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00:00I had no idea Dolly Parton was a huge Mexican pizza fan.
00:03We did something with Paris Hilton, like the volcano menu was her favorite thing.
00:08Had no, no idea.
00:10LeBron James and Taco Tuesday.
00:20So what I love about this panel is the contrast between Taco Bell,
00:25which is one brand, very, you know, useful, right?
00:30I'm not saying, but I mean, it's like a younger brand and it's one brand.
00:34And Hanes, which regroups many legacy brands.
00:38But you both are very, very close to your fans and have a very similar approach.
00:44And so we're going to start with one example, which I think is very telling,
00:48is how Taco Bell worked with LeBron James on bringing back the Taco Tuesday.
00:55Freeing, liberating the Taco Tuesday.
00:57Freeing Taco Tuesday, yes.
00:58Tell us about this campaign, because I heard about it even in France.
01:01Even though we don't have Taco Bell, I heard about the Taco Tuesday.
01:04Yeah, well, first I got to ask, are there any Taco Bell fans in the house?
01:08Okay, okay, we got some of my people in the house.
01:11That was a really fun one.
01:13And I think one of the things that we believe in as a brand is actions over words.
01:17You can't just say what you're about.
01:19You actually have to do something and take a step that shows your fans and consumers
01:23that you're going to put your money where your mouth is.
01:25So that year, we wanted to do something that gave taco culture back to all of the people
01:31that own it.
01:32Because humbly, we're not the only ones that make, celebrate, and sell tacos.
01:36So the idea to liberate Taco Tuesday and free the trademark for anybody to use was kind
01:41of the idea.
01:42And I got us thinking on, well, who's a big fan?
01:45Who has tried to do this?
01:46And just so happens, King James himself had tried to celebrate Taco Tuesday or liberate
01:52Taco Tuesday on his own unsuccessfully.
01:55So what a fun partnership for us to actually help one of the biggest athletes in the world
02:00do something he couldn't do on his own.
02:02And that's how the campaign was born.
02:04And at the time, it was our biggest campaign ever in 2023.
02:08Wow.
02:09Amazing.
02:09Amazing.
02:10And one of the things that you guys have to do is really move fast to kind of capture
02:16the zeitgeist.
02:17And there is one instance, of course, when you're a legacy group like Hanes, it's probably
02:23harder to move fast.
02:24But one instance where you moved very, very fast was with Kendrick Lamar's song Mustard.
02:31How did that happen?
02:33You actually created Mustard right on time by the Grammys.
02:37Like, how did you make it happen?
02:39Yeah, sure.
02:40So yeah, last year, you're referring to last year around before the Super Bowl and the
02:44Grammys, Kendrick Lamar had a great album with the song, Turn the TV Off.
02:48And his producer, whose name is Mustard, was DJ Mustard.
02:52And he shouted, Mustard, in one of his songs, much better than I just did.
02:57And we said, well, we make a Mustard.
02:59And by the way, and this guy Mustard, his name is Dijon.
03:03He's actually a big fan of Heinz.
03:05We got in touch with him.
03:05And we moved very quickly, and we partnered with him to create a limited edition Mustard
03:09that is a new flavor of Mustard that we dropped.
03:12And we came out with a spot and hacked that moment.
03:14But I think it's interesting.
03:16You talk about we're a big company at Kraft Heinz with 70 brands across 50 categories.
03:20So a lot of different brands that have been around for 100, 150 years, but we can still
03:24move with speed and agility.
03:27Even down to the fact this last week with all the World Cup excitement going on, I don't
03:31know if you guys saw that a lot of international people coming into the US are trying to smuggle
03:37out ranch dressing, which is one of the best American delicacies I would see.
03:42And so the TSA at the airport security, you're seeing bottles of dressing confiscated because
03:47you can't bring it on the flight because it's a liquid.
03:49So within 24 hours, we said, hey, well, we have these little 3.4-out sachets of ranch, made
03:55them available in a collective in a clear case, a carry-on case, and giving them out to consumers
04:00so they can take the equivalent of a bottle home with them that still clears through security.
04:04So with craft ranch dressing.
04:07So there's a lot of opportunities as you think of these big brands where you can still be
04:10listening and participating culture pretty quickly by just being agile and moving quick.
04:15It's not just about famous people, right?
04:18Working with fans is also something that you do super well.
04:21There is one example that I thought about was how Ori Ida, which is one of the brands that
04:27are part of, that is part of Hanes.
04:30And Ori Ida chose a young basketball player who is not famous, obviously, but his great-grandfather
04:37invented the tater tot.
04:39So first of all, can you tell us what is a tater tot?
04:42Because maybe it's something you don't know.
04:44Yeah, so it's probably a more complicated story to this audience.
04:46So we'll start with a couple of education here for the international audience.
04:48I'd love to know the background on the tater tot.
04:50So here's the thing.
04:51So first, another American delicacy is the tater tot, which is like a fried potato
04:57puff.
04:58Delicious.
04:58You dip it.
04:59It's crispy on the outside, soft in the middle.
05:01Delicious.
05:02They're amazing.
05:03We have a brand called Ori Ida that makes frozen tater tots.
05:07And around the college basketball tournament in the U.S., March Madness is very big.
05:12When that was coming up last year, there was a player on one of the teams, Brigham Young
05:17University, this player Richie Saunders.
05:20It was discovered in a post-game interview that his great-grandfather invented the tater tot
05:25and was actually one of the founders of Arida.
05:27And he was a star basketball player on the team.
05:30So we're like, this is crazy.
05:32We got it.
05:32So we reached out to him very quickly.
05:34We partnered with him and we built a whole program around it where people were holding
05:38up bags of tater tots in the stadium as they made the run.
05:40We made a tot clock where after every game for 35 minutes, we would give away free tater
05:45tots and literally drove more conversation than many official partners through by just
05:50hopping on this moment and leaning into that insight.
05:53Do you have like a team of people who search through the internet to find the right fans
05:57that are going to be like so compelling like that?
06:00I mean, you know how this works.
06:01It's just, it's real time.
06:02Most of the best ideas that I'm sure Taylor, I'd love to hear from you too.
06:05Like it's a lot of the best ideas are unbriefed, right?
06:08It's about just having a real fluid conversation.
06:10We have group text chats.
06:12We have our agencies on speed dial and just listening.
06:15And you see and participate in culture day to day.
06:19And you see things and say, hey, is there something we can do here?
06:21And just having that real time discussion.
06:23No, I would just build on Todd's point.
06:25I mean, we have a pretty big social infrastructure at Taco Bell.
06:28We have a team of 21-year-olds who run everything on social.
06:32But to Todd's point, that creates the muscle to listen.
06:34But the best ideas just come from that spark of an insight.
06:37Somebody in the hallway, hey, I saw this thing.
06:39What should we do about it?
06:40Or just like a hunch.
06:41I love that tater tot example, by the way.
06:43It's a good one.
06:43It's good.
06:44It's fun.
06:45And there are also examples of like superstars.
06:47I mean, very big stars were actually also like genuine fans.
06:52And sometimes they take, you know, social media, they use social media to advocate for
06:57things such as the Mexican pizza.
06:59That's right.
07:00So what happened there?
07:02Dolly Parton, apparently.
07:04Yeah.
07:04I think one of the really fun things about Taco Bell, and I saw some Taco Bell people in
07:09the house, is it's one of those brands that's a great democratizer.
07:12Because everybody, no matter where you are, where you live, where you're from, no matter
07:17how famous you are, Taco Bell is just one of those things that if you were a Taco Bell fan,
07:21you share that with everyone.
07:23So when we turn out and do big campaigns like the Mexican pizza, I always think it's shocking
07:27on who comes out of the woodwork.
07:29I had no idea Dolly Parton was a huge Mexican pizza fan.
07:33We did something with Paris Hilton, like the volcano menu was her favorite thing.
07:37Had no idea.
07:39LeBron James and Taco Tuesday.
07:41We just signed and are about to launch a new campaign with Fernando Mendoza, who's the number
07:46one draft pick, no idea that Miami Taco Bell and the Crunchwrap were his favorite things
07:50growing up.
07:51So I think that's the beautiful part about the brand is it's something that a lot of people
07:55have in common.
07:56It humanizes people that seem more famous, and it makes the brand really accessible.
08:01And so what about like working with some identified talents?
08:06Like for instance, yesterday I moderated a chat with the executive from Pepsi, who was
08:12talking about working with an Oscar-winning filmmaker to direct the latest Pepsi campaign
08:18during the Super Bowl.
08:19I wondered how is it important also for you to have this kind of filmmaker vision when
08:24you're working on campaigns?
08:27Yeah, I think a lot of it is the, you know, over the years you have the pleasure of working
08:31with a lot of great directors, filmmakers.
08:33I think you're referring to when we did the Pepsi Super Bowl halftime show, this thing
08:37called The Call, where it was about Dre and Snoop and Eminem coming together.
08:40But when you work with a lot of filmmakers over the years, and no matter what it is, what
08:44we're doing at Kraft Heinz or beyond, like it's really all about just great storytelling
08:49at the end of the day and making sure that how when you connect these things to culture,
08:53you know, it doesn't always have to be a 30 second spot.
08:56A lot of times it's a digital piece of content that travels a lot further.
09:00Sometimes it's just a key visual that's shot so interestingly.
09:03And so there's a lot of craft that goes into making these things travel as well.
09:08And so also the other thing that's important is to get feedback, as we were saying, from,
09:13you know, the users, like the people.
09:16Like what are the elements that you have that helps you kind of track the reactions from
09:22fans and from people on the internet?
09:25Yeah, I mean, I'll give my perspective.
09:27I think the first and foremost thing is, listen to your team.
09:30Your team, my team is more plugged into culture and what people are selling about the brand
09:35and have a more diverse point of view than I do on how people are thinking and receiving us.
09:39You absolutely have to trust and listen to your team because they're going to bring you insights
09:43and ideas that you maybe hadn't thought of.
09:45I think the second part is you also have to be a student of your own brand.
09:50You've got to go and read.
09:51What's going on in the comments when you have a piece of content?
09:54What are people actually saying about your brand on Reddit?
09:57It's a very dark place, but it's a great place.
09:59Go deep.
10:00Go figure out what are the real conversations because a lot of the times as brand builders,
10:04Todd, as you know, we may have an idea on how we want consumers to receive us.
10:08But at the end of the day, that might be our intuition but not what's happening.
10:11And I would say the other part is like for our categories that are so big, everything is a focus
10:17group.
10:18Everybody will have an opinion on your brand, what you're doing right, what you're not doing right.
10:22And you really have to be like humble and open your ears and listen.
10:26And I found some of the best insights about the brand from talking to parents at my kids dance practice.
10:32You get a lot of great insights and raw feedback from that.
10:35Yeah, and I think it's one of those things that as a brand builder, you need to,
10:38there's a lot of formal tools of, oh, we'll get insights reports and we'll do focus groups and we'll talk
10:43to people.
10:44The good stuff is, as you said, like way beyond all that.
10:48And I think just being curious, go into the Reddit chat room, go into TikTok and just scroll around,
10:53see and understand and have these social listening tools.
10:57You know, you can really see very quickly how your brand is being consumed.
11:02If there's new things, there's a lot of even things where we're learning about some of our categories,
11:06how they use them differently.
11:08We have a brand in Jell-O that's been around for 130 plus years.
11:12And when you think of like someone making a Jell-O mold, that's like a very old school behavior.
11:16What we're finding on TikTok is as new generations discover it,
11:19they're mixing it with yogurt and having flavored color, you know, different flavored yogurts.
11:24They're mixing it with Cool Whip and making, freezing it into ice cream.
11:28There's a lot of ways using it as an ingredient brand.
11:30So as you start to look at these behaviors, figure out how to inform them into your business moving forward.
11:35A lot of the best learning is just by being a student of the world and seeing what's out there.
11:39And I mean, we were talking about, you know, having this kind of emotional bond with the fans.
11:44And the other thing that tends to work is also to kind of shock the fans, right?
11:49To go beyond what they expected.
11:51How do you achieve that?
11:54Yeah, I think it's a balance between two things and I'll give an example.
11:58And I think this is the balance that as marketers and brand burles, we always have to walk.
12:03I think part of our responsibility when you are the steward of big brands and culture, Todd,
12:08like you are as well and like Taco Bell is, you have to have a strong point of view on
12:12where the brand should be
12:13and play a role in culture.
12:15And for Taco Bell, we really strive to and believe that we should be creating culture, not just borrowing from
12:21it.
12:21And creating things and innovating things that are going to inspire people to do the same.
12:25And then that might be your agenda.
12:28But then you also got to listen to what consumers say as well.
12:30So I think it's a balance of those two things.
12:32And I think when you get those right, that's when you really surprise fans.
12:35So I don't know if anybody had seen Live Moss Live, which is our big show.
12:39There's a nod.
12:41I knew there was somebody that actually watched the whole thing.
12:43I'm sorry that you did.
12:44But it actually came from two things.
12:46One, we wanted to do something that was big, bold, and disruptive that put us on the map as being
12:51the most innovative brand in the world.
12:53I mean, we're a top ten innovative brand and fast company.
12:56We wanted to do something like that.
12:57But how to do that actually came from Reddit.
13:00So on Reddit, before we launch a new product, somebody would leak what the product was.
13:07And so that kind of pissed us off, honestly, for a while.
13:11But there was something there.
13:12And what we found is the hardcore Taco Bell fans just wanted the inside track.
13:17They wanted to know before anybody else what was going on.
13:21And so we said, well, fine.
13:22Why don't we just share what all of our innovation, all of our big ideas with our closest group of
13:26friends and doing it in a really innovative way.
13:28Our first couple of years were like an Apple keynote.
13:31Last year was our version of an award show.
13:33So that's a great example of what we were trying to do as a brand and then listening to consumers.
13:37And when you get those two things together, that's where you get something that really takes off in culture.
13:41And so we talked about looking online to kind of get a sense of the reactions and stuff.
13:48And what about using AI to kind of help you also creatively?
13:52Do you do it?
13:54Yeah, I think AI is increasingly going to be changing the forefront of marketing and how we approach things, both
14:01as an internal tool from a development standpoint.
14:03We're working on a tool right now called Tastemaker that we can make a piece of creative in anywhere from
14:09eight hours, what would have typically taken eight weeks, right?
14:12As you think about the creative development process and so how you can develop custom content at scale.
14:17But I also think, you know, as you look at AI, I think we talk a lot about these organic
14:21channels like Reddit, like, you know, YouTube organic with creators, like a lot of these organic channels are going to
14:28matter even more in the future.
14:30As you think of where these LLMs are scraping and where they're getting data, they're not looking at paid media,
14:35right?
14:35And so what they say about your brand, how your brand shows up, when someone says, what's a good restaurant
14:40I should eat at for under $5?
14:42What's something I should have for my meal on Friday night with my family?
14:46You know, you need to make sure your brand's organically showing up.
14:49And so participating organically in the right channels like the Reddits, like the YouTubes, like, you know, through your own
14:55social owned earned and operated channels, I think is going to be increasingly important.
15:00Yeah, I got my partner in crime here, our chief digital and technology officer in the front row.
15:05And I think one of the things that we're working on, honestly, is using AI to actually make our guest
15:10experience more human.
15:11So what we're finding is using AI in the drive-through, what it's doing is it's taking the weight and
15:17the burden from our team members that's the most stressful part of their job.
15:20Keying in whatever your order is, making sure that Todd's bean burrito, which is a high maintenance order, gets entered
15:26in accurately and correctly.
15:28So using AI to do those things to give the team member time and space so when Todd shows up
15:33to the window, they can have a great interaction.
15:35They can have a human moment with you and say, hey, Todd, you know what, have you ever tried your
15:38bean burrito with this?
15:39Or, hey, have you tried this new thing? And voice AI for us in the drive-through is a way
15:43that's allowed our team members to honestly be more human.
15:46So that's an example of how we're actually applying it.
15:48Just so you get it right, it's a Crunchwrap Supreme and a Mexican pizza for me. That's the go-to.
15:53Yeah, I know. We know.
15:57So I just want to wrap up on something that's a bit thoughtful.
16:00I want you to kind of reflect on the cultural trends right now that you're seeing.
16:04Maybe you've been looking at sessions here at Cannes Lions.
16:08What are the things that interest you about the future of your jobs, like how it's going to impact the
16:13way you work?
16:14You're ending on just a really light, light question.
16:17Sorry.
16:18I'll go first. I'll go first.
16:21I think looking at a lot of the work at the Pelle, talking to a lot of brands and other
16:26leaders, I think the bar for brands and our responsibility to have real meaningful relationships with consumers is higher than
16:34it's ever been.
16:34And it links a little bit to your AI question. I think when it was programmatic before and now it's
16:39AI, I think there can be this tendency for brand builders and brands to get too tactical and focus on
16:46lower funnel.
16:47And I think what Gen Z and Gen Alpha who's coming up, what they want is they want to really
16:52understand what you believe in and do your values align with them.
16:55And if you tell me that you believe in creativity like Taco Bell and I'm a creative person, are you
17:00really showing up that way? Are you inspiring me to do the same?
17:02So I think the bar for brands to be real, honestly, is higher than it's ever been. That's my takeaway.
17:08Yeah. I think just to build on that, I think the role of brands is going to matter more and
17:12more increasingly to consumers, especially as they get information in different ways, the shorthand of how you discover new products,
17:20new brands, new things of that.
17:21And so I think what's interesting is the concept of brand building hasn't changed for the last 20, 30, 40
17:26years.
17:26There's just the canvas that you paint on is changing very rapidly in terms of the media channels, in terms
17:32of the way you interact with consumers.
17:33And that's what I think is the most exciting and inspiring, especially being here and you walk the Palais, you
17:38see the work, trying to find new ways to engage, connect with consumers, become the content itself, be organically.
17:45You know, consumers are going to more opt into brands. There's going to be more of a tribalism like you're
17:50already seeing around brands like Taco Bell, like Heinz, where fans really seek out content from those brands.
17:56And I think that's going to be an increasing trend. We're going to see a lot more in the future.
18:01Amazing. So my last question is going to be for you, Taylor. When are you bringing Taco Bell to France?
18:07We need Taco Bell on the cross.
18:09Well, I don't know. If there's anybody that's French that thinks Taco Bell can work, I mean, that's a live
18:14fire focus group.
18:15I think we maybe have one taker, two, three, four.
18:18Of course it would work.
18:18Okay, well, that's, you know, we'll work on it.
18:20It seems like there's some pull.
18:21Taco on the baguette.
18:22Taco on the baguette.
18:23That's a big idea. Just think about it.
18:25Here, it happened on this stage.
18:27Thank you guys so much.
18:29Thank you, everybody.
18:30Thank you, everybody.