 and welcome to our conversation with Tim Love, who's going to talk to us about the analytics journey at Burger King UK. Tim, thank you very much for joining us. Pleasure. No, thank you very much for inviting me. I would love to start with, talk a little bit about your role at Burger King UK, and start to talk about what you do with respect to the day-to-day experience at BK UK. Yeah, sure. I'm the digital director at Burger King UK. It's quite interesting listening to the keynote this morning because I sit within marketing. Obviously, over the last couple of days, we've met so many people from growth teams, product teams, engineering, and not loads of marketeers, but as Justin said, 15 percent of the top users of the platform are in marketing, and I think that's because the customer is always at the heart of what a marketeer is thinking about. So my job really is to make sure that our customers can access Burger King easily, fast, quick, through digital products, mostly focused around our app, which is where a lot of them are, and make life easy for them. Would love to start with your analytics journey. Where did you start at BK UK in terms of how you thought about analytics? Oh, we started at rock bottom because despite the fact that Burger King is a brand that's been around for such a long time, we at BK UK, who are the master franchisee for the business in the UK, obviously, did not have anything in place. So when we took the business on, we had an app product. We had kiosks in restaurants. We knew absolutely nothing of the usage of those platforms beyond somebody has activated an offer and they've used it in store. There was nothing more than that. And so with this role sitting within marketing reporting to a CMO, obviously our desire was to understand much more about who those customers were, why they were using our digital products in the first place, and actually how we could make their experience much better. So we joined up with RBI, who are the brand owners internationally, to look at what they were doing first and foremost to try and help ourselves get to a better place faster. So they were very early adopters of amplitude. And we decided to go into a tech partnership with them, whereby we used their app products and other bits and pieces as well. We took on the same CRM stack that they did, which they'd delivered a lot of success with and campaigns that people still talk about such as Wappadita, which I've already heard a few times today. And yes, we tried to get ourselves into a position where we could accelerate what we knew about our customers and actually use those insights faster than if we'd been trying to do it ourselves from complete scratch. So you're kind of starting a complete scratch, you're thinking about your analytics journey. What were some of the initial use cases for the team at Burger King UK? Yeah, so like I said, we really didn't know anything apart from the fact that we had a value for money platform predominantly with the app, which is what the business was interested in at that time because that's where we could actually see people were coming in because of it. But quite quickly kind of, we wanted to understand much more. We very much had a kind of one size fits all for that group of customers who predominantly we discovered are obviously seeking value for money. They're seeking to understand where we are and they're seeking to order. What we're trying to do is very simple. Like we're trying to make their lives easier. So it took time to kind of gather data on them and what they wanted, but some of the really kind of interesting use cases that we had with amplitude were around dietary preferences and how we might take that data to actually give them a different service. So to use an example, I don't know how big plant based vegan products are in the US, but it's a massive trend in the UK. And what we found was that there are a lot of people who were giving an indication via use of our platforms that they had an interest in plant based or vegan products or that there was potential for them to be interested in them. So we created that cohort of customers, very simply split them a bit, send them into Braze and started offering them different content to what we were offering to everyone else, which was predominantly beef place, beef based chicken products. And what we found was that those customers who were interested in using our products and looking for things, suddenly we're actually then coming into restaurant and doing something. So it was a real eye-opener for us that that interest was there, if I suppose, in the first place, but also very interesting case for the business as a whole, because what's interesting as a marketer is the fact that for me to kind of sell a platform like Amplitude or other software like this, you really need to prove that it is bringing customers into restaurant in a different way to how others might. And so to be able to tell that story to the powers that be within the business about how we discovered these customers and then their actual value and potential long-term value for us was a eye-opener for everyone, I think. You and I talked a lot about kind of your discoveries around how plant based and vegan products have kind of changed the market for you in BK, UK. So I love how you kind of were able to understand that perspective from Amplitude. In that same vein, you kind of talked about how you started from scratch. Now you've gotten a couple of use cases you've made insights. Talk a little bit more about how you're thinking forward with respect to your data transformation at Burger King. Yeah, I think the most interesting thing that's changed for us is even just rewinding a couple of years is how this group of customers gets talked about within the business. And that's because we're able to illustrate through what we see in Amplitude and beyond that actually this group of customers is worth a lot of money to us. Quite simply, that's very crass way to say it. But they are, their lifetime value to the business is much higher. And so to kind of give another example of where they're intrinsically discussed within the business now is we do a campaign annually called Wop-A-Day, which is you get free Wop-A-Zers, not the most original thing in the world. But look, the way that that might have happened previously as a marketing department would be, we would say, okay, like we want to do this today because it's going to create brand affinity, people are going to come back in if they have a good experience, et cetera. And I believe those things, but you couldn't prove it. So now we're in a position to really tell the business, look, we should do this and we've done it a couple of times before because we will be able to then see what these customers do will be able to influence their next decision as to whether they come back in or not. We will be able to try different techniques to try to get them back into restaurant. So I think that that's where the biggest shift has been for us. It's been that the data and the way that we use it has allowed us to frame the software but frame the customer differently to the business directly and that's very powerful. And how do you, you're talking a lot about as you're kind of thinking about some of your marketing campaigns. Now you have data around it to kind of understand it. How are you sharing those insights back to the business? As simply as possible, depending on who the audience is. Yeah, so I do think, again, sitting with the marketing perhaps offering a different perspective on it. You know, what we want to be able to show is that through our product and through the way that we communicate with these customers based on their actions that we're able to influence them. So very much where we've gone from a kind of one size fits all in terms of the offers that we give to people, the content that we share to something quite different. And as you're kind of thinking about and we've talked a lot about kind of how you've been able to understand your user base, gain insights and build kind of marketing campaigns around that. How are you thinking about data and kind of the insights you're gleaning from the data to influence product strategy and working maybe with the product team? Yeah, it's quite interesting how I work with our product team. Because as I said, they're based, they are in RBI. So they're actually part of BKUK. So I work very closely with them on a day-to-day basis. And so we actually have to go back to some of the slides that we've seen over the past, over this morning, you know, we do have a situation where the three teams are converging together. And we could do it much better, to be perfectly honest with you. But we all have access to the same information. We all have access to not only the customer campaign data, but we also have access to the product data. And so for me, I kind of straddle both areas. So to give an example of something that was fairly recent, we actually had, it looked as though, we discovered we did, have an issue in terms of customers getting to check out. So a lot of customers were dropping off at sign-up stage, which we could obviously see within AmpliGee data. So a customer would start the process of ordering, they would get to actually having to sign in or sign up and then drop off. So we changed it and experimented with getting them to the absolute end of the process before asking them to do that, which made a big difference in terms of conversion. So lots of different experiments and tests that we do, largely, like I said, driven by the teams working together. So often it will be a case of the product team suggesting that we do something. To me, in a lot of the time, I'll say, well, yeah, that makes complete sense. Or I will see something within the platform and suggest that we do something with it. So it's very collaborative, but yeah, there's an awful lot of things, a lot more we could try that I'm sure we will. Let's stay in that theme a little bit. How about some of the other non-business spacing teams, maybe like engineering? How are those conversations going? And kind of what, when you have kind of, we're talking about the convergence of all these teams coming together. How's maybe some of the partnerships going with some of the other non-business spacing teams? Yeah, I actually think that the most interesting one, for me, that's developed quite significantly over the last six months or so, is actually with our finance team and our head of finance. So obviously, somebody like that and their team is constantly going into trading meetings, reporting on sales, literally top line, this is what's happened this week, what's next. Now, those meetings are starting to get different because they're taking a big interest in actually the customer and what we are seeing within the platform. So to go back to my example of Whopper Day, when that is reported by finance internally in trading meetings, it won't just be a case of, we gave away this many whoppers and that's it, it will be a case of, this is what happened on the day, but actually, four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks later, this is what we're seeing. And I think it's their interest in getting into the platform that is most interesting to me because typically it's kind of been difficult to get that sort of engagement. Obviously, yeah, finance is there. I think to go back to more of the themes that have been discussed today around marketers, the platform is definitely accessible for marketing people to use as it is. I have a couple of people on my team who regularly look at, to be fair, like fairly top line metrics, but by just getting into the platform that's starting to use it, they start to see what else is available. So I think that's one of the things that I want to work with Ambitudon over the coming year is making sure that we make it as accessible as possible and make sure that that onboarding process is as strong as it can be. So yeah, I think there's definitely been a shift in the business in that respect. And I think what's been exciting, and you and I talked about this yesterday and we're kind of talking about it now, is like you have gone from nothing to now you have a solid approach and foundation to have data-driven decision-making. How are you enabling maybe new teams to your ecosystem or new employees to your ecosystem? What does kind of like enablement of this new process look like for you guys at Burger King? For them to start using the platform. Yeah, and getting insights quickly. Yeah, so we're actually in a process of reevaluating our structure to be honest because the way that we're set up means that, I'd be interested in talking to other people about this after the session, just around set up for data analysts, specifically to be in to look at this information that we're getting and suggest what we might be able to do because the way that we are at the moment is quite, it's a little bit hand to mouth. So we do have obviously myself, we have a couple of people in my team, we have our product team engineering, but it is kind of like there's not somebody whose job it is necessarily specifically just to assess the data that's within the platform. But I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing at the moment. It's kind of embedding amplitude across lots of different areas, albeit like one by one. But I think it's something that we need to have a good think about for sure. The macro environment is changing and would love to hear some of the things that you guys are thinking about at Burger King UK around, as the environment is changing, as the pandemic is a global phenomenon right now, would love to hear like some of the things that you guys are thinking about that as the market moves, you guys are doing to adjust and adjust quickly. Yeah, I mean, very broadly speaking, our business changed incredibly quickly as it did many other industries over a very, very short period of time. So really good example of that is delivery. Home delivery was not a huge part of our business prior to 2020, and then it suddenly became a massive part of our business. And so you had a shift from being able to kind of serve delivery drivers and the customers ordering through that platform relatively easily because the volume wasn't there, to suddenly being in a situation where our kitchens, which were often built an awfully long time ago, were not ready for a massive influx of delivery drivers, a massive influx of people kind of waiting to get food before they could take it away again, and massively increased use of aggregated platforms within the UK. So for us, coming out of the pandemic, touch wood, there's no wood here, we're just worrying, hopefully coming out of it long term, it's for us to think about how might that change again, how set are those consumer patterns that we've seen develop over the past couple of years, and what happens next? Does everything stay as it is now, or do people start to kind of retreat back to where we were? And there are so many factors layered into that, massive cost of living crisis, so many uncertain things. And for us, it's sort of trying to get to a point as quickly as we can to understand what shifts may be longer term than short term, you know? In that vein, and we talked a lot about how your organizational has gone through some, your organization at BKUK has gone through some change, we're talking about how the customer is experiencing change and the way that they interact with you, how are you helping other teams at BKUK stay close to the customer and get that perspective? Yeah, I think it's trying to tell stories which are understandable in a lot of ways. So I think if you give, the vegan one is such an easy thing for people to understand in terms of like, this is a group of customers who are looking for something different to what we're offering everyone else, so we need to treat them differently, and then you start to broaden that out more we know that this group of customers typically comes between these times, we know that this group of customers typically spends this much, and so it's starting to understand those groups as best we can, trying to understand who the target group, like what's the lowest hanging fruit to be quite honest, and then to tell that to the business and help them to understand. So it has to fit into your broader audience segmentation and who you're going after for definite. But yeah, it's trying to layer those stories into the bigger picture, I think. So I think you make a great point as you're starting to think about your audiences, your cohorts that you're creating, and thinking about how that's driving your strategy moving forward. How are you thinking about marketing towards different audiences? What is, you talked a little bit earlier about your partnership with Braze. Would love to hear how you're kind of thinking about that aspect of the customer experience to drive value. Yeah, I think it's trying to, I think the biggest legwork to do is to really understand kind of what those groups are. So obviously we can identify hundreds and hundreds of people who are hundreds and hundreds of groups who are doing things quite differently. Groups of people who are doing things quite differently. But you're not then necessarily going to get the biggest ROI and all the time that you would spend identifying them. So I think it's trying to work to identify those clusters, make sure that they're big enough to kind of make it worthwhile and then test and test and test again. So there are really easy examples of where we've been slow to do stuff. So something that we should have done way before we actually ended up doing it was just firstly authenticated customers versus non-authenticated customers. How do we change those? How do we change the content that non-authenticarity compared to authenticators? Super simple, makes a big difference. So it's trying to find more of those types of examples. And then as you go on, get more and more sophisticated in what you're doing, you use a product like Recommend, which is not something that we've gone massively in depth on yet but is quite exciting because it takes a bit of that legwork out of what you're doing. It's a, you touched on a good thing that also came out from the conversation that Spencer had with Pat Grady this morning around simplicity, right? Like these simple things that you're gleaning from your data can be a massive impact in terms of how you think about your product and your experience. Yeah, definitely. And I think we're not, we don't have to pretend like we're an overly complex business. People, it's very clear from what we see what customers want from us and want from our platforms. Make it easy for them to buy food is that simple. So everything that we should do should layer onto that. And if we can make it slightly easier by recommending a product that we think that they're going to like based on previous behavior, brilliant. But it should never, we should never over complicate things in terms of what the customer actual, actual customer experience is in my opinion. Talk, in that same vein, talk about some of the trends you're seeing in your industry. What are some of the competitors doing and what do you see going on from an industry perspective for you guys right now? Yeah, I think QSR is an unbelievably competitive environment for me. Obviously, they're incredibly well-known brands within this space. And I think that QSR generally, if you don't know how much attention anyone pays to it, but it's, I would say it's fairly advanced in terms of use of tech generally. It's been under the pandemic has seriously accelerated that. So you're now finding that a lot of restaurants, new restaurants that are being built are very much digital first compared to ones that came before. So if you walk into many QSR within the UK, you'll find that actually and here I'm sure, but you'll find that there's no front counter is just loads and loads of kiosks where you are able to log in as a known customer to get an advantage over somebody who's not. So I think it's trying to keep up with those expectations. And I think that obviously every brand is going to come at it from a different perspective because the technology that you have within restaurant is either going to seriously enable that or if it's going to potentially hold you back. So it's trying to play with a lot of big players in that game. Yeah, and I think it's exciting to hear how you guys are experimenting with different ways to make the customer experience exciting and delivering a product that customers want. Yeah, definitely. As you kind of think about now in terms of like where you're at, what's one or two things with respect to your amplitude experience that you feel are going well? It's going well. So yeah, I think that we have been fairly successful so far in terms of audience cohorting and how we then talk to those customers through the platform but also through SMS, through email, through in-app messaging. That's been a fairly successful thing for us so far. I think as well, like again, it might be unique to us just in terms of the way that we're set up, but I think that I am a couple of people and my team are fairly good at holding the product team to account in terms of what we see happening within the platform. So if we identify something as, hang on, this doesn't look quite right. Obviously, we don't necessarily have the technical expertise to then dig into it, but we are able to talk to the right people who do and obviously it's incredibly collaborative. So to give a kind of really recent example, we noticed that within, we'd had a fairly big drop in conversion right at checkout. And this was not easy to identify. We saw it in Amplitude, we're like, hang on, something's happening here. Like what is it? And so we had to work really closely with our products and engineering team to try and establish what it was. And what it was was that we had in a number of restaurants, incredibly old Windows software operating, which was meaning that the price to come back to the customer was taking about 20 seconds. So over that time, they were just like, well, I'm not going to bother with this. The only way that we were able to see that was because of Amplitude. So I think that we're quite good at sort of identifying issues and then escalating them in the right way and working with the right teams to solve them. What's one or two things that you think Amplitude could be doing better? I'm just going to slag you off in front of all these people. You guys are offering more and more and more products and you're offering more, not more, more and more features. And so depending on the size of the teams that you work with, that might be easy for a team to implement or they might be able to take it, just run away with it, do it themselves. Or it might be a case of actually, we really need you to kind of guide us here and actually work with us to tell us sort of how you think we could do this better or how this feature is really going to make a difference to you because we can see X, Y and Z right in terms of what you're doing now. So I think that as you grow the platform and as you offer more and more and more features, the need for that is going to become greater because in the end, smaller teams, mid-sized teams are going to look at this and be intimidated by all the different things that they can do. And I think that the best use of the platform is identifying the things that will make the biggest difference to you as a customer. And I think that you can really help to identify those things, so it's that close collaboration. When you think about your customer, and we've talked a lot about how you've been able to gain insights, what's next for the Burger King customer in the UK? What are you guys thinking about in terms of your roadmap moving forward? Yeah, so certainly, like I said, to build on where I've been, the presentation of very, very relevant content is massive. The presentation of relevant offers as well, and we're launching loyalty, which is a massive thing for us in July. So again, we're slightly playing catch up there, and I know I've been to a lot of QSR here, basically everyone has a loyalty platform that's new for us. The challenge that we have is that we do have a very fractured franchisee estate. So you do have restaurants which have capabilities that others don't. So I think for us it's gonna be making sure that we tie that up as much as possible. So if we see customers who are having trouble accessing loyalty for whatever reason, we'll be able to identify them within the platform and hopefully give them a better experience after and not just kind of ignore the fact that that's happened to them. So I think that that's kind of, yeah, the biggest thing coming up for us is that trying to have that consistency of experience as much as possible, which is so critical in QSR. When you think about what keeps you up at night as a marketer in QSR, is it conversion? Is it new users to the platform? Like what is the one thing that you're really trying to solve for the most? So I think the thing that keeps me up is the things that I don't have much control over. So to that point around a franchisee estate, everyone obviously working bloody hard to make everything perfect and make everything completely consistent across our restaurants, but there's only so much that we can do to help that. But it's not worth worrying about things that you necessarily aren't able to control. So like I said, the key thing for me is making sure that we are ultimately delivering on the vision that we have, which is to make it fast and easy for customers to get a whopper their way. And there are lots of things in our disposal that we can do that and can help that with. So we have time for one last question. So I'm going to come at you with the heavy hitter. What's your favorite thing on the menu? I was heart speaking, man. I was like 50 seconds, I just mumbled my way through that. Bacon XXL, which is the most popular item in the UK. I need to go to Boking while I'm here, but it's so hard to walk anywhere here that there is one which is only supposedly like a mile away, but I think it will take me about an hour to get there. But yeah, I think hands down, Bacon XXL, what about yourself? Let's see what you did. Oh, whopper everything. Easy answer. No questions asked. Easy answer, yeah. Gang, please join me in thanking Tim for the conversation today. Tim, thanks for this really fun session. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks.