Franchise Brands: More than a Logo

Franchise Brands: More than a Logo
March 9, 2009

In franchising, it’s not just the corporate logo that needs to be carefully guarded, although that’s important. It’s the logo plus everything else—corporate colors, signage, buildings, trucks, uniforms, products, services, prices, promotions, ads, window posters, and even mundane stuff like pens, wrappers, and every collateral item in existence.
SUBWAY restaurants, named the #1 Global Franchise Opportunity for 2009 by Entrepreneur magazine, has more than 30,500 locations in 87 countries. Imagine what it’s like to control every aspect of the SUBWAY brand in every franchise location around the globe.
If it sounds like a major headache-inducing challenge—well, it is. “Multi-unit franchises may face a variety of difficulties along the way toward building brand consistency,” says Gary Findley, CEO of the Findley Group, in Franchising World (“Consistency: The Key to Branding," April 2007).
“Balancing brand uniformity while respecting franchisee independence and regulating brand messages while effectively targeting local communities are two of the struggles that often arise.”
Findley believes the only way to control the brand is through RQM—repetitive quality marketing.
“In RQM, repetitive is remaining persistent and consistent with the marketing message,” Findley says. “In RQM, the overall objective is to remain consistent.
Consistency in the marketing campaign will not only strengthen the brand identity, but it often leads to positive business growth.”
In the franchise world, however, marketing consistency takes on a whole new meaning. “…marketing touches everything a business does,” Findley says, “from the design on the bathroom tiles to the rips in the salesperson’s jeans, and anything a customer sees, touches, hears or smells can affect the brand image.”
For large and small franchise operations alike, educating franchisees about the value of the brand is often the first and most important step.
Taylor Bond, CEO and president of Children’s Orchard, a US-based children’s clothing resale franchise, explains it this way in Franchising World (“Communicating the Brand,” February 2005): “…we have aggressively focused on communicating the ‘picture of value.’ That means we have done everything humanly possible to help our franchise owners understand that the brand is the market share.
We explain that the brand is a mental message, a picture that consumers connect to their store.” Bond says smaller franchisors should point to the success of large global brands to get their franchisees “to understand and embrace the value of the brand.” It’s crucial, he says, to “tie the brand directly to the value of the business.”
In large, sophisticated franchise operations, the franchisor maintains control of the brand through numerous means, including franchisee training programs, comprehensive brand guidelines, and providing franchisees with consistently executed branding and marketing materials.
Providing brand guidelines is not that difficult, but enforcing them across a far-flung franchise system is another story.
“While many franchise systems provide their franchisees with guidelines about logo usage, signage and advertising, many fail to fully enforce those guidelines,” says Nikki Sells, vice president of franchising for Express Personnel Services, in Franchising World (“Consistent Brand Identification Increases Market Share,” December 2006). “This is why a customer can go from one unit to the next and have a completely different experience with the brand.
Enforcing clear guidelines will not only help franchises stay true to the brand when marketing, it will also improve customers’ experiences.” Sells says it may take site visits, customer surveys and focus groups with field reps to determine adherence to brand standards.
That’s why superior global franchisors such as SUBWAY and McDonald’s make franchisees part of the solution. McDonald’s requires its restaurants to spend a minimum of 4 percent of gross sales annually for promoting and advertising the business. Owner/operators work with local agencies to place advertisements and, in some cases, produce their own creative material, as long as it follows system guidelines.
McDonald’s also encourages its operators to offer feedback and ideas that could benefit the entire system; the Big Mac, Egg McMuffin and Filet-o-Fish sandwiches were all developed by owner/operators.
International branding is particularly difficult. Language and cultural issues present unique challenges for franchises. For food franchise systems, local cuisine preferences may require entire menus to vary. McDonald’s, for example, operates in India but does not serve beef there.
Instead, the Indian system offers a choice of vegetarian and non-vegetarian menus; the non-vegetarian menu is comprised of chicken and fish. Product names retain the McDonald’s branding concept but are country-specific: McVeggie, McAloo Tikki, Shahi Paneer McCurry Pan and Veg Pizza McPuff.
Challenges not withstanding, globalization is a means of rapid brand expansion. US-based Yum! Brands, owner of KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell restaurants, has enjoyed widespread acceptance for its franchise brands around the world. The KFC business in France has the highest unit volumes of any KFC in the world. For the last four years, Pizza Hut has been ranked as the #1 most trusted food-service brand in India in a consumer survey in The Economic Times.

Mainland China is Yum! Brands’ top market for new company restaurant development worldwide. The company opened 471 new restaurants last year in mainland China. KFC, with more than 2,300 restaurants in China, is the leading quick-service restaurant brand, while Pizza Hut, with 400 locations, is the leading casual dining brand in mainland China. Yum! Brands says it opens a new KFC every day in mainland China. In 2007, operating profits for Yum! Brands’ China Division were more than US$ 375 million.
When a franchise system decides to change its brand, the implications are mind-boggling. In 2001, global shipping giant UPS acquired Mail Boxes Etc., a private postal center service. In 2003, “The UPS Store” brand was introduced. Tests in select US markets pitting The UPS Store against Mail Boxes Etc. showed a strong preference for The UPS Store. That meant thousands of US-based Mail Boxes Etc. stores had to be rebranded. Stores in Canada were rebranded in 2005. Stores outside North America, however, maintain the Mail Boxes Etc. brand. UPS currently operates over 6,000 stores worldwide.
Despite the arduous requirements of global branding, the business opportunity associated with a strong international franchise is unparalleled. Controlling their brands across thousands of locations is a key reason leading franchise systems succeed—and why their brands are among the most recognized in the world.

Soda Cans

Zoo Safari::: Take a peek

BRAND OWNER :Zoo Safari
CATEGORY:Sport/Leisure
REGION:Brazil
DATE:Feb 2009 - Dec 2008


The Zoo Safari in Sao Paulo is a safari park where visitors can drive their vehicle through forests as the animals roam around freely. The idea is that this way visitors are in cages rather than animals.
In order to communicate this different type of animal park, Zoo Safari created electrostatic stickers featuring pictures of animals including Zebra, ostriches and monkeys. These were placed on the windscreens of parked cars, facing inwards to car interior. Anyone getting into their car would get a glimpse of what it might be to have an animal peering into their vehicle. The proportions of the sticker gave the impression that an actual life sized creature was investigating the car passengers. The message on the sticker read: “Up-close, no cages, more fun”.

36.6 :::Ad-funded mobile brand

BRAND OWNER:36.6
CATEGORY:Telecoms/ Mobile
REGION:Poland
DATE:Jul 2008 - Dec 2008


36.6 was a service that allows people to top up their mobile credit just by listening to advertisements.

They must connect to a specific number, listen to the ad, respond to a specific question verifying that they listened to the ad and then get their account credited with free minutes or texts.

In order to launch the service, 36.6 wanted to drive the free message home, so created media and services that game the target audience of 15-24s something for nothing.

By following their habits, the brand identified key “need to phone” times and made sure the brand was there to offer an alternative to a cash-free mobile.

So this meant that young people were targeted when they were travelling to and from work, while they shopped as they exercised and during the evening.

36.6 appeared on signs in parks, on the sails of boats, as reverse graffiti, in digital out of home and on TV screens in electrical retailers.

The brand helped young people plan their big night out by appearing in the listings pages.

The brand also provided a free 36.6 bus which acted as a sales channel with the crew selling SIM cards.

The bus went along predefined routes in cities, carrying passengers between nightclubs.

Finally the brand also took control of snack dispensers in Warsaw selling 36.6 start up packs alongside snacks and chocolate.
As a result of the campaign, sales were 90% ahead of target in the second month.

Honda :::Mobile ignition

BRAND OWNER :Honda
REGION :Ireland
DATE :Jun 2008 - Jul 2008


To launch the Civic Type R vehicle model, Honda wanted an interactive campaign that captured the imagination of people in Dublin, Ireland.
Honda teamed up with JCDecaux to create an innovative new out of home format.

The special build was a 2D cut out of the back of the car with special lighting in the brake lights, smoke machines in the exhausts and a sonic element incorporated into it.

There was a text number on the poster that was linked to the controllers of the lights, smoke and sound. Passers by could text the number to “start” the car.

On doing this, the brake and indicator lights on the car started to flash, smoke came out of the exhausts and the roar of the engine was emitted from the board.

The sender then received two messages on their phone – one from Honda saying “thanks for participating, hope you enjoyed the show”, and the other gave a link to a specially designed mobile site that contained more information on the car (images of the interior, specs etc.).

A bluetooth unit contained in the build also picked up on any bluetooth enabled phones in the area, allowing people to download the roar of the engine as a ringtone.

Carlsberg::: Best Mate

BRAND OWNER:Carlsberg Group
CATEGORY:Drinks (alcoholic)
REGION:Canada
DATE:Apr 2009 - Dec 2008


Carlsberg was looking for a campaign to enhance brand awareness as it launched in Canada, building on its brand slogan “Probably the Best Beer in the World”. It wanted to engage with a primarily male target and link the brand to sociability.
Carlsberg came up with a nationwide competition akin to the Canadian Idol phenomenon. Competitors are required to show what makes them the “Best Mate” and why they can lay claim to the title.
The competition looks for “the guy that can make every situation better, is always connected and never lets anything stand in the way of a good time.
Visitors to www.bestmate.ca can enter to prove that with pictures, stories and videos that they are the best Best Mate. The 30 top “Best Mates” will be given a new Sony Ericsson W705 Walkman phone with integrated Facebook and YouTube applications.
The finalists will then be encouraged to record events and interactions as they build their case demonstrating their “best mate” skills.
A final winner will be selected and announced in June. The big prize is a VIP trip for the winner and three mates to Las Vegas. The advertising declares “Sinners needed for Vegas” and was created by GJP creative team Louis Duarte and Craig Burt.
The initial phase to invite contenders will be supported using a combination of outdoor, radio, online, video and social media tactics to cast a wide net.

Huggies::Baby countdown

BRAND OWNER:Kimberly-Clark
CATEGORY:Baby Care
REGION:USA
DATE:Feb 2008 - Dec 2008


There is a very short window in which first-time moms look at different disposable diaper brands and, once they have developed a preference, they generally stick with it.

Huggies sought an innovative way to inspire new moms to try the brand and build brand preference. The challenge was to create a meaningful tool that would allow mums to take information from the Huggies site and save on their personal profile pages online, creating brand ambassadors.
Multi-tasking is an important survival mechanism to help mums with their busy lives and online media play a major role in facilitating multi-tasking. Huggies created the “Huggies Baby Countdown” widget as a tool that expectant mothers could use to calculate how much longer their pregnancies will last based on their due dates.

It serves moms-to-be with daily pregnancy tips corresponding to their particular day along in pregnancy, as well as a picture of the developing fetus.

All content for the tips came from the Huggies brand website while a link on the widget drove users to sign up for the Pregnancy e-Newsletter on HuggiesBabynetwork.com.

This aligns Huggies with a useful tool that pregnant women can download to a personal profile page from more than 20 websites, including Facebook, Freewebs, iGoogle and MySpace, thereby connecting moms-to-be with the Huggies brand on a daily basis. All widget-supporting media and creative execution was negotiated as added value. Thus, every successful install was essentially a 9 month-long brand engagement, free of cost. The widget had 1,200+ installs in the first month and garnered an astounding interaction rate of 18%, compared with a Pointroll CPG rich media average of 7.25% (Pointroll CPG benchmarks, December 2008). To date, the widget has had 4,503,983 unique views and more than 31,000 installs

Dove::: Sleepover for self esteem

BRAND OWNER:Unilever
CATEGORY:Toiletries/ Cosmetics
REGION:Canada
DATE:Mar 2008 - Jun 2008

Too many girls develop low self-esteem from hang-ups about their looks and it stops them reaching their full potential.

The Dove Self- Esteem Fund wanted to fight this and deliver a positive experience for mothers and daughters.
While mums have positive memories about their own childhood sleepovers, they know they can turn negative and hit self esteem.

The Dove solution was to get both mums and daughters excited about doing something positive together, encouraging mothers to make the sleepover positive experience for their daughters.
Information about the sleepover was distributed online at dovesleepover.ca/soireedove.ca, offering mums tips on hosting a positive sleepover with music downloads, photo albums and live to air texting for daughters.
In a media first the promotion included a five network takeover with commercial breaks replaced with segments that linked live to real sleepovers and showing mums and daughters discussing issues that affected them.
TV programming was also adjusted in line with the positive theme to show empowering movies. Support also ran in-store, print and via PR.
The campaign delivered 11m media impressions and more than 30,000 registered attendees.

Johnnie Walker::: Targeting Chinese-Canadians

BRAND OWNER:Diageo
CATEGORY :Drinks (alcoholic)
REGION :Canada
DATE :Jan 2008 - Feb 2008

Chinese-Canadians are a significant minority. They are also keen whisky drinkers – particularly as part of their New Year celebrations.
The challenge for whisky brands is that they prefer to be communicated to in their home language – adding to costs – at a time when many are still recovering from the expense of pushing their products at Christmas.
Research indicated that while this group liked the finer things in life – making it a perfect target for Johnnie Walker – they also love giveaways and value add-ons and actively seek out such offers.
Johnnie Walker created Fai Cheun stations inside the biggest Chinese shopping complex in Toronto to offer our own branded version of the red wall/door posters traditionally used to offer new years greetings in homes, stores and restaurants.
Consumers who arrived at our calligraphy stations were greeted by traditionally dressed models speaking Cantonese and Mandarin and given branded Fai Cheun.
They also had the chance to speak to a world famous calligrapher and get unique personalised Fai Cheuns on branded paper.
Finally they were given a chance to sample Johnnie Walker and green tea in a nearby liquor store.
Chinese-Canadians were happy to display the branded Fai Cheuns and the activity was covered by Toronto’s two largest Chinese dailies.
Twenty-three per cent of Toronto’s Chinese Canadian population participated in the promotion.
Sales via liquor stores grew 44% in January and February year on year.

Red Bull::: Break Da Rulz " Kuwait"

BRAND OWNER:Red Bull
CATEGORY:Beverages- Energy Drink
REGION:Kuwait

DATE:April 2009 (Souq Sharq on Friday April 24 at 5:30pm)

.....So 80’s......

How Google won the search engine wars

April 2009

The Story of Search: How Google beat Overture and Yahoo by backing the long tail

Gary Flake, Microsoft technical fellow and director of Microsoft Live Labs, first became renowned for failure.
In 2003, he joined Overture as chief science officer. At the time, as he reminded an audience at the 2009 Advertising Research Foundation's 2009 Annual "Re:think" conference, the search-engine business largely was a duopoly. In fact, a year later, Overture had a 55-percent market share, Google 35 percent, and a variety of other providers shared the remaining 10-percent.

Five years on, Flake said, "the pie had grown by a factor of four. And it had changed from a duopoly to a monopoly." In 2008, Google's market share was 80 percent; Yahoo, which had acquired Overture in 2003, had 15 percent and Microsoft rounded out the selection with five percent.
"Google's dominance almost didn't happen," Flake told the ARF audience. And, the drivers were as much Overture's failure to understand the market dynamics as they were Google's successful understanding of the search value proposition. From a personal perspective, he added, such a momentous change in just a half-decade led to two questions: " 'WTF?' or 'How did I lose so badly - with greatness in my grasp - and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?'"

Although acknowledging he is a technologist and only a "tourist" in the marketing world, Flake began answering both queries by acknowledging the need to address three different constituencies:
*Customers: "They only want what they want."

*Advertisers: "They want low cost and low risk."

*Media/Publishers: "They need to engage customers and they want to do so at a low cost and with low risk."

"For each to get what it wants, someone has to sacrifice. If a publisher wants to make more money, an advertiser has to pay more. If an advertiser wants lower risk and still get out in front of customers, the customers may not get what they want."
In the case of paid search, a customer types in a query; advertisers, in advance, bid on a click because they presume a click translates to interest; and, with each click, publishers presumably make money. "If the interests of all three partiers are aligned, new value is created to all parties. It's something all three want: Something is exchanged at a pricing that's market-determined."
When GoTo.com - the original name of Overture - was founded in 1988, "There were valid questions about the model", Flake said. Would users actually be willing to pay up on a sponsored search result? Up to that point, search had been almost entirely non-commercial. Would destinations show these server-sponsored ads, when so much emphasis had been placed on preserving an editorial voice on search-engine pages? Would advertisers be willing to take the risk of a new medium that was completely new with no demonstrated return on investment?
The hesitation all added up to "a serious cold-start problem." The solution, Flake offered, was to make paid search completely transparent.
Overture tried to engender confidence with three strategic platforms: Exact search meant that users would get exactly what they wanted. Type in "Flowers" and you'd get flowers. Type in "Flowers" and "Mother's Day" and you'd get a list of sites that specifically matched those criteria. "But if you typed in, 'Where can I buy flowers for my beautiful mother in San Jose,' - and, I kid you not, we received long verbose proposals like that - you'd likely not get anything."
The reasoning, Flake explained, was that "we felt that the thoughtful advertiser wanted to know precisely what they were getting." Three other Overture features that reinforced the concept of transparency: A "human" editorial filter that reviewed every ad, "high-touch relationships with advertisers through all parts of the workflow," and partnerships with such premium destinations as MSN, AOL, Yahoo, and Microsoft.

To explain how Overture went wrong, Flake used three models of the new digital word that "that might explain the past and look toward the future":

• The Long Tail
• The Innovator's Dilemma
• Network Effects

The Long Tail

Before either organization fully realized the model or its implications, Overture focused on the head of the long-tail model and Google concentrated on the tail. And, as Flake described, those orientations would be the paid-search market-mover.
From day 1, Google defaulted to the approximate match. "'Where can I buy flowers for my beautiful mother in San Jose" generated a bunch of responses - florists in the specific market, 1-800 order-by-phone services, even grocery stores that offered plants as a sideline ordering. There were no specific matches (the head), but scores of approximate matches (the tail) that better served the needs of the consumer.

Similarly, Google used automated click-through rates (CTR) instead of staff people to determine whether a search was relevant to a query. If a search seemed to work, it was kept. If not, it was rejected from the system.
A CTR filter also served as a proxy for the relevancy that the destination partners had provided for Overture.
The pattern was not an isolated one. Flake pointed to other instances of head/tail distinctions that have become more common as the model has become better understood: mainstream media (head) and news aggregators/citizen journalism (tail); network TV (head) and "stupid YouTube videos (tail); radio (head) and podcasts (tail); RIAA (head) and unsigned artists (tail); shrink-wrap software (head) and software mashups (tail).
The Innovator's Dilemma
"The first companies in an industry (the innovators) must be willing to eventually destroy their own business to create something new," Flake told the ARF assembly. "They must destroy their business before someone else does."
Flake's career began in the hardware industry, "where the epitome was to program on a supercomputer." Although "it took decades to unfold," priorities for hardware moved from supercomputers to main frames to scientific workstations to personal computers to laptops to handhelds and to cell phones…. Comsumerization of that market actually drove innovation and drove the bigger things out of business."
"Innovators start off by doing something very natural," Flake said. "They focus on a small number of large, high-margin customers. They want to make money, they want to prove the model works as soon as possible. And they want to maximize their own ROI."
Late arrivals, by contrast, are left to focus on lower-margin customers - again, a common-sense strategy: Why go head-to-head with the market leader when there's a whole pool of customers for whom they don't have to compete?
"Meanwhile, through competition, margins begin to shrink," Flake continued. "Both the original innovator and the newcomer invade each other's space, looking for more business."
The difference in their histories, however, begins to reveal different strengths: The older companies - the original innovators - have not had to learn to grow up looking for more efficient ways to do business. The younger companies have a heritage of going head-to-head with competitors, of scaling up, on learning new ways to operate more efficiently. "And the late arrivals win because they can take the lessons of optimization" they've learned working on the tail and apply them to the head, Flake said.
In the paid-search business, the cycle of evolution took just 18 months to unwind. And, the change happened as - naturally enough - the principal players tried to move from their position of strength to the areas where they still could grow. As paid search matured, he added, the industry survivors naturally try to capture a fuller market share by moving to the opposite end of the long tail. Yahoo, which had purchased Overture in 2002, tried to expand its market from the head to the tail; Google attempted to move from the tail to the head.
But, as Yahoo discovered, it was much easier to move from the tail to the head than from the head to the tail.
Network Effects
"If you're the only person in the world with a telephone, it doesn't have much use to you," Flake told the ARF audience. "If everyone else in the world has a telephone, it has great use to you because potentially you can call anyone."
Any kind of network that has more participants simply provides both greater individual value and greater aggregate value, Flake continued. And, as networks grow, "virtual cycles emerge."
In an eBay network, he explained, the more buyers there are, the more opportunities there are to sell. And the more sellers who participate, the more opportunities there are to buy. It's a model that's replicated in operating systems (developers and users), file formats (writers and readers) and search engines (authors and searchers), marketing (advertisers and consumers), and payments (payers and payees).
"In the virtuous cycle of paid search," the director of Microsoft's Live Labs added, "You need advertisers. The more advertisers you have, the more bids you have. The more bids you have, the more traffic you have. The more traffic you have, the more money you get per search. And, with the more money you get, the more syndication you get. And, as you get more syndication, you get more traffic. And it's traffic inventory that pulls in the advertisers and the process begins to snowball."

Overture - and, in time, Yahoo - operated independently and allowing the cycle to develop "organically," said Flake. Google, by contrast, "primed the pump with a destination site that could effectively make them as powerful as any affiliate on the network. And, in doing so, they were able to bootstrap their own network in a way that was quite stunning."

Overture, he explained, "did not understand that one network could prime another…. We were constrained by our own idea, by our focus on the head [of the long tail]. We didn't understand how it all could play out so rapidly."
The future plays out with "an even longer tail" and as "tools become simpler, more powerful and more prevalent, the pools of creators will increase dramatically." Everyday examples include desktop publishing, digital photography, garage bands, Songsmith, podcasting, and blogging. "What does it take to make an online business?" Flake asked. "Ten years ago, you needed a substantial amount of money. Today, it's $5 or for free…. The barriers to entry are dropping to zero."
And, as the opportunities proliferate, so will the occasions grow that enable additional long-tail partnerships - pools of intelligence that can overlap with (and reinforce) one another.