Bruno Cardinali is leaving his role as Popeyes CMO after nearly three years in the job.
In a conversation with Adweek, Cardinali said he’s not leaving for another post. Instead, he simply wants to take a break.
“I’ve gone from job to job over the years, and I’ve always promised myself that if the opportunity came up, I would take some time off,” Cardinali told Adweek. “This the right time to do it for me, and for the brand.”
A rep for Popeyes parent company Restaurant Brands International confirmed Cardinali’s move.
Matt Rubin, currently the CMO of RBI’s brands in APAC, will return from the company’s Singapore office to take on the role of interim CMO of Popeyes. “We will concurrently launch an external search for a permanent CMO over the coming months,” the RBI rep told Adweek. “Bruno has been a valued partner and leader in the growth of our brand. We look forward to seeing all that he accomplishes in the future.”
Cardinali’s exit comes amid a string of CMO resignations. This week alone, five chief marketers have made their exits, including Walgreens’ Patrick McLean, IBM’s Carla Piñeyro Sublett, TikTok’s Nick Tran and Formula 1’s Ellie Norman.
But RBI has been dealing with a CMO exodus over the past several months. Most recently in November, Ellie Doty ended her year-plus run as North American marketing lead at RBI’s Burger King. Doty was hired in June 2020 as the brand’s first-ever North American CMO. Doty’s exit was preceded in October with the conclusion of Paloma Azulay‘s tenure as global chief brand officer. Azulay oversaw marketing at the corporate parent for Burger King, Popeyes and Tim Hortons.
For Cardinali, who will leave the job at the end of January, the departure is happening at a particularly strong time for Popeyes.
“Over the past three years, we’ve had such a great run,” said Cardinali, who joined Popeyes in March 2019 after running Burger King’s Latin American and Caribbean marketing for a year. He was previously at Unilever for 13 years in a variety of leadership posts. “Before I joined, Popeyes was making roughly $2.2 billion in U.S. sales. We’re selling more than double of that.”
The CMO’s responsibilities have also grown since that time. When Cardinali arrived at Popeyes, the brand had between 10 and 15 marketing staffers. Now, it has 60 people in that department.
The team’s accomplishments during Cardinali’s tenure include striking a unique menu and franchise partnership with Megan Thee Stallion. Cardinali also helped establish the New Orleans experience for the now-legendary Chicken Sandwich Twitter War of Summer 2019 (with rival Chick-fil-A), in which the Popeyes product became a viral phenomenon and sold out of two months’ worth of buttermilk-battered filets on brioche buns in two frenzied weeks.
“Before I was here, we didn’t have a real digital presence, we didn’t do a lot with social, and we didn’t do delivery and ecommerce,” Cardinali said. “So a lot has changed.”
