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Bricks and Clicks

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Bricks and Clicks

How We Drove Sonic into the Digital Age

Forbes Books,

15 Minuten Lesezeit
5 Take-aways
Audio & Text

Was ist drin?

How Sonic implemented a successful – and delicious – technological makeover.

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Editorial Rating

8

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Recommendation

As technological innovations arrive at an accelerating pace, business leaders may despair of keeping up. Take comfort in Sonic’s case history from former CEO Clifford Hudson and consultant Craig Miller. They demonstrate that a digital upgrade is less daunting if you keep one principle in mind: focus on your customers, not on the technology. As a case in point, the authors describe how they led a digital makeover throughout the chain of Sonic Drive-In restaurants. To move ahead, the authors advise, always enhance your customers’ experience.

Summary

Businesses must keep pace with constant change.

In the 21st century, businesses must contend with an unprecedented, steeply accelerating rate of technological innovation. This is as true for hamburger restaurants as it is for manufacturers or retailers, as the Sonic drive-in restaurant chain discovered.

Starting in 2010, the leaders of Sonic, a chain of American drive-in, casual food restaurants, undertook a major technology makeover. In the process, they learned that a technological retrofit is not as much about the tech itself as it is about finding tech solutions that support a business’s unique brand and customer experience.

Sonic’s leaders found that technology and other disruptions had changed the way companies communicate with their customers. In the 1990s, the primary mass-market advertising channels focused their efforts in one direction: from the marketer to the consumer. Businesses didn’t generally coordinate their messages across various media.

When media innovations – such as the rise of the internet – first emerged, companies saw them primarily as routes for expanding their traditional, multichannel approach to reaching their clients.

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About the Authors

Now a speaker and corporate advisor, Clifford Hudson was CEO of Sonic Drive-In during its digital transformation. Change management consultant Craig Miller led business innovation at Sonic, PepsiCo, and Bank of America.

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