[piano intro] - Hello, I'm Nido Qubein, welcome to "Side By Side."

My guest today changed the way we order pizza.

That's right.

He was hired as the Chief Marketing Officer at Domino's Pizza.

He led the reinvention of the world's largest pizza chain.

And today he is Domino's President and Chief Operating Officer.

We're talking about big brands, technology, and transformation with Mr. Russell Weiner.

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You make it feel like home.

Ashley HomeStore, this is home.

- [Announcer] For over 60 years, the everyday leaders at the Budd Group have been committed to providing smart, customized facility solutions to our clients and caring for the communities we serve.

[soft music] - [Announcer] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors, locally.

Thanks to our teams.

We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.

[upbeat music] ♪ - So welcome to "Side By Side," I'm glad to see you here.

Did you bring some Domino's gift cards with you?

- I do.

We got a bunch of pizza in the back, but only if you ask me easy questions.

Or you are not allowed to-- - Okay.

[laughs] Well listen, you have literally changed the way pizza is served.

At Domino's you are the largest chain, still the largest chain?

- [Russell] Yeah.

Yeah.

- [Nido] And it is all over the world.

- All over 90 countries, all over the world.

- [Nido] More than 90 countries?

- Yeah.

More than 90 countries.

- [Nido] How many Domino's stores?

- Over 18,000.

- [Nido] 18,000 Of them.

- Yeah.

More than that.

- [Nido] I remember when Domino's was started.

I remember Mr. Monaghan.

I'm a customer of Domino's.

You really not in the pizza business, are you?

I mean, you're really in the technology business.

- There's a great quote that talks about that we're a pizza company, wrapped up in a technology company, wrapped up in a marketing company.

And I think we're a little bit of everything.

At the end of the day we sell a product that other folks sell.

I think we do it better than everybody on the product and on the service side of it, but still at the same time there needs to be, what I call a tie breaker.

So when someone's hungry, why would they pick pizza versus burgers?

And when they pick pizza, why would they pick Domino's?

And so you need to give people other reasons, in addition to just value and product quality.

And I think when people are buying Domino's today and they put that box here, let's say there was a box between us, that box says a little bit about who they are.

And I think people want to make sure that they make the right impression that today when technology is abound and everywhere, when you put a box of Domino's there, you're not just saying that I'm buying pizza.

You're saying that I know technology, maybe I ordered this via Twitter.

Even though I probably ordered it on the phone, right?

And so yeah, we try to give people reasons for being, other than reason for eating, I'm sorry.

Other than just the product and the service.

- [Announcer] Yeah.

But what I meant by technology that, they are the way the orders are taken, the way the process is made, the way the supply chain works for you.

All of that has to have significant technology systems, right?

- [Russell] Yeah.

- And you're the President COO, or the Chief Operating Officer of Domino's, what's the hardest part of your job?

Well, we just got through a pandemic, right.

And so I think, the pandemic well it still kind of going on.

But I'll put that aside because hopefully that's only happening once in our lifetime.

- [Nido] But the pandemic should have been good for you, right?

I mean, people stayed at home and they had to eat.

- Certainly from a business perspective, people were home and they needed a delivery.

For our 350,000 team members around the world, it was tough.

I mean, you're right, it's busy, It's busy when you're maybe scared to come to work.

Again this is the beginning of the pandemic, right?

When you're next to a hot pizza oven and you've got a mask on and you're worried about, "Hey, we do all the right testing, but still you worry.'

And probably you don't have the amount of staff that you need because of everything that's going on.

So it's kind of understaffed a little bit, nervous during the beginning of the pandemic, and that really is my biggest, I don't want to say worry.

It's just my biggest concern.

my biggest, thank you.

My biggest piece of gratitude.

Our frontline employees are at the front of whether it's the pandemic, if there were hurricanes down in New Orleans, wherever we like to say we're the last to close, - Yes.

- And the first to open.

- And so we're there in the service of all those who serve.

- Yes.

In the midst of whatever calamities.

- And we're going to be there, we're going to give the pizza away.

And there's a big responsibility, and that lies within the communities, where these frontline employees are.

- [Nido] But Russell I mean, there are a million pizza companies out there, right.

And any location, any city there's so many pizza companies.

One can order from here, here, here, or here.

Many of them have caught up with the Domino's technology process.

Now days you can go online order.

You can order through Uber or whatever.

Uber Eats, et cetera, et cetera.

What is it that really differentiates Domino's besides size?

- [Russell] Yeah.

Oh, I think a lot of things.

And I'll get back to the technology piece in a second.

But I think, what differentiates brands is a point of view.

And I think we have a very different point of view than maybe a lot of restaurants do.

If one were to close your eyes and think of a commercial, and I know there are no commercials because we're on public broadcasting system.

So we're going to have to stretch and just pretend for two seconds, you're not watching PBS.

And if you thought of a restaurant commercial, you probably are thinking of food shots and here's a new product and now we've got double pepperoni, it's [murmurs] and here's the price.

So there is no brand story.

The story is just about a limited time offer that frankly anyone can do.

And while we launched new products, I always talk about, we try to do innovation, not spinnovation, right?

What spinnovation is, "Oh, here's water, now it's got water with lemon, now it's water with bubbles, now it's water with cherry, now it's got vitamins in it."

Real innovation is a substantial change that allows the product to be there forever and not just three months.

So we try to keep our product innovation to true innovation and not spinnovation.

And a lot of the innovation we do, is around technology.

So you're right, there are a lot of pizza companies, a lot of restaurant companies, how do we make the ordering process better?

How do we make the delivery process?

How do we make the customer interaction better through technology?

What's our point of view?

We have a tagline, it's probably not the most famous tagline.

You're not going to have it at, it's not going to be a "Let's do it."

Or something that's going to be on a hat.

Our tagline is, "Oh, yes we did."

And because we approach every thing that we do, whereas we want people to think, after they see the commercial, after they see what we've done to say, "Oh my God.

The Domino's actually do that."

'Cause it changed their perception about the brand for a positive.

And our answer to it has to be, "Oh yes we did."

And if the answer isn't an "Oh yes, we did," we don't do it.

And so the, oh yes we did moments are things we try to create.

And I think, that's what we do in pizza.

I think that's what companies need to do in general, right?

There's a sea of sameness everywhere.

Today there's a lot of doubt in, there's always been doubt in brands.

But there's doubt kind of throughout in society.

So if actions speak louder than words, and so what can you do to change the frame of what people think about your brand and have them raise their hand, so they want to be associated with the brand.

So when the box is here between us versus another box is not just because the food is great.

- I eat the pizza as long as it's hot and tasty and good, but the innovation lies in the systems that support the making that pizza, the delivery of that pizza and the service experience I would have.

- [Russell] Yeah.

Exactly.

And they come line up really interesting.

So for example, one of the things we are known for is our pizza tracker, right?

Pizza tracker tells you who's making your pizza, tells you who put it in the oven, who's checking your pizza, who's delivering your pizza.

Now that originally was a system.

We have a point of sale system and everyone needs to log into their station.

I'm making the pizzas today, am delivering the pizza blah, blah, blah.

And that was really to help us figure out, who is in the store doing what and help the general manager make sure what we call, aces were in their places.

But what we realized was, we're gathering this information.

What can we do with this information?

How do we make the experience more personal with our customers, I think they want to know who's coming to their house and delivering their pizza.

Who's making their pizza.

And so something that was started from an operational standpoint, we turned it inside out and made it a marketing idea.

And I think that's really something I urge companies to do.

There are a lot of good ideas there, but we see them as a supply chain thing.

Turn it inside out and say, "I already have this thing established.

Do I need to create something new or do I have something already that's part of my core that I can turn it inside out and I can market it to the world."

- [Nido] Where did you learn all this stuff.

Did you learn PepsiCo where you served for many years?

You were at Cornell, NYU, where did you learn it?

- I have it interesting that-- - You went to Cornel Undergrad, NYU Grad?

- NYU while I worked part-time.

- And you worked at PepsiCo for how many years?

- I worked at Pepsi about 11 years, I've been a Domino's 13 plus.

The interesting thing, so I've started my career in marketing, I won't bore you with the details of how I got into it, but I will tell you, I graduated at Cornell without taking marketing.

[laughs] So really, I feel like.

- [Nido] What was your undergraduate degree?

- [Russell] Well, I changed a few.

[laughs] - Was that because you were an excellent student and you're exploring, or did you have difficulty in the subjects?

- No.

Well, I think at least when I grew up, you kind of were supposed to know what you wanted to do when you were in the second trimester maybe.

[chuckles] And so I always thought I was going to be a doctor and went to school, did okay in that area.

But it was clear that there were other people around me who were meant for that and not me and so, - [Nido] But you are a Doctor.

You are a Doctor of pizza.

- [Russell] Maybe.

Yeah.

- Yes.

- And then, so on my list, if you're not a doctor, you're a lawyer.

So we didn't have a big, I didn't have a big purview back then.

And so I ended up being a political science major and I was gonna go to Law School, but I had an internship and I just didn't enjoy the internship.

I had done some reading and I don't know if this is true, I wish I could remember the article.

But it said something like, "If the rate of people becoming lawyers increased at the rate it had been at least my three or four years coming out of school."

Something like, "By the year 2050, everyone in the world would be a lawyer."

So I said, "Okay, I have to figure out something that I really want to do."

And I just got lucky at the last minute being exposed to a friend of mine who was in a marketing class who asked for help with a project.

So it was senior week, I was done.

He had a couple of finals and he said, "Hey, can you help me with this paper?"

He was a marketing major.

So I said, "Okay, I'll help you."

And I helped him with his paper.

And I felt like, "Oh my God, this is what I want to do."

I had already graduated college.

And so to make a short story long, not everyone wants to, I don't care where you go to school.

They don't want to hire you if you haven't majored in something.

And so I started as entry level.

- What was your first job?

- Well, it's a long story.

Actually what I did at first is I went abroad for a year to Israel.

And I had an internship with the government and I worked in marketing for a little magazine 'cause I wanted to get some marketing experience.

But I went there, one is I wanted to kind of see the world but two, I wanted to escape the pressure of my parents who said, "Hey, you said you were going to go to Law School."

[both laugh] But I came back and started from the bottom in an advertising agency, worked my way up and you know.

- [Nido] What is it that you tell your children, or what is it that you tell young and uprising associates at Domino's or before that at Pepsi, that can propel them forward in life?

- [Russell] Yeah.

Two themes, the first one, we just went through my circuitous route to figure out what I wanted to do.

And so many people feel, I know I have a lot of friends.

I'm sure you do as well, where they decided what they were going to do when they were younger in life, and they stuck with it, and they're not happy.

And I think people always feel the pressure to choose and what they should realize is that if you actively check things off the list, actively, that's just as good as figuring out what you want to do.

And I actively-- - [Nido] The process of elimination, is that?

- [Russell] Yeah.

And as long as you're not sitting back watching television saying, "Come to me job."

You're saying, "Okay, this is something that I'm going to do, spend as much time doing this as I am probably more time sleeping and with my family.

So I got to love it."

And if you love it, I don't care what it is.

You can do it forever.

And it may not come to you right away and it's okay.

When your friends are getting the jobs that are getting paid twice as much as you and your parents are saying, "Why are you still living at home?"

As long as you are responsibly checking something off the list is as good as putting something on the list, that's one kind of thing.

- [Nido] You speak the truth.

If you love what you do is really not work.

You can't wait to get there, give it all you've got, you perform at a higher level of excellence and so on.

Looking back over your life, can you think of a mistake, a singular mistake that you made that when you found out what it meant, it became a productive failure, productive mistake.

So many people for example, succeed in life, but they don't know what caused their success.

Therefore they cannot replicate it.

I call it a nonproductive success.

You did it, you're successful, but you can't replicate it.

You can't teach it, you can't coach somebody else in it.

But when you have a mistake, we feel this adversity of this mistake.

But out of it can emerge in almost abundance.

New learning, new exploration.

Was there something, a turning point in your life that was like that?

- I'm sure I'll think of something better after this, but it was an almost mistake.

So when I talk about checking things off the list, I was all in like I said, I was pre-med.

My first advanced pre-med exam at Cornell, this is when you get the grades and they print them off on the little, this is before the internet, and you go up and you look at your grades, and I had a triple check 'cause I got a 43 on my, now it turned out a 43 was a B, [laughs] but I wasn't used to getting Bs.

- [Nido] 43 Was B?

- Yeah.

'Cause they curve it.

It's a whole long, I could talk to you all day about curves.

But I remember thinking, I had done things my whole life.

There's a publication I'm part of in the journal of biological chemistry, I was going to do this.

And then you're sitting there with your B, even though you studied so much, and you're saying, "Wow."

- [Nido] So what's the lesson out of it.

- [Russell] Yeah.

Well and then the second one was I had gotten into Law School.

When I went from, to Law School, - [Nido] You were admitted into Law School.

- [Russell] I was admitted.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So when I say mistake is, I just went so far down these areas, but by kind of keeping my eyes opened, like I talked to you about before, about this whole idea of checking things off the list it's easy to look back and then tell that story, - [Nido] You found a new opportunity.

- [Russell] And then tell the story, but you can make mistakes trying to figure out what you want to do.

- Yeah.

- The question is when you've made that mistake, you don't look back and say, "Oh, I just spent four years of Cornell tuition doing these two things."

That's in your rear view mirror, that's some cost.

It's what do I do next?

- [Nido] Was there a moment in your life when you came up with an idea or you activated a strategy, or promotion in marketing that you look back on and say, "That was my aha moment.

I was really pretty genius with that and I was acknowledged for it."

Was there a such a moment, what was it?

- Well, first of all, there's never an "I" and anyone who thinks there's an I who did something, - [Nido] Always teamwork.

- There's always a teamwork.

But I can tell you that I was part of something that I feel honored to be a part of when we, the end of 2009 and early 2010, we launched a campaign for Domino's.

So Domino's has been around since 1960.

And the three years before I got there, sales were negative, our stock ended up being below $3.

And it looked at a lot of the research and our product wasn't in a good place, and nor was our brand.

And in fact if you put our product in someone else's box, they would think it would taste better and vice versa.

So we had a product problem and a brand problem.

- [Nido] The perception.

- It's perception.

And so it was clear to me, I remember telling the team is, we have to do 10 years of marketing in one year.

And so we knew we had to fix the pizza and when we did, but the question was what's going to do 10, we didn't have time to be up one or 2%.

And so-- - [Nido] So how does one do that?

This is a fascinating comment.

We have to do 10 years of market and one year.

That was a sense of urgency.

We've got to go to market quickly, or we are gonna lose this game.

How does one do that with larger supply of intense advertising, as it finessing the arguments and the messaging in such a way that has greater impact?

How does one do 10 years of marketing in one year?

- [Russell] It's not the budget.

Because that's like me saying, if I did an ad saying, "My kids are wonderful."

Of course, I think my kids are wonderful, no one cares.

So a brand does tons of advertising and says, "Look at this great new pizza we have, you're going to love it."

No one's gonna believe you.

So you have to do something that's believable.

And that breaks through.

There's so much going on right now.

And so how we come up with ideas at Domino's is we use something called tension.

What's the tension in your brand, and what's the tension in society.

And if you figure out how to break those tensions and collide those ideas, you have a big idea.

The tension back in 2009 on our brand was, we were a pizza company and we had this kind of the secret, which is our pizza didn't taste very good.

Well there were a lot of other things that during that time tensions and culture.

If you remember this is when the bailouts were happening with car companies and they were flying down-- - [Nido] Recession.

- [Russell] Recession, and people were losing their homes, right?

And so what consumers were thinking at that point was why isn't anyone telling me the truth?

Why are all these people lying to me?

What happened to the American-- - [Nido] There was distrust in the system.

- Distrust.

So there's distrust in the world.

We have this, not that we're a pizza company, right?

But we had this thing about our pizza that we felt that, "Hey, you know what, if the world wants everyone to tell the truth, just somebody tell the truth.

I know we are the pizza company, we're not going to solve middle east peace.

But someone's got to tell the truth and it's going to be us."

And so we didn't just go out there and say, "Hey, we're Domino's trust us.

We have a new pizza, try it."

Is we were honest and transparent.

And we went on TV live, or shooting customers for the spots.

And we played their feedback where they said, "Domino's pizza crust tastes like cardboard."

All of the things, we played it, and we then said, because you can't just say it, then you got to do something about it.

We fixed the pizza.

Then we did a campaign where we went to the homes of the people who said these bad things about our pizza and they love pizza.

And so, at some point-- - Russell, this is a big, big risk.

- It was a big risk.

Well, the stock was, I believe $2 and 83 cents when we know started the idea.

- You on your way to being delisted among other things.

Where did you get the courage to go on TV and say, "Yeah.

Our product is not good."

- [Russell] Yeah.

Well, first of all, the courage came from the data.

People always say, "Oh, you take big risks."

Don't take big risks.

Jumping out of a plane looks like as big risk.

But if you have a parachute, you're okay.

And so this is not about taking risks, this is taking smart, - [Nido] Calculated, - Calculated move, to have a big idea.

And so when we came up with the idea, it was risky, but it was based in fact, the old pizza wasn't as good, as the new pizza was great.

- [Nido] But how did you know that people will change their mind about Domino's?

- [Russell] Well, so what we did was, we created this campaign, actually a few different ads talking about it.

And what we did before we ran them, is we tested them.

So a lot of people, I've been in marketing most of my life.

- [Nido] Sure.

- And it runs so fast you get the ad out and you don't even know until it hits.

This was such a big risk that we created a couple of spots and we created a backup spot.

And when the ad scores came back, turns out it was the highest scoring restaurant spot in history at least up to that point, we knew we had something.

But if it didn't, we had a back up.

- [Nido] We had a backup.

- So that's what you gotta do.

You gotta, yeah.

- What's the worst thing that can happen.

Are we ready for it?

I could talk to you for hours 'cause you're clearly versed in this whole concept of marketing and branding and really positioning a product in a very busy, very competitive, really global marketplace in which we all reside.

When you hire people, what are the three things you look for?

Just name them for me.

What are the three characteristics you look in a person?

- Yeah.

Well, things that you want to see from somebody new, maybe it's just me, I love my diverse background.

I think I'm decent at what I do in business, because I did all of these other things.

And so I really look at to see what are the experiences they had throughout their life.

Some people come straight to it, a lot of folks have these circuitous routes and I embrace both of those, because you bring everything with you.

The interpersonal skills are so important.

- [Nido] of course, - Because you hire people as individual contributors starting in their career, but then they become enterprise leaders.

And if you can't take others with you, you're an individual, okay and there are places for individual contributors, but if you're hiring leaders, you need to see that.

- Absolutely.

- I think the third thing and you don't really see this, but you get this in the interview process is how they lead.

- [Nido] Their style of leadership.

- Their style and you can get that through folks that they talk to.

And particularly within the leadership, I don't think enough.

I mean, I'm talking to the expert here.

But platform skills are so important.

Because if you need to take others with you, whether are your employees, whether it's a stock-- - [Nido] Connecting with people, - [Russell] Connecting with people and beginning up there and yeah.

- Well you connect very well, my friend, and it's a pleasure having you with me "Side By Side."

Thank you, Russell Weiner, President COO of Domino's for being with me and best wishes and I'm looking for that gift certificate in the mail.

Thank you for being here so, - You got it.

I appreciate it.

- Good to have you.

- Take care.

- [Announcer] Funding for "Side By Side" with Nido Qubein is made possible by, - [Announcer] Here's to those that rise and shine, to friendly faces doing more than their part.

And to those who still enjoy the little things.

You make it feel like home.

Ashley HomeStore, this is home.

- [Announcer] For over 60 years, the everyday leaders at the Budd Group have been committed to providing smart, customized facility solutions to our clients and caring for the communities we serve.

[soft music] - [Announcer] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors, locally.

Thanks to our teams.

We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.