INSPIRE BRANDS CCO, Chris Fuller on Managing Multiple Brands, Modern Approaches to CSG, and Why Empathy is the Silver Bullet for Resilient Cultures

Chris Fuller is the Chief Communications Officer of Inspire Brands whose portfolio includes Arby’s, Baskin-Robbins, Buffalo Wild Wings, Dunkin’, Jimmy John’s, Rusty Taco, and SONIC Drive-In restaurants. Chris’ prior experiences include stints at Yum! Brands and Pizza Hut as well as an early position as press secretary for the US House of Representatives.

In this conversation with Lippe Taylor CEO Paul Dyer, Chris dishes out advice on managing an array of disparate brands that align towards a singular mission, how to properly execute CSG campaigns, and how a culture of empathy is the key to building resilient teams.

Here are some key takeaways from this conversation with Chris.

The key to effective CSG is transparency.

One of Inspire's brand tenets is being action-oriented, and as such, they do an impressive amount of social purpose work. Chris claims that listing out all CSG plans, actions, and impact in a public forum is critical in ensuring success. Inspire publishes everything from the number of jobs they're creating to the economic impact they're providing to the communities they serve. This type of transparency brings a high level of accountability to ESG plans that otherwise could remain on a shelf.

Data can inform intuition.

A common query among marketing leaders is how to become data-driven while remaining in touch with the kind of creative intuition that drives brilliant marketing ideas. According to Chris, the two are intertwined. Chris claims that the data and analytics his best-in-class team is able to provide, enable and inform his and his team's creative intuitions instead of stifling them. This is the left brain, right brain balance that's critical for marketing leaders to grasp.

Stay flexible, but encourage in-person meetings.

Chris claims that during COVID, flexibility was key to enabling his people to adapt and pivot to the major changes they faced. Fast forward two years later, Chris and his team had to correct some of the imbalances caused by their remote work agreements, specifically the lack of team cohesion that can occur with an over-reliance on ZOOM and a lack of in-person meetings.

To counter this, he introduced a program called In Good Company, where the sole purpose was to get his people back to meeting in person regularly while remaining flexible on remote work policies. Chris, like many leaders, understands that there's a magic that occurs with face-to-face meetings that cannot be replicated. Chris even went so far as to say that the biggest business decisions and innovations occur during in-person meetings.

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Produced by Simpler Media