts, are there brands that you admire to find yourself loyal to?
Speaker 2:And so, what do you like?
Speaker 1:about their offerings and in what elements would you like to see applied to the Hoot Club rewards?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think simplicity is the king, not having to navigate and figure out where you're going. I think best in classes for me is Chick-fil-A. It's easy, it's engaging, I understand what I, what I receive. I like the fact that I Can get questions and questionnaires sent to me for free sandwich. It's things. They do make sense and I think that we try. We try and Look at our loyalty program and make it as easy to interact with as possible and fun and to interact with as possible and we're warning, to interact with as possible. So make it easy, make it fun, make it rewarding. And we have a large contingent of customers. You are very loyal to our brand and getting that loyal fan base engaged with our loyalty programs important for us.
Speaker 1:Excellent. And when you look at Kind of customer loyalty and general customer experience, what can loyalty 360 do to help you and your team with your customer loyalty efforts?
Speaker 2:I think the most important thing is sharing best practices. I'm helping us understand, I guess my mentioned earlier. We don't need to create the wheel. The wheel is being constantly reinvented in a smarter, more efficient manner and we spent a lot of time internally, you know, myopically focus on what we're doing, but keeping an eye on technology, keeping an eye on what's working, not only in our industry but outside the casual dining industry of what's working, is a key component of our learning and tweaking and what's new.
Speaker 1:Excellent, perfect. So now we have our quick fire questions. Yeah, I'd like to limit them to one Word or a short phrase. Keeps me in good graces with our content team. What's your favorite word?
Speaker 2:My favorite word is nimble. I think that that incorporates everything we want to be and what I try to be excellent. What's your least favorite word? Strength? I don't like to be boxed in by anything, and the great thing about Hooters is that we don't have a lot of constraints. We can do what we want to do, and Without without apology.
Speaker 1:Okay, what excites you?
Speaker 2:The opportunity to do things that are not expected of us, surprise and delight Our potential guests. Okay.
Speaker 1:What do you find tired or something?
Speaker 2:Rinse and repeat marketing efforts. It's easy to get into a marketing calendar that is that you have March Madness, super Bowl, summer football. How can you keep that alive and spicy every year? Absolutely, yeah. What's your?
Speaker 1:favorite item on the Hooters menu.
Speaker 2:Smoked wings. So we roast and smoke wings in house, and my favorite is smoked wings with our spicy garlic sauce. Okay, what profession other than the one?
Speaker 1:you currently find yourself in. Would you like to attempt?
Speaker 2:I think I would like to be a sports agent in my in my next life. I have the ability to link link an asset with different properties that make sense and that's always seem like a fun, fun area. Okay, what profession would you avoid?
Speaker 1:Probably being an accountant. Good choice who inspired you to be the person that you are today, I'd say my parents.
Speaker 2:My parents gave me the ability to Be confident and go after my dreams and what I want to do, and have always provided me support. Okay, what do you typically think about at the end of the day?
Speaker 1:The ability to disconnect and re-engage with my family when I'm home.
Speaker 2:I think we're so linked to technology and phones and everything else. Being in the moment is important when you know how do you want to be remembered by your friends and family.
Speaker 1:As a good guy who looked out for more than himself. Okay.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us today.
Speaker 1:It was very interesting to hear more about Hooters and also we get more inside some things you have a passion for, bruce, so it was a great interview and the passion you have for the brand and how you've extended kind of touch points with brand are very interesting and I think brands will learn a great deal from that. Okay, thanks for your time. Thank you for your time, absolutely. Thank you everyone for taking the time to listen to me.
Speaker 1:Make sure you join us back for another edition of our Lead and Custom Multiseries and, until then, have a wonderful day.