Dollar General’s Chad Fox has a mission to serve small towns

Dollar General Chief Marketing Officer Chad Fox has retail in his blood. From the time he was old enough to walk, Fox unloaded trucks and stocked shelves at his grandparents’ Western Auto store. His career blossomed by managing multiple retail accounts during his time at the Dallas-based advertising agency TRG on top of working for the retail giant Walmart. Growing up in the small Texas town of Ranger, which hovers at around 3,000 residents, also influenced Fox’s perspective. Mix an appreciation for retail and small towns, and Fox has been a natural fit to run Dollar General’s marketing team since 2019.

Dollar General is the biggest retailer in the U.S. in terms of number of stores, with around 75 percent of its locations in small towns across the country. Fox says understanding the company’s core customer is key to success.

“We’re an 83-year-old company, but we’re an 83-year-old company in growth mode,” Fox says on The Current Podcast. “Our success goes back to the mission of the company. It’s serving the underserved from both a financial standpoint and a geographic standpoint. And it’s doing well by doing good.”

In this episode, Fox discusses transforming the company to become more data-driven, why he believes the Dollar General brand is slightly misunderstood, and how leaning into its rural customer base has been a big distinguisher in the retail media network space.