Jason (00:35)
Hi, I'm here with my friend Fred Ehle Fred, great to see you as always.

Fred (00:39)
Great to see you, Jason. Thanks for having me.

Jason (00:41)
my pleasure. We're going to do this week's Wise in Five together. But before we dive in, I'd love for you just to share a little bit of your amazing background with our viewers and listeners.

Fred (00:50)
Thanks, Jason. So most recently I led purchase marketing for Rocket Mortgage. Before that, ⁓ a number of sort of corporate marketing leadership roles at Pulte Group, where I led brand management at McDonald's, where I was the first chief customer officer for McDonald's US business, and then leading marketing at Redbox and product marketing strategy at Jockey. Before that, I had an agency career. So I had led a number of

CPG businesses at agencies in Chicago, like FCB, Leo Burnett, DDB, with clients like Campbell Sue, ConAgra, SC Johnson. So I've had an interesting sort of ⁓ agency background and then that turned to the dark side when I went client side in the back half of my career.

Jason (01:30)
Well,

and just for a couple of small companies, right? They're not household brand names at all. No, none at all. Well, why don't we dive in? And so my first question is, where do you find inspiration just in everyday life?

Fred (01:35)
Right. And none. None that I'm aware of.

I, in all sorts of places, I mean, it's, it comes from unexpected places as well. I mean, there's the obvious sort of inspiration choices from the arts design and you see something new, something cutting edge, but, sometimes I get inspiration just for the conversation with my daughter about something and she'll say something out of the blue that'll be like, that's a really interesting point of view. and it's interesting from that standpoint, because,

She's a really interesting person and she's got some neurodiversity. So she's got a different point of view than the rest of the world. And sometimes that's a really refreshing one.

Jason (02:17)
That's cool. That's really cool. From the mouths of babes, right? You just never know what's going to come out. ⁓ It's true. So as you mentioned, you worked on a number of iconic brands across a number of industries. And I'm curious, being the amazing marketer you are, what similarities do you see across those industries around brands? I would think there's some things that are just

Fred (02:21)
100%, or at least a 22-year-old babe now.

Jason (02:42)
Kind of constant, no matter what industry you're in.

Fred (02:45)
I think that the thing that I have seen over the years around brands is where brands oftentimes go off the rails or where the business starts to fall apart a little bit, because I've been part of a couple of turnarounds, is when the brand sort of loses its original premise and promise. Like, what did it come into being for and why? And are they delivering on that sort of core original premise and promise? It's when they try to be something else. We talk a lot about authenticity and that type of thing.

But too often, especially with short-term corporate America, you're chasing the bright, shiny object, and you're not paying enough attention to the core business. If you're not delivering on your core business promise, you're not going to get licensed to do anything else for the marketplace. So that's one of the biggest mistakes I see. And brands that kind of go back to that and deliver against that in a more contemporary way.

⁓ are really the more interesting ones, the really successful ones. The turnaround at McDonald's was a great case in points. Go back to what you do well, reengage with your core like they've been doing recently with some of their longstanding equities from the 70s and early 80s, but then tap into current culture with that. It really is a contemporization of who and what they are and their essence.

Jason (03:54)
Yeah, that's very true. Does McDonald's still have salads? Speaking of

Fred (03:59)
Not that I'm aware of. You know, for a long time, it's like the same point, right? Where do I go to McDonald's for it, I go to McDonald's for a cheeseburger or a chicken sandwich now. It used to be 3 % of the business. It's like, I don't go to McDonald's for sale. early in my career, I worked on Betty Crocker dessert mixes and we were doing light cake or fat free cake. It's like, you know what? If I'm going to have cake, I want a cake. I don't want a light cake or a low calorie cake because it doesn't taste like cake, you know?

Jason (04:00)
All

Right. Exactly. Well, when you go to McDonald's, that's why you get your Big Mac and the extra large fries and the Diet Coke, Just to balance it out. So, and as you mentioned, Fred, you started on the agency side, the service provider side, I working with consultancies and ad agencies, and then you moved, I won't call it the dark side, but you moved to the client and brand side. What did you learn from each? I always think of it as offense versus defense in some ways, but

Fred (04:31)
Right, exactly. Exactly.

Jason (04:51)
I'm curious what your experience has been.

Fred (04:53)
Well, the agency side provided me with a number of different perspectives and foundation. First of all, just strategically in brand. Really being clear about who you're talking to, what your benefit is, what your reason to believe is. One of the...

greatest things I took away from my FCBA experience on SC Johnson was we would look at a, we had a three box briefing. like, here's the target with an insight. Here's the benefit. And here's one or two reasons to believe. But then there was what is the single most important thing? So it got down to literally what are the five or six words? And it had to come from one of those three boxes. So it could be, we're going to lean heavily on the insight or we're going to lean heavily on an RTB because it may be a technological advantage, but you had to pick one.

because the compression of the communication vehicle, whether it be a 30 second video or whether it be audio or whatever the case may be, demanded that sort of focus and clarity. So that's something that just sort of came out of years and years of repetition from that. The other thing it gave me was a depth and breadth of sort of movies to see, right? Different businesses, different scenarios, different outcomes, what worked, what didn't work. And so I've got this sort of vault of

like a whole different movies, different business scenarios, different outcomes and what works and what I learned to what I didn't learn. Then he gets to the corporate side and now I'm doing it for a single company. And we've got a single issue or maybe a basket of issues. I've got my hands on the tiller more a little bit, Cause I'm not just advising and hoping they'll do it. Cause that's the other thing that I wanted to do is like, okay, tell someone why I think they should do. But at end of the day, they're responsible for executing it. Now it's like, okay, now I'm on the other side.

And now you've got a whole host of other contingencies you need to deal with on that side of the equation in terms of who are the internal stakeholders to make this happen. Now all of a sudden I understood what the executional complexity was. It wasn't just, yeah, I could just snap my fingers and do this. I've got, in the case of McDonald's, owner operators. I've got operations. I've got finance. I've got, in some cases, legal regulatory and heavily regulated businesses like financial services. And so all of a sudden now,

to move fast in an organization. used to say at Pulte, sometimes you got to go slow to go fast because you've got to bring those stakeholders along. And so I had no idea until I got to Pulte, just how long it took to get things done and why. And that's one of the things I learned right out of the gate there. I remember laying out my first timeline to do a program there as a client. And my boss, Debra Walls, like, yeah, that's not going to happen. Double the time. 100%.

Jason (06:59)
you

Was she right?

Yeah, well Deborah's usually right so we know that.

Fred (07:21)
100%. Yes,

yes, that's true.

Jason (07:25)
Well, that's great. So we're cooking with gas. I'm going to I need a cup of wisdom right now just to keep me going.

So I mean, you've worked at all these different companies and, as you've grown your career, you keep growing in terms of getting into the C suite and working across the C suite. But with that, I would think would come questions and doing things for the first time. So, who do you go to when you're entering a new challenge or a new opportunity? Do you have mentors that you go to people that you rely on for advice?

Fred (07:54)
first of all, I look at other companies and other places that are doing something somewhere and what are they doing to the extent that I can. But I'm fortunate to have, a broad and deep network that of people that have probably somewhere in that network, someone's done something, someone, someone, you know, whether it be going to someone like Debra Wall around managing a large

corporate organization, given that she worked at GM and that type of place. Whether I go to someone more entrepreneurial who understands the VC startup world. And so I've got, I'm fortunate to be able to sort of like, who's seen this or who may be thinking about this differently and being able to tap those people. there's actually no one person I'm really fortunate to have hundreds, maybe even thousands to pull from.

Jason (08:38)
You

have an amazing network and that's just a credit to you and and who you are as a person in terms of what you've been able to build so I've seen it We're on our fifth question, right so we're almost done with the Wise in Five. so We've entered this age of AI. I think that's how you pronounce it as a AI. I'm not sure how you spell it, but What do you suggest for companies to do as they build their go-to-market strategy?

Fred (08:45)
I appreciate that.

Jason (09:01)
and approach now. It seems like everyone's questioning what they should be doing, where that comes in, where do I use people, what would you suggest they think about?

Fred (09:11)
But the promise of AI and what it can accomplish is beyond comprehension, I think, to a lot of us. I think the current reality of AI is probably not quite to the promise yet. But you've got to start testing. You've got to start utilizing it somewhere. It's interesting, I think, in terms of go to market.

AI is, the obvious application is in the analytics. how do you apply AI to performance marketing? And that's a real, obvious sort of easy first step in terms of, that could take a lot of this sort of manual process or even make performance even better.

You look at analytics from the other side in terms of business performance and that type of thing, and market analysis. What's the consumer behavior in using AI from that standpoint? You know, it's interesting. Some companies are even using AI or a chat version to execute copy in the tone of their brand personality. So that's where the sort of creative,

I won't say lower creativeness, like some of the performance marketing copies content can be used for within AI because you've got that test and learn capability that can be accelerated through that process.

Jason (10:14)
Mm-hmm.

Fred (10:19)
⁓ and that is it's a test and learn into the process to see where you're seeing the impact. Rocket is using AI right now in terms of, and this was just talked about in second quarter, using AI in terms of enabling mortgages. So you can now refi at Rocket without talking to a human. That's all enabled by AI.

And so Varun, the CEO there, has talked about how AI has enabled essentially a limitless sales pipe because it supercharges those bankers in terms of chat and that type of thing. when you start to look at the operational applications for that in terms of the ability to accelerate sales and sales pipeline for some companies, it's incredible.

Jason (10:55)
Right.

And do it extremely efficiently as well. Yeah. Well, I mean, as you know, you talked about AI with analytics. We just did a round table a week and a half ago around AI and analytics. And I encourage our listeners and viewers who haven't watched that we have a recording available if you want to see it. And then the other side of this, when you mentioned AI and creative, I know you were instrumental in Rocket's Superbowl ad, and the engagement around that. When do you think,

Fred (10:59)
100%.

Jason (11:24)
an AI generated Super Bowl ad will appear. Is that this coming Super Bowl or are we ways away?

Fred (11:29)
Yeah, I think you're going to see

it. I think it's going to be this coming Super Bowl, Jason. I think someone somewhere will do it. They'll be the first Super Bowl AI for sure. It will be the Super Bowl, 100%.

Jason (11:39)
So does the marketer still, are they able to go on a boondoggle or is that gone? Did AI kill that too?

Fred (11:46)
They can go on a virtual boondoggle. Exactly.

Jason (11:48)
Put the glasses on.

Well, we went through our Wise in Five questions. I have one more question for you, which is as an amazing advisor and a good friend of mine. when people are looking to engage with you, what kind of topics or questions do you think you're best suited to help them with?

Fred (12:08)
Well, I think any business that's looking at sort of a renovation or even a turnaround or if they're stuck, helping to do that. how do I sort of get from A to B? Because something's keeping me from doing that. Something around sort of the rejuvenation of a brand. So I need to sort of contemporize my brand. And then the other obvious is I'm watching a new brand.

How do I do that? And what should it be and how should it reflect that? So most recently, I was part of the restage for the rocket brand. And that was an incredible sort of process. in that case, it really was. And this is really interesting, too, is just talking to the Wharton Business School and taking them through the Super Bowl case study. And one of the things I mentioned was the alignment between the business strategy, the marketing strategy, the brand strategy and the creative strategy.

That is what you learn in business school. But I have only seen that alignment maybe two or three times in my career. And so how do you align those and all the stakeholders so that you come to market fast and consistently? One of those things is out of alignment. And that's oftentimes why you are struggling in business.

Jason (13:08)
Yeah, that's hard.

Yeah, I totally agree. I don't know if you heard it, Fred, but the siren was going off as you were talking and it's like someone sending out the bat signal saying we need Fred to help us out. So we're going to keep that in the podcast because it was just so appropriate. we usually had to take it out, but thank you so much for making the time. This was terrific. It's always great to see you, my friend, and look forward to talking with you soon and for you to engage with some of our

Fred (13:38)
AI could get rid of it though.

Jason (13:53)
mid-sized business members on The Wisory.