Papa John’s sank into tepid same-store sales comparisons. In the wake of the public disaster, Schnatter stepped down as CEO of the company he founded and is now chairman. And to add insult to injury, given the chance to swap pies in February, the league took on Pizza Hut as its official pizza sponsor in place of Papa John’s. Schnatter declined an interview request, but Papa John Chief Marketing Officer Brandon Rhoten told Chief Executive that his old boss “doesn’t love it when he has to talk about and explain his politics, because he feels that might make people uncomfortable.” Schnatter, he says, believes that
“when [Apple CEO] Tim Cook and [Amazon CEO] Jeff Bezos say something, and they don’t have the same political views as John, it’s not twisted and turned by most media sources.” Over at Patagonia, the results were the complete inverse. Employees and customers cheered, sending letters of support to Congress for the company’s stand against the feds and expressing an outpouring of social media love for the nearly $1 billion, Ventura, California-based brand. “When is it a bad idea to stand up for what you value?” Marcario says. “I think some companies, mostly public companies,
BENIOFF’S BIG STICK a Heartland tech capital almost overnight. Indy now hosts Salesforce’s second-biggest concentration of workers, behind only San Francisco, and the company’s occupation of the former Chase Tower downtown has beckoned many other tech firms to the Indiana capital. But in 2015, Indiana’s state legislature passed a
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If there’s one thing that’s tough to beat when it comes to successful CEO Goodism, it’s raw economic power. Case in point: Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and Indiana. When the $10 billion revenue tech giant acquired Indianapolis-based online marketing firm ExactTarget five years ago, it transformed the city into
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law that allowed businesses to refuse service to gay and lesbian customers under religious freedom protection, and then-Governor Mike Pence signed it. Benioff wasn’t pleased. “Today we are canceling all programs requiring our customers and employees to travel to Indiana to face discrimination,” he tweeted. Within days, a group of heavy-hitter local CEOs, including then-chief John Lechleiter of Eli Lilly and Tom Linebarger of Cummins, were trying to reconcile the new law with their companies’ stances, a city “human rights” ordinance and Benioff’s concerns. “We were able to bring a certain pragmatism to the discussion about the law’s long-term impact on retention and attraction
of talent for key economic sectors,” says Michael Huber, president and CEO of the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce, who headed a “war room” at his offices for a week as CEOs and others worked on a solution. The “fix” was to amend the law to explicitly protect sexual orientation and gender identity, and Pence and the legislature agreed to it. While Salesforce executives weren’t entirely satisfied, they love Indianapolis as the company’s effective second headquarters. “Indiana just really needed to indicate that it was going to be a state that fought for people’s rights and would be fair and just,” says Bob Stutz, CEO of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud operation in Indianapolis.