No. 2At Yext · Hard Rock International · Hospitality & entertainment
One problem, five brands
Every Hard Rock division wanted something different. I got the CIO to name the one problem that mattered, then built the case on their own numbers.
- The challenge
- A new multi-brand loyalty program flooded one shared support team with questions. Answers sat in disconnected systems, and IT had no capacity to help.
- My contribution
- Ran discovery with every division, got the CIO to name one shared priority, and built a conservative business case on the customer's own support data.
- The outcome
- A single-brand listings customer became a multi-brand AI search agreement: the company's top AI search deal of the fiscal year.
Business challenge
Hard Rock International was folding its brands into Unity, a single loyalty program. One shared support organization served all of them — dining, hotels and casinos, retail, loyalty, even careers. The launch flooded it with loyalty questions. IT had no bandwidth to help. Answers lived in SharePoint, two ticketing systems and loose Word documents, so agents swivelled between screens and customers gave up and called. Only one of the company's brands was a customer of ours, and only for listings.
Strategic insight
Every division had its own pain. Hotels wanted one thing, loyalty another, marketing a third. Pitching each one separately would have produced several small deals and no executive owner. But the same problem sat underneath all of them: loyalty-related support requests were eating IT and service capacity across every brand. If the CIO named that as the top priority, five conversations became one decision.
My approach
I ran discovery with each division lead, then played the combined picture back to the CMO and CIO. The CIO confirmed the number one priority: cut loyalty support requests and give IT and service teams their time back. I scoped the rollout in that order — loyalty first, then hotels and casinos, dining, retail and careers — and built on the service platform they already owned instead of replacing it. The business case used their own support volumes and costs, with every benchmark clearly labelled.
Stakeholder alignment
The buying group spanned the CIO, CMO, and leaders of digital experience, loyalty, media, content and IT programs. I sequenced it: an onsite business review to find the shared objective, an executive gathering to build relationships, a meeting between our Chief Digital Officer and their CIO, then a value review with the CIO and loyalty leadership. Along the way we worked through competing internal priorities, a bad experience with a previous vendor, budget and launch timing, and real questions about integration.
Business outcome
A single-brand listings customer became a multi-brand agreement covering AI search for customer support, listings, reviews, structured data and analytics, co-termed into the existing contract. It was the company's top AI search deal of the fiscal year. The business case was deliberately conservative — it only counted support that already happened online — and still showed the investment paying back several times over.
“I didn't sell five teams.”
What I learned
Expansion inside a multi-brand company isn't won division by division. It's won by finding the one problem the executive above all of them already feels — and letting them be the one to name it. I didn't sell five teams. I got the CIO to say what mattered most, then built the numbers with their data, so the decision was theirs before it was ever mine.