Fred Ehle, an innovative senior marketing executive, is grounded in brand building with retail expertise. He’s driven top and bottom-line results for Fortune 500, private equity and privately held companies including Jockey International, Redbox, McDonald’s and PulteGroup. As a senior leader at major ad agencies DDB, FCB and Leo Burnett and marketing strategy consultancies including The Zyman Group and VSA Partners, Fred has grown and built existing brands and launched over 30 new products domestically and globally for companies including General Mills, Campbell Soup, ConAgra and SC Johnson. He was named one of OnCon’s top 100 marketers in 2021 and is a member of the Association for National Advertisers CMO Circle and Brand Strategy committee.
in August 2020, Fred was named as the vice president and head of new business development for Jockey International. Based on his performance, he quickly expanded his role to oversee product marketing, innovation, research, corporate strategy and licensing.
Prior to joining Jockey, Fred served as the vice president of marketing for redbox to oversee brand management, integrated and channel marketing, content marketing, strategic planning, marcom, partnerships and promotional calendars. In addition, he was responsible for product marketing and marketing communication across the enterprise, including new product launches, PR, social media, retail marketing, field marketing, partnership marketing and title marketing. He successfully launched redbox’s first national advertising campaign, redbox on demand streaming service and secured sponsorship of the redbox bowl college football game.
As the first to steer customer strategy for McDonald’s USA, Fred served as the vice president chief customer officer, reporting to the Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Marketing Officer to drive customer focused, insight-driven initiatives across restaurant operations, marketing and menu innovation. He led the customer insights and customer experience teams and developed and implemented the CRM function including McDonald’s first loyalty program. Fred was instrumental in launching All Day Breakfast and re-imaging McDonald’s restaurants across the country and the turnaround is still being realized today.
Before leading key organizational initiatives with McDonald’s, Fred was the Vice President of Brand Management for Pulte Group, the nation’s largest new homebuilder. He oversaw the development of brand strategy and strategy activation for the three Pulte brands: Centex, Pulte and Del Webb. By repositioning the Centex and Del Webb businesses, he helped drive a 20% increase in PulteGroup revenue which enabled them to become the fastest growing stock on the Fortune 500 in 2012.
Fred spent the first half of his career in marketing strategy consulting with the Zyman Group, VSA Partners and several major ad agencies such as DDB, FCB and Leo Burnett. He was in charge of leading national and global brands such as General Mills, Campbell Soup Company, ConAgra and State Farm Insurance as well as a number of high tech and financial services companies.
Fred has been a guest lecturer at the Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern University, the Johnson School of business at Cornell University, the American Marketing Association Annual Meeting 2015 and 2021 and has appeared on the Markets in Motion podcast hosted by Prof. David Reibstein of the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. He is an advisory board member of Leapfrog Online.
Fred has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Master in International Management from the Thunderbird School of Global Management.
Fred lives in Chicago with his wife and daughter, enjoys travel, golf, great restaurants and is a co-owner of an NFL franchise.