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Arby's CEO is now in charge of turning around Buffalo Wild Wings — here's how 'Moneyball' inspired his hugely successful transformation of Arby's

Arby's CEO Paul Brown looked to "Moneyball" for inspiration when crafting a comeback plan for the fast food company. Now he's got Buffalo Wild Wings to save.

Arby's recent offbeat image has an unlikely root in the baseball book Moneyball.
  • Arby's holding company Roark Capital has agreed to buy Buffalo Wild Wings.
  • Arby's CEO Paul Brown will run both fast food chains.
  • Brown said his remarkable turnaround of the Arby's brand was inspired by Michael Lewis' "Moneyball."

Arby's parent company has seen such success under CEO Paul Brown that it's handed him another struggling franchise to turn around, Buffalo Wild Wings.

On Tuesday, Roark Capital agreed to acquire the wing chain for $2.9 billion, operating it as a privately held subsidiary of Arby's Restaurant Group, which will be run by Brown.

In a July interview, Brown explained that he was inspired by Michael Lewis' "Moneyball," imagining Arby's as an underdog against bigger, richer organizations.

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In 2016, Arby's had its best year ever. The fast food chain brought in $3.7 billion in sales, with an average of $1.1 million in sales-per-store in the US — up 20% from 2013.

To put that into context, though: Revenues at McDonald's were $24.6 billion in that same time, and its ad spending alone was $734.6 million.

When Brown joined Arby's as its CEO in May 2013, the controlling stakeholders gave him the task of revitalizing a 50-year-old company that had lost relevancy, trailing behind fast-food rivals such as McDonald's.

Brown came to see this gap as a disciplining advantage over its richer rivals, he told Business Insider.

His situation reminded him of one of his favorite management books, one that most people would associate more with baseball history: Lewis's 2003 classic, which was later adapted into an Oscar-nominated film.

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"Moneyball" tells the story of how the Oakland A's manager Billy Beane transformed the game of baseball during the team's 2002 season. The team had the third-lowest budget in Major League Baseball, limiting the ability to grow a star-studded team. Beane stretched its budget by building a team based on hard data and research rather than traditional scouting techniques and intuition. The A's became one of the most successful teams in the MLB.

Brown saw Arby's as the Oakland A's, and McDonald's as the wealthy New York Yankees.

"So when you look at it that way, you've got to do things differently," Brown said. "We had to one, come up with a way of talking about ourselves in a voice that actually stood out, but we also had to be more creative about all the channels that you could use to get the message out." In other words, Arby's needed to do more with less.

Around six months into Brown's tenure as CEO, Rob Lynch joined Arby's as its new CMO. One of Lynch's first moves was changing ad agencies, switching to Publicis and agreeing on a comprehensive brand identity that both employees and customers could unite behind.

With the direction of Brown and Lynch, Arby's underwent some "Moneyball" moves:

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  • the tweet went viral
  • it responded with an ad

A particularly amusing marketing decision that brought together these principles was the sponsorship of the the English professional golfer Andrew Johnston, a bearded, lighthearted guy with the nickname "Beef." When their unusual sponsorship got significant media attention, Arby's decided to sponsor the 2017 PGA Tour.

"We don't have the budget to throw our logo all over the place," Lynch told ESPN after the announcement. "But this will make people look twice, so we think it's both ludicrous and awesome that we pulled this off."

This is an updated version of a story that ran on July 19, 2017

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