George Felix is Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Chili’s Grill & Bar. In this role, George provides overall vision, leadership, strategy and execution of all marketing programs and initiatives for Chili’s Grill & Bar including Brand Strategy, Advertising, Media, PR, Insights, eCommerce, CRM/Loyalty, and Culinary Innovation.
Prior to this, George was the Chief Marketing Officer of Tinder where he oversaw the global brand vision, strategy, and marketing operations for the highest grossing non-gaming app in the world. During this time at Tinder, George established the brand’s first brand positioning and delivered revenue growth of +22% and grew payers on the platform by +16% year over year.
Before this role, George was Chief Marketing Officer of Pizza Hut U.S. where he oversaw Marketing, Media, and Public Relations for the brand. During his time at Pizza Hut, he led the development of a new brand positioning and a new advertising campaign dubbed “Newstalgia” that helped deliver three consecutive quarters of same store sales growth including Pizza Hut’s best quarter in over a decade.
Prior, George was Director of Marketing for KFC Global where he was responsible for the brand communications strategy and positioning for the brand globally across 140 countries. He also served as Director of Brand Communications for KFC U.S. leading national advertising, product packaging, and restaurant merchandising. During his time in the role, the brand grew sales for 3 consecutive years behind the award-winning ‘Return of Colonel Sanders’ advertising campaign.
In April of 2018, George was named Advertising Age’s Brand Marketer of the Year and KFC’s “The Return of Colonel Sanders” campaign was named Advertising Age’s Campaign of the Year. George was previously named to Advertising Age’s 2016 40 under 40 list identifying the bright young minds reinventing and reshaping the future of marketing, and KFC was named to Advertising Age’s 2016 Marketer A-List as one of the top 10 Brands of the year.
Prior to joining KFC, George worked in brand management at Procter & Gamble for 6 years. In that time he worked on the Old Spice brand where he led advertising campaigns that won 10 Cannes Lions, 2 Effies, and the Emmy for Best Commercial.
George holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from the University of Notre Dame and an MBA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. George and his wife of 18 years, Mary, live in Dallas, TX with their 2 children, Eleanor (13) and Wilson (10).