Uniting Marketing and Training for a New Product Launch

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Launching a new product requires collaboration, strategy and cooperation from team members across an organization. In this episode of Powered by Learning, Learning Solutions Director Jenny Fedullo and Host Susan Cort talk to Judi Bader of Inspire Brands, to learn how training is at the center of any successful product launch.

Show Notes: Senior Director of Learning & Ops Experience at Inspire Brands Judi Bader leads the training that launches new products at Arby’s and other restaurant brands every couple of weeks. The rapid-pace product rollout schedules require discipline, strategy and collaboration to have everything in line before the new product hits the street. Judi shares these and other insights in her interview.

• It’s critical that marketing shares the vision with training for the new product launch and that there is trust between the two groups.

• Develop and commit to your product launch timeline to set the right expectations for all departments involved in the launch and for the learner who needs to communicate about the new product to the customers.

• Build in time for making changes in the launch schedule in case something changes with the product along the way. Being able to adapt quickly is key to keeping to your launch timeline.

Learn more about Arby’s and Inspire Brands

Connect with Judi Bader

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VIEW TRANSCRIPT

Announcer 1: This is Powered By Learning, a podcast designed for learning leaders to hear the latest approaches to creating learning experiences that engage learners and achieve improved performance for individuals and organizations.

Announcer 2: Powered by Learning is brought to you by d'Vinci Interactive. For more than 25 years, d'Vinci has provided custom learning solutions to government agencies, corporations, medical education and certification organizations, and educational content providers. We collaborate with our clients to bring order and clarity to content and technology. Learn more at dvinci.com.

Susan Cort: Hello, and welcome to Powered By Learning. I'm your host Susan Cort. With me today is d'Vinci Learning Solutions Director, Jenny Fedullo. We are pleased to welcome Judi Bader, Senior Director of Learning and Ops Experience at Inspire Brands to talk about uniting marketing and training for a new product launch. Inspire Brands is a multi-brand restaurant company whose portfolio includes more than 11,200 Arby's, Buffalo Wild Wings, Sonic Drive-in, Rusty Taco, and Jimmy John's locations worldwide.

Welcome, Judi. It's nice to chat with you again.

Jenny Fedullo: Hi. Welcome, Judi.

Judi Bader: Hello. It's great being here. Thanks for having me.

Susan: Well, we first connected back in 2017 at the Training Industry Conference and Expo in Raleigh when you appeared in our video blog series. Three years have passed. Tell us a little bit about your career and what you're doing now in your role at Inspire Brands.

Judi: Well, thank you, Susan. Yes, I lead the Learning and Development Strategy for our brand in regards to the design and the deployment for restaurant operational teams, anywhere from supporting our team members through the development programs that are assigned for above restaurant leadership. In addition to that, aside from the day-to-day maintenance of our operational standards manual, which sets the gold standard for our brand to designing innovative learning tools, as well as supporting major brand initiatives that drive improved operations.

Beyond that, I also lead a cross-functional team in the development and the deployment for our national promotions. This group is made up of several key stakeholders at our global support center containing the culinary team, our marketing team, Ops integration, hire management, our legal department, and then our training team, both internally, who designs the materials, as well as our field training team.

Jenny: Wow, that's quite a lot, Judi.

Judi: It is.

Jenny: I'm curious, in preparation for the podcast, I was researching Inspire Brands. To be honest, I was inspired about the company's vision specifically at statements about what they are, mavericks, allies, visionaries, achievers, good citizens. How do those we are statements translate to what you're doing and learning at Arby's?

Judi: That is an interesting topic for discussion. Now, well, Arby's, we've been around for over 50 years. Inspire Brands was recently founded in 2018 and it has been such an incredible journey and one that I'm extremely proud to be a part of. These statements make up our culture within the Inspire Brands support center. It's based in Atlanta, Georgia, and it continues throughout each of the five brands across the country.

However, within each of the individual brands, there are a unique set of values that are represented amongst the restaurant teams. For Arby's, our values are dream big, work hard, get it done, play fair, have fun and make a difference. This is a really great example of how Inspire Brands has empowered the sub-brands successfully by supporting each individual brand's desire to maintain the values that have made them what they are today.

Jenny: Wow. That's so powerful.

Judi: Absolutely.

Jenny: Tell me how you've built a learning culture that promotes a strong brand recognition?

Judi: I had to think about this one a little bit. I'll tell you once it came to me, it really started flowing. And one way we promote our brand recognition within our training is that we talk about the brand on day one, and this really begins with our new employee orientation. As a matter of fact, we just recently recreated our orientation program altogether and really just moving away from that task-oriented approach of filling out paperwork to more of a welcoming approach in which the experience is designed as though you're having someone over for dinner.

Aside from the main meal, in that example, you would show them around the house and introduce them to the family. This really has changed everything for us. Beyond that day one of being a great welcoming experience for our brand, we're designing their whole learning path customized for them, and everything within that training program leads up to what we call our 90-day brand champ workshop. In that workshop, it's really laid out as a roadmap.

The whole workshop is solely focused on bringing out important characteristics of our brand. It's played as if it's a game like a big map on a table and they're playing a game and talk about our values and our culture, the way we inspire smiles with our guests. It's truly a fun way to get team members engaged and see how they add value to our brand.

Jenny: That's so interesting. It's so creative. It definitely would be a welcoming culture there and certainly connects to the brand.

Judi: Oh goodness, as you know, our business model is really designed that we're always bringing in new and delicious sandwiches. It's almost every four to six weeks, you're going to see an Arby's commercial on television.

To keep up with this, we have adopted is what we call our 3, 2, 1 implementation plan and really it's that simple. It's three weeks out prior to a media that's going to start. We begin communicating to our restaurant teams and leadership, letting them know what that upcoming promotion, along with electronic version of all of the training elements that they're going to begin to see.

Then counting down from there two weeks out, we are providing customized e-learning lessons designed for both management, as well as team members. While that's being deployed, our field training teams are holding trainer to trainer webinars that outline the upcoming promotion more specifically, along with any keynotes regarding the kind of state and training that they're going to in turn need to carry out.

Then that last week, there is one more week before they go live, that cascade is taken down one more level in which now those restaurant leaders are then charged with holding hands-on training sessions with our teams. That's probably the most important part of our training model is that the employees have the opportunity to assemble the sandwiches, taste the sandwiches, talk about the sandwiches.

Then really from there, once we've started media, we're not finished, we then go back and we have what we call a chat for execution. It's a checklist basically. The restaurant leaders are going in the restaurants and checking the product, tasting it, and giving feedback on how well it's going.

Susan: Judi, it sounds like you have this down to a science. What does it mean for the team members who are receiving the training and also ultimately for your customers who are on the other end of purchasing these new products?

Judi: Great. For our team members, for them, it's helping them be prepared and get excited about the product. That’s where that hands-on is crucial. They know what's coming, they're better able to talk to the guest and talk about, "Hey, this is my favorite sandwich," or "Have you tried this one? Do you like spicy?" Just by being pulled in before it gets to media, they're going to get excited, engaged, and maybe they're even telling their friends and family about it. "Hey, why don't you come on over to Arby's? We just started this new line of market fresh sandwiches," and that kind of thing.

Susan: I bet it makes them feel more a part of the process and may even help with retention in the long-term

Judi: That is our goal. Absolutely. We talked about how do we incorporate brand into our training programs? That is really important. We want every employee when they start working with Arby's to feel a part of it, to be a part of that big picture and represent the brand because, at the end of the day, when you look at culture, culture is the people that are there. We make up that culture. In our restaurants, each of those team members make up that culture.

Jenny: I know Susan said you certainly have that down to a science with the 3, 2, 1 launch. How much lead time do you have to put that together? I think you said at week two, you're putting e-learning together. How much time do you have before that 3, 2, 1 to get it all going?

Judi: If you could see me right now, you'd see the huge smile on my face. It's tricky. You do have a good visibility into what's coming down the pipeline. Absolutely. I would say on average, we're probably about 10 to 12 weeks before something is going to go live where we're putting everything together. The challenge is that the changes that can happen.

We do start with that 10 to 12-week lead time, but we have to understand that along the way things may happen in the world, right? Things may happen in the industry. We're going to switch gears. If your chief marketing officer comes and says, "Hey, I want to add another pickle to that sandwich," well, we're going to have to add a pickle and we're going to find a way to make sure all the training and the cascaded approach matches up and that we're delivering an accurate message.

Jenny: As a fellow corporate learning and development professional, I know how important it is to forge those partnerships with other departments, especially in the business you're in with, how quickly you need to react when you're adding that pickle. With a new product launch, partnering with marketing is probably pretty critical, I'm sure. Can you tell us about that partnership?

Judi: Oh my goodness. You are so correct. This relationship is absolutely essential. It really is an age-old challenge in many organizations, really, in the push and the pull between marketing and operations. There's always been a question of, "Who's really driving the brand?" With that, I'm really pleased to share that we have really formed a strong partnership with our marketing team leads. I really just feel like this is the result of constant communication and collaboration when we're planning for national product introductions.

If I had to pick one word that I felt was the core to that success of this relationship, it would be the word trust. In operations, we need to be able to trust that our marketing partners will take in into consideration the day-to-day challenges of our restaurants when they're designing that marketing strategy. Then, in turn, marketing needed to believe that our restaurant teams would do their absolute best to deliver that product the way they intended and to serve our guests in that way from day one.

Jenny: What would you say you absolutely need from marketing to build a successful learning strategy? We've worked with a number of leading organizations during product launches, understand the role marketing plays, but from your perspective, what does that need that you can't be successful without? Maybe you said it was trust, right?

Judi: No, I think trust is definitely a good runner-up, but a word that comes to mind for me on this question is vision. What I mean by that is that my team, we absolutely want to understand the story that our marketing team wants to tell our guests. Once we understand that, we can then weave that information throughout the learning elements appropriately based on that audience.

For example, when you start that cascaded process and you're looking at those leadership conversations when you're introducing that product, you want to know more of the why’s. Why are we changing to that new box or that new product? We already have wraps on the menu, why are we adding another brand? We really need to give more information for those guys.

Then, of course, when it comes to the restaurant management, yes, they still want that information, but by the time we get to cashier training or even the person in the backline who is preparing the sandwiches, they might not need quite as much information, although there might be some parts that would be helpful.

Jenny: I like that, understand the story marketing ones to tell the guests. In a learning organization, that's what we do when we put together training is we want to know what does the end, the audience member, the learner, need to know and do. It's very similar. It certainly connects. The brand is unique at Inspire Brands. I'm curious if there are best practices that are shared across all the brands as you approach a new product launch.

Judi: Oh, absolutely. From day one, as new brands join the Inspire team, we began sharing best practices right away. I think it's because we're trainers, we're always looking for new and innovative ways to engage our teams during the learning process. It seems like that just made sense. However, we have found that the concept of taking a shared approach and actually doing it can be a bit challenging. This is because our business models are slightly different.

While there are many things that we're definitely going to come together on and gain some efficiencies with, there are special modifications that we need to make an effort to ensure that our learning is authentic to each of our individual brands.

Susan: What do you mean by authentic, Judi? Can you elaborate on that a little bit?

Judi: I'd be happy to. A recent example, we're in the process of rolling out a very technical program. It's a training program that's going to teach our operators how to place their weekly [unintelligible] orders or how to build an employee schedule. The [unintelligible] they're using today is going to be different, and Inspire Brands holistically, it's going to use the same platform for all of the different--

Buffalo Wild Wings and Arby's will have access to the same platform. However, when I need to develop training on how to build and schedule at Arby's, it's going to be very different than somebody in Buffalo Wild Wings because they're more of a full-service restaurant. Their employee model was different. They have waitresses and bartenders. In our business model, we have cashiers and backline operators, and so forth. So that's where it just begins to take on a little bit of a different tone.

Jenny: Judi, what's the best advice or perhaps the lesson learned that you can give other L&D professionals who are responsible for training during a new product launch?

Judi: I believe it's creating an environment of trust, collaboration, and flexibility. To ensure an effective launch for any new product, it's going to take some full planning regarding the training elements that are to be developed as well as that training approach. What I learned early on was that while planning a well-laid-out timeline or with everything was scheduled and happen, and by noon, not everyone saw that as a benefit.

As a matter of fact, they saw the timeline as handcuffs. Yet, if we didn't have a project plan, the likelihood of us getting these materials developed and deployed on time would be very risky. While I couldn't ditch that timeline altogether, I was able to gain support through building the plan just more collaboratively. Then in that way, in the event the plan changed, we could come back and renegotiate our options from there together.

Susan: Regardless of industry, yours is a very specific one, but do you think these same principles apply regardless of what kind of a product launch?

Judi: I do, I really do. It's really just about making the connections and you go into any project and you have your own experiences, your own expertise, and your own thoughts on what you think is going to make it work. But when you get in a room with colleagues that are in different departments, maybe it's IT or human resources, and they're going to have a little bit of a different take on what the outcome needs to be. We need to really build that ability to listen to each other and then find a way to collaborate, because at the end of the day, we all have the same goal and that's to make that, whatever that product is, launch successfully and, in turn, get the results that we're looking for.

Susan: That's good advice. Thanks so much, Judi.

Judi: I've really enjoyed speaking with you guys today.

Susan: Thank you. Jenny, what are some of the key takeaways from our discussion today with Judi?

Jenny: I think I alluded to this during the conversation, but I loved her one word that she said when I asked the question about what do you absolutely need from marketing. She said vision, and that they have to understand the story marketing wants to tell the guest, and how that ties so much to what we do in the learning and development field, is we've got to make sure we understand what the learner needs to know and do. I think that was my biggest takeaway.

Susan: That and I think she said trust was another important word. It sounds like they definitely have that at Inspire Brands because it touches so many different departments when they do these product launches. Well, thanks, Jenny, and many things to Judi Bader, Senior Director of Learning & Ops Experience at Inspire Brands for joining us today.

If you have any questions about what we talked about today, you can reach out to us on d'Vinci social channels through our website dvinci.com, or by emailing us at poweredbylearning@dvinci.com.

Announcer 2: Powered by Learning is brought to you by d'Vinci Interactive. For more than 25 years, d'Vinci has provided custom learning solutions to government agencies, corporations, medical education and certification organizations, and educational content providers. We collaborate with our clients to bring order and clarity to content and technology. Learn more at dvinci.com.