He once drove a taxi in New York City, was a vendor at Yankee Stadium, and delivered the New York Post for a living. Now as CEO of Domino's, Russell Weiner needs to bring the best of his hustle to navigate the uncertainties of a looming recession and a resurgence of the pandemic. Can he?
Ann Arbor, Michigan, US, December 2008. “Your pizza sucks…” the backhanded compliment was a sucker punch for Russell Weiner who was used to a “fizzy”, and “happy” life. He joined Pepsi in 1998, held various marketing positions over the next decade, and in 2007 urged cola drinkers to be “more happy”, a new tagline that Pepsi adopted since its last one—“Pepsi. It’s the cola”—in 2003. “One of the nice things about the word 'happy' is it's really multidimensional,” Weiner, vice president of cola marketing at PepsiCo, reportedly remarked during the unveiling of the advertising campaign with the new slogan. “The beauty of the word happy,” he underlined, “is it kind of captures all of them—invigorating, uplifting, exciting and fun.”