Ep 13: Clicks 2 Bricks with Chris Jones, CMO of Casey’s General Stores

If you don't know this convenience store brand, it’s probably because you don't live in the Midwest – Casey’s General Store, or Casey’s, as it’s more commonly known, is a regional brand based in Iowa and has more than 2,000 locations. Casey’s considers itself committed to the communities that it serves and is upgrading its branding to make that better known, after rolling out their Here for Good tagline late last year. Today’s guest is Chris Jones, Senior Vice President and CMO of Casey's General Stores. Chris is leading the 60-year-old company through a digital transformation and a most recent refresh of its visual identity. We talk about these initiatives, the Casey’s rewards program, and some of the interesting challenges of competing within the convenience store industry, as well as how the company responded to the COVID crisis. Tune in today!

Key Points From This Episode:

• Fun fact about Chris Jones: He’s worked in the confectionery, pet food, and pizza industries.
• What Chris loves about Iowa is its diverse population and its great mix of industries.
• The Casey’s General Stores story – from gas station to convenience store and pizzeria.
• Part of Casey’s strategy is to position the brand at the heart of the communities they’re in.
• Chris says the Casey’s brand has different salience in different need states for their guests.
• Chris talks about the interesting challenges of competing in the convenience store industry.
• How Chris looks at the landscape, and why the convenience industry is generally congenial.
• Having a successful dinner business is extremely unusual in the convenience industry.
• The push toward digital – Chris as the first chief marketing officer at Casey’s, and he joined at a time that digital was part of their strategy.
• From repositioning the brand and building the digital experience to refreshing visual identity.
• The combination of rewards, the new mobile app, digital, and marketing automation is really paying off in terms of Casey’s digital business.
• The process of streamlining Casey’s visual identity while retaining what makes them unique.
• Casey’s has re-centralized some operational aspects of the business so that operators can better focus on the guest experience.
• Through their rewards program, Casey’s hopes to contribute to a funding solution for schools.
• Feedback at a local level through guest surveys and real-time feedback from operators.
• Casey’s response to COVID and their pride in the resilience of their teams in stores.
• Casey’s competes with national and regional convenience, pizza, and QSR players.
• The specific marketing response to COVID – Chris says they made no reductions.
• How Casey’s has recently been contemporizing the skills they have across the business.
• Chris’ response to brand loyalty – it’s a feeling that guests have, not a program they offer.
• Chris feels that the type of branded content they have is word-of-mouth, where guests are talking about Casey’s program.

Tweetables:

“Across the industries I've worked in here, in retail and financial services while I've lived in Iowa, there is still a common passion in all those industries to know your guest, care for your guest, and really evolve the experience. I think that's been a universal theme across all these businesses. They’re trying to build branded, compelling guest experiences.” — Chris Jones [0:03:23]

“The combination of rewards, the new mobile app, the digital, and marketing automation is really paying off in terms of our digital business in the first quarter. Our fiscal year runs from May to April, so we start with our big summer season to get our big roaring start, and then we continue with the rest of the year. But what that means is that we just reported our first quarter, May, June, July,