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Vidéo Jan 24, 2025

3 Questions with Carrie Fischer of Subway

Welcome to three questions with MotionPoint. I'm your host, Dominic Tither Biden. And and today, I have the absolute pleasure of being with Carrie Fisher.

Carrie is the leader of localization at Subway. Subway is renowned for having the the franchise the most franchisees worldwide with thirty seven thousand locations globally. Hey, how are you doing?

I’m good. Thank you, Dom. How are you?

I’m doing great. It’s an honor to be with you.

I mean Thanks for having me.

What you've been doing. Absolutely. Absolutely. So let's get to it. Today we're gonna talk about a lot of different things, but with someone with your level of responsibility, I am vastly interested in how do you balance messaging and standardizing versus customizing messaging across global markets?

It's a great question because we're so global. We're the largest quick serve restaurant in the world. You can imagine we have to customize everything, including our menu for that matter.

But messaging, if we're talking about marketing let's let's take our website as an example. So if you if you look at our US website versus, the Japanese website or the Korean website, vastly different. The branding is there. You see the s, you've got the green and the yellow, that's standard across the board.

The menus are completely different. The messaging is different And, you know, these, influencers, right, are are different. They're not gonna Yeah. They're not gonna show a bunch of American football players in Japan or Korea.

They're going to use the influencers influencers that are important and, you know, popular in those locations. So while the branding is the same, the service should be the same as well. So, you know, we we do like a consistent global brand messaging and and welcoming our guests.

We go off script, you know, depending on the country that we’re in. So we wanna make it relevant for everybody in their respective countries.

And and you allow, like, some autonomy from local subsidiaries or, local office to tell, hey, Carrie. We would like to do this and that.

Thank god. Right? Because because you imagine if everything came through me and I was translating commercials or something like that into, into Japanese, it wouldn't resonate. It wouldn't even make sense. So creating content in country is, I think, the best strategy that Subway could ever employ.

Right. And and so how do you set those guardrails, I guess? Like, is that something that you you, you know, tell them, hey, this is kind of the perimeter you have to work with or?

Well, we’ve got, you know, branding guidelines that have to be adhered to.

We have to be legally compliant in every country that we’re in.

So it's it's a huge, really, effort worldwide, global wide, to to be able to do all of this. And sure, we I'm sure we have, you know, parameters and and other things that have to be adhered to. I'm not privy to them because I don't live in those countries. But, I look at the commercials and I look at the, you know, just the differences.

And it's they they try and be similar, believe it or not. Like, the the tone, the excitement, you know, everybody's energetic.

That’s the same throughout the countries.

Yeah. So it's like the benefit to the emotion you're trying to convey the branding at the highest level. Yeah. But you do allow, like, enough autonomy in those subsidiaries to, like, say, prescribe to me what you think should be working.

Right? And, of course, I mean, I could ask you, and we could do a whole thing on on the regulations and and requirements in different markets, and I don't even know. But for the people to talk about that. n'est-ce pas ?

Probably not.

So many. Well, I think that’s a good segue to the next question, which is what is the greatest challenge that you have when pioneering globalization strategies at Subway?

At Subway. Okay. So I think the biggest challenge, what I found with every job that I’ve had, and I’ve only had four, post college, but it’s Mhmm. It’s the same theme comes up again and again, and that’s educating the company about localization.

I don't have to I didn't have to educate Subway on why localization is important. That was already in place. They didn't have anyone to, you know, help create the strategy around it.

It. Yep.

But educating people on what localization is, the best workflows, automation, you know, kind of, herding the cats as, as it’s been called, just which is difficult, if you don’t have cats.

So trying to help people understand the the best process, in order for this wonderful thing called localization to work as optimally as it can, that’s probably the biggest challenge.

A lot of people, you know, wanna send a a Teams message or an email, you know, with this big translation request or something like that. It's like, nope. Here's here's the process.

Everything's automated. You know? I'm a one person army at at Subway. I can't there's no way for me to manage everything through emails and and text messages. So, yeah, that's the biggest challenge. In other companies, it was educating them on on why we're doing this whole process. You know, we're trying to go global as a company.

You know, we’re trying to make money, and survive.

But I didn't have to do that at Subway. It was more the challenge was around, centralizing. So I'm I'm the only centralized function within Subway.

So I yeah. It's crazy. I deal with all of the departments and all of the regions for their translation requests.

So, that’s that was a new one for me too.

So if I were to revisit what you just said, it's kind of like the biggest challenge a company like Subway, which is the biggest company to do this for, is making sure that you standardize the infrastructure and the operational procedures that come with, getting approvals and getting, like, you know, requests fulfilled in an organized manner because you you have to do a lot of things. But if they don't come through this, you know, procedure, which already has in it engineered the checks and balances that you need to, you know, move forward.

It's it's it's creating that, you know, infrastructure. It's almost like the, you know, the crossways between technology and marketing where, you know, you gotta make sure the technology hits hits all the the the tricks and balances for you to execute your job and Yeah. And, make it come to you in in a way where you can actually, you know, it's malleable enough for you to give them direction and feedback back without them, you know, not understanding or without you, not misrepresenting their needs is a big thing.

Absolutely. You can imagine the chaos that I came into.

People were translating stuff over here, over here using vendors, using people, using relatives. No. But, you know, so having everything centralized through a TMS, and then having a workflow, having a process to ensure the consistency, lowering the cost, you know, all that all of the stuff that comes with centralizing, I had to put in place, and I have.

Yeah. No. That's that has it's almost like, you know, trying to I'm trying to think of an analogy that talks about, you know, drinking out of a fire hose and also, like, threading the needle and the fire hose has the needle that you need to put through. n'est-ce pas ?

It's That's right. That's a lot. That's a lot. Well, brilliant.

It's it's brilliant that you've been able to to execute that. I I I can only imagine. And and the way that you describe it means, you know, there there has to be a lot of things that you you might not have the time to really extrapolate on to actually actually create the infrastructure and the processes to have that be efficient. You know?

It was slow going. I'll be honest. You know? It's I'm seven years here and, you know, still coming across some some challenges, and that's why I stay. I mean, it's it's not only is it a great company, great people, but there's always something to work on. There's always some new thing, to work on, which I I just love it.

Well, that's great, Kaye. I I really appreciate the detail there, though. You can say to what something like that could be.

I I I know there’s thousands of people that would love to have that, you know, role, and and I’m sure this I know how lucky I am.

I know how lucky I am. Yes.

When we first started talking, I was already like, hey. I'm I'm talking to the Carrie Fisher over here. You know? It's it's impressive.

Well, I I digress. So let's let's move on to the third question. So k. You know, you have nearly thirty years of experience in localization.

What are the changes you've seen in the industry and where do you see, of course, like I haven't talked about this, AI disrupting the status quo and what's gonna happen moving forward? What do you think, Carrie?

I think the some of the changes well, most of the changes have been around technology and the availability of that technology. I remember when translation memory was a thing.

Mhmm.

And my vendors said, hey. We we just bought this, you know, translation memory system. We can now put all your content in there. And then if you want it back or no. I had to pay a fee for them to to do this.

To reuse your translations from the Yes.

Really? Really?

Well, I’m I’m sure It was a new technology.

It was a new technology, and people you know? And it cost them money. And they were, I'm sure, trying to figure out how to pass that cost on to the customer.

Over time, it just became the norm. Right?

TMS. You could do it for free, I guess. Right?

Yes. Absolutely. It was part of the process. It was part of the workflow. Right? You just you it wasn't even a question of using it or not.

And then that TMS, that technology became available to people like me.

For a long time, it was the the supplier side that used it pretty exclusively, except for the super large companies like Oracle and Sun.

They have their own systems.

So I let the the service provider do all of that. All I would my job was to send files and make sure, you know, my company's, files were correct and the file types and all that stuff. And then it morphed into anyone can use these things. Anyone can use a TMS system. And so that was, I think, a big change in the industry. Technology Yeah. Simplified and made it easy for the people who never saw it before, never used it before, made it accessible, made it available.

I think that was a big change.

Like your marketers in in, you know, any given domestic market would be able to pull from those TMS systems and and use the translation memory that had already been invested into you reuse the same translations for their, let’s say, marketing campaigns, stuff like that.

Exactly. Yeah. And if it's a centralized function, then we could have, you know, we could do that for them. So, as opposed to, you know, I'm not saying that these TMS systems aren't accessible to people outside of localization, but, it's difficult for non local people to kind of understand what this is and then figure out how to use it. Oh, do I grab this TM or that TM? Do I use the operations or the legal you know, it's Yeah. Not not their wheelhouse, but the ability to have this on the localization department within the localization department on the client side, I think that was pretty kinda revolutionary.

And then just the it's all about the tools and automation, QA, QA automating. You know, that was such a manual process. Now it can be done with a piece of software.

Yeah.

You know, to make sure all the translations are what we think they are and what they should be.

You know, MT, neural MT, and now Gen AI. Right? Yeah. It's another step in localization's evolution.

It's not going away. It will be refined just as MT has been refined over time and neural MT. GenAI is gonna go through the same process. I think it just generated a lot more noise and controversy than machine translation.

Once again, you know, oh my god, our jobs are going away. No. They're not. They're just changing.

Yeah.

Well, that's that that that sounds very I mean, it resonates to me. It's it's almost like yeah. GenAI is is a is a big tool, but, you know, it's not replacing anybody.

It’s It’s helping us.

Use it. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's you have to learn how to use it. Right? Just like you have to learn how to, you know, back in the day, you know, use a plow, you know, and you you have somebody driving that plow, you know, a big animal.

Totally. And and and, it's how technology isn't leveraged by the same person more so than, you know, the the the disruption of the technology in and of itself. Right. But that's that's very interesting.

I think I wanna, like, pop back a little bit how you were describing the the ease that you had in choosing between, let's say, like, legal and regulation type translation versus just commercial or marketing type jargon, and then you have the ability to choose between one or the other. I think that's, like, that was a huge, you know, step forward in our industry.

Do you think there's something similar to that with, you know, I guess, generative AI, or do you think, like, a company like Subway that's so vast, like, it almost you know, the the bleeding edge of innovation in our industry almost has to take, you know, a slower pace at a company as big as Subway because we have to, like there's a trickle down to it where we have to make sure everybody else that talk talk talk about that if you can, Carrie. That's interesting to me.

So, I actually reached out to my HR department last year.

So when GenAI really took off and the service providers were figuring out how to use it Right.

And how clients like me could leverage it. Right.

So I saw some demos and I was like, cool. We should look at this. You know, could it save us time, money, whatever?

So I went to my HR department and and, I said, are we allowed to use chat g p t, which is out there right now? You know?

And it took them a few months to get back to me because they were talking in to internally about this.

What is our stance?

For for everybody. Everybody else. Yeah. That's a good question. Yeah. Yeah.

You have to even go to HR to see if we can even leverage this amazing new thing everybody’s talking about.

Can I use chat g p t in French to translate or create content, you know, for an article that's gonna go to the franchisees? I need to know that before I start doing it. Wow. Yeah.

And, the other answer so we decided oops. Since we're a Microsoft house, we decided to use Copilot. And we were piloting Copilot.

And it was fun, you know. One or two people from every department started using it.

How can it help, create a job description for HR? How can it create an e learning content piece by referencing a user guide? Holy crap. All of a sudden, these things that were taking three to four months are taking three to four weeks, and we're able to generate more content. We're able to and it's, you know, it's a lot easier to edit than it is to create. And, we found that GenAI is just a great creator if you can figure out the prompts, you know, the best prompts to and that's the learning curve on our part. Great.

And the second part which is and and create a good editing process for that because you're like you said, creating, that's that's easy. You know, like, seeing that up, polishing that another story. And that does still require, you know, a lot of, resources. So Oh, yeah. Interesting. Very interesting, Carrie.

It’s fun.

Any other thoughts that you wanna you wanna share with us?

Just that it's it's a constant, struggle isn't the right word. It's just constant being aware of Mhmm. What Jenny and I can do, and how to do it and how it relates to your company. And how can it help? How can it help us? That's all this is about.

You know, like, in speaking with you, I really that's I I I feel like I'm empathizing a little bit with what what you're conveying, Carrie. It's like there is so much, and AI moves so fast. You just blink, and now there's all of these new tools that weren't there yesterday.

That’s right.

How can a company with a digital footprint like Subway? You know, forget about thirty thousand, the biggest franchisees, you know, in the entire world. Like, now just think about the digital footprint of that, which has to be at a scale of three or four, probably more like fifty times, fifty x, right, of just just the the markets that you're serving.

How can you choose what's the best tool to leverage? And, I mean, if I were in your shoes, Kaye, I I would know that whatever I choose is not the right answer just because tomorrow there's gonna be another ten. Right? Right.

So, We also have to be wise about what we’re using it for.

Right? Right.

We can’t see anything going crazy here.

Yeah. The end goal, I think, is to reduce the mundane tasks, like taking minutes, meeting minutes, or something like that or you know, Jenny, I can do all that from you. It takes the minutes. It summarizes them.

So if you've missed the first ten minutes of a meeting, you can just ask Copilot to sum it up for you. Boom. Done. Action items.

Oh my gosh. So a lot of it, you know, I just feel is for helping humans with the mundane stuff.

Mhmm. Also creating, you know, how can I reduce my time creating, you know, this type of content?

You know, it may or may not help with marketing, you know, generating the really because we have weird not weird. We have, creative ads and Yeah. And content and, you know, even our app.

We're not using Jenny and I to create, you know, our app or our website or or any of that stuff, but we can use it for stuff that, you know, doesn't make a big difference in our everyday lives. And, again, I I just feel like it's a helper.

Yeah. Absolutely.

Well, that's very interesting, Kerry. I appreciate all of your answers. So I wanna tell the viewers that's it for this three questions with mostly point. Thank you for your time, and we'll see you guys next time. Merci.

Thanks.

Merci.