Turning Around A Brand Before It’s Too Late
November 26, 2025
You’re running a supermarket chain that’s just been rated the worst company to work for in America. Not the worst grocery chain, but the entire country. Employee morale is shattered. Customers are leaving. The board is skeptical. Sales, traffic, margins, and market share are all trending downward. Now, imagine that a year later, that same company wins USA Today’s “America’s Best Supermarket” award.
This is exactly what happened at The Fresh Market under the leadership of Kevin Miller, the company’s former Chief Marketing Officer, with over 35 years of experience transforming some of the world’s biggest brands, including McDonald's, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Disney.
In this episode of In other words, Kevin joins host Jason Hemingway to explain how a sharp focus on loyalty, data-driven decisions, and connected customer experiences repositioned the brand for long-term success. They explore what effective personalization really looks like, how to scale engagement without losing the local touch that builds loyalty, and why thriving across languages, cultures, and diverse markets is more important than ever.
You’re running a supermarket chain that’s just been rated the worst company to work for in America. Not the worst grocery chain, but the entire country. Employee morale is shattered. Customers are leaving. The board is skeptical. Sales, traffic, margins, and market share are all trending downward. Now, imagine that a year later, that same company wins USA Today’s “America’s Best Supermarket” award.
This is exactly what happened at The Fresh Market under the leadership of Kevin Miller, the company’s former Chief Marketing Officer, with over 35 years of experience transforming some of the world’s biggest brands, including McDonald's, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Disney.
In this episode of In other words, Kevin joins host Jason Hemingway to explain how a sharp focus on loyalty, data-driven decisions, and connected customer experiences repositioned the brand for long-term success. They explore what effective personalization really looks like, how to scale engagement without losing the local touch that builds loyalty, and why thriving across languages, cultures, and diverse markets is more important than ever.
What You’ll Learn:
- How to reverse-engineer loyalty programs from customer research rather than off-the-shelf solutions
- Why connecting marketing spend directly to bottom-line impact is the non-negotiable CMO responsibility
- How to segment customers financially before building engagement programs
- Why frontline employee conversations outperform executive data in uncovering actionable insights
- How to maintain cultural authenticity when scaling to new markets
Kevin is the former Chief Marketing Officer at The Fresh Market, a gourmet specialty grocery chain owned by Apollo Global. He was responsible for overseeing brand positioning, multi-channel media and marketing strategy, and product innovation.
Before joining The Fresh Market, Kevin was CMO of Natural Grocers, a fast-growing organic retailer with 160 stores across 20 states. He drove transformational change across marketing, culture, and digital, resulting in 12 consecutive quarters of sales and traffic growth. Under his leadership, membership in the (N)power Loyalty Program grew over 500% to 1.3 million, and the marketing team secured four U.S. Trademark Patents for original concepts.
Kevin is a member of the ANA’s select CMO Masters Circle, focusing on global growth challenges for leading brands. He was named by USA Today as one of the Top 10 Leading CMOs to Watch in 2024, recognized among the 30 Most Influential Marketers on LinkedIn in 2022, and awarded CMO Innovator of the Year by the Millennium Alliance in 2021. Kevin also serves on the National Advertising Review Board and was behind The Fresh Market’s award-winning video strategy that picked up a 2023 DigiDay Live Video Strategy Award.
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Highlights and YouTube Chapters:
- 00:00 Introduction
- 01:57 From the Army to Adland
- 03:58 Diagnosing the Marketing Gap
- 06:10 Building a Brand on Love
- 08:01 One Million Members in 7 Months
- 14:08 Scaling Personalization with GenAI
- 17:08 Culture, Language, and the Bottom Line
- 19:50 What Kevin Wishes He Could Automate
- 21:43 Inspiring Teams in a Turnaround
- 25:34 Solving the Dinner Dilemma
- 33:03 Kevin’s Piece of Advice to Young Marketers
Episode Resources:
- Kevin Miller, Former CMO at The Fresh Market
- Scrollmark Website and LinkedIn
- Jason Hemingway, CMO at Phrase
- Phrase Website