How California Pizza Kitchen Embraces Change, Goes Viral on TikTok, and Gives Consumers FOMO – InstantFollowerz

This week’s Mastermind has worked for Lou Malnati’s (pizza), Krispy Kreme (doughnuts), and now leads the marketing team at California Pizza Kitchen (return to pizza)—which makes her career sound like my dream order after a rough Monday.

Keep reading to hear Dawn KellerCMO at California Pizza Kitchenabout why she likes to give consumers emotional FOMO and how to take care of the brand’s evolution.

Lesson 1: Induce emotional FOMO.

“Desirable items that are unique and drive consumers to irrationality are the best defenses against competition, consumer apathy or inertia,” says Keller.

For Keller, this applies to both her menu and her marketing. Her goal is to “trigger emotional FOMO” for her consumers.

Listen, I’ll hand it to you — discussing “crave products” with the head of marketing for a pizza the company probably doesn’t sound too relevant to B2B marketers.

But when I tell Keller that the cheesy, gooey crust is more seductive than revenue attribution reporting, she counters, “I actually see this in B2B marketing all the time. Emotional FOMO is fully capable of being created in that world too – you just need to show what’s possible and other people’s success stories.”

She adds, “They’re all the same people, you know? They just make different decisions… Like what to eat and what software to use for their business.”

While you may not be selling garlic cloves, there is plenty of B2B attributes that are insanely “desirable” – like ease of use, time savings, and productivity gains. Use it those full marks for making all your prospective customers as hungry for your offering as they are for good mac and cheese.

Lesson 2: Turn negative moments into opportunities to show up.

Recently, a customer ordered mac and cheese from CPK — and he just got the cheese.

After she uploaded the video on TikTok, CPK responded with video in which Chef Paul jokingly goes through the steps of properly making mac and cheese (emphasis on: Add spades), and then announces a 50% discount on mac and cheese for all CPK customers. (Because the customer only got 50% of his meal — get it?)

CPK’s TikTok response received 1.6 million views. Keller was shocked… and delighted.

“It was astonishing to everyone [how well it did]but we believe it’s what really made the difference how we showed up – in a super authentic, humble, self-deprecating way. It wasn’t corporate or stuffy.”

CPK could have chosen to completely ignore the user’s complaint or could have commented on the video with a generic “I’m sorry!” customer service response. Instead, they decided to take the opportunity to reshape the narrative into something fun and lighthearted.

And as Keller points out, “We still need to reinforce what’s important to us – which is to have quality food and take care of our guests. Authenticity and fun are what get people’s attention… Don’t just use SOCIAL MEDIA as advertising channel.”

We’ve since heard it around the world this year Greg Fass, Jenna Kutcherand a host of other marketing masters, and the point is true: be authentic and represent human behind your brand is a much better strategy than a slick advertisement these days.

Lesson 3: Evolve as your customers will.

It wasn’t always donuts and pizza for Keller, who also held marketing roles at CVS Health and Staples.

In all of these roles, she believes one key responsibility has always been to be a “change agent.”

But people don’t always like change, especially with brands that have been around for more than 40 years. So I wanted to know: When Keller joined CPK, how did she balance fresh ideas without making the team feel like they were working on a good way of doing things?

“I give a lot of credit to Jeff Warne [the CEO of CPK] and my colleagues, who really incubated this idea any brand that has been around for 40 years has to keep evolving and doing new, fresh thingsKeller tells me.

Fortunately, she also has some words of wisdom for marketing leaders tasked with growing a company that no embrace change just as easily.

“You have to bring people along and invite ideas from anywhere. Sometimes leaders think good ideas can only come from new people. But veterans with deep context can also be the originators of the best new thinking.”

Everyone has a role to play, and the more a change agent can encourage and encourage new ideas while breaking down walls of fear or discomfort, the more likely they are to succeed in creating an increasingly relevant brand.