The Balancing Act of Building a Franchise Brand

Successful franchise brands are built over time by consistently setting and meeting customer expectations of the brand experience.

By Steve Friedman

Today’s customers have access to greater amounts of information faster than ever. With pervasive social sharing and smartphones, brand managers are met with an ever-increasing number of threats to maintaining their brand’s images and credibility. This is particularly challenging for franchise companies. Franchisors wrestle with the balancing act of protecting their brands while supporting the creative and entrepreneurial spirit of their franchisees. Successful franchise brands are built over time by consistently setting and meeting customer expectations of the brand experience. This can’t be done without network-wide adherence to brand and operating standards. However, many people purchase a franchise so they can be their own boss, own their own business and control their own destiny — not necessarily so they can follow the brand guidelines established by the corporation. These don’t have to be mutually exclusive if expectations are properly managed from the beginning stages of the franchise acquisition process. But even the most thorough disclosure process cannot control what people believe or remember during the sales process, creating the inherent conflict that pits the enterprising franchisee against the corporate brand manager. Here are four strategies that foster franchisee creativity and true love for the brand, while maintaining the brand promise:

1. Rationalize the Need to be Compliant with Education

Many franchisees don’t understand the complexities of creating and growing brand awareness because they’ve never been exposed to the role of brand management. Key to this strategy is educating franchisees about the potential harm to the brand when guidelines aren’t followed, which in turn can negatively impact their own individual investment in the business. As reinforcement of the franchisee education, it is important that all franchisee-facing personnel understand the brand guidelines and the need for them. This is especially true for bigger networks with field support personnel. In some cases, franchisees are more likely to be influenced by their local operations or marketing representatives with whom they interact on a more regular basis. Show examples of the good, the bad and the ugly and explain how each impacts customers and their loyalty to your brand.

2. Make it Easy to Follow the Rules

Not all franchisees are created equally when it comes to computer skills, graphic design and so forth. By their very nature, franchisees are do-it-yourselfers and when they are looking for a particular marketing tool that they can’t find or they don’t believe exists, they will surely create their own. Provide a robust platform of tools for franchisees to use in their advertising and marketing efforts. The trick here is to control the overall brand identity and message, while giving franchisees enough flexibility to tailor the tool to their particular need.

3. Avoid Brand Extremism

Every franchisor knows how critically important it is to develop and nurture positive relationships with its franchisees. Otherwise, franchisee validation can suffer, which in turn impacts network growth. Use common sense to avoid an overly harsh approach to brand management. It might be okay to use red and green during the Christmas holiday promotion, even if red and green aren’t part of the brand color palette. In the majority of situations, this level of flexibility will not harm the brand. Brand extremism can be destructive to the cause and erode trust among the network. Certainly, standards must be maintained; however it’s easy to become so mired in protecting the brand that we lose sight of the bigger picture, and flexibility and common sense get lost. When this happens, guidelines become overly rigid and they suffocate creativity and enthusiasm for the very brand they are meant to protect. Before standards are established and put into place, they should pass a “common sense test” that would pose the following questions:

• Who is this guideline protecting and how - the brand, corporation, franchisee, customer?
• Who gets hurt when the guideline is not followed and can such damage be quantified?
• Is the brand image, at its core, at risk if the guideline isn’t followed (corporate values, brand promise, etc.)?
• When would it be appropriate to alter from the guideline? How likely and often might this happen?
• Can this guideline be enforced?
• Does the guideline prevent the franchisee from promoting the business or make it difficult to explain the value proposition to the customer?
• Does the guideline have legal implications?
• Does the guideline have safety implications?

These questions and their answers should be used to guide your brand management strategy and dictate the extent to which you define and enforce the guidelines.

4. Emotionally Engage your Network

If you are successful with the first three strategies, the fourth can make the biggest difference. Successfully balancing franchisee spirit and brand management depends on your ability to motivate and foster emotional engagement of the brand across your network. It doesn’t happen overnight. Unfortunately, the passion and enthusiasm created at the beginning of the franchisee training process, or at the annual convention, rarely last on their own. This is a marriage, and successful ongoing engagement sustains the relationship past the dating and proposal, and well into lasting true love. Many franchisors agree that the most important brand marketing conducted targets the franchisees directly. Videos that celebrate the brand and position franchisees as heroes and leaders in their communities can be inspirational and create real brand zealots. Programs that recognize and reward franchisees for the way they represent the brand can also have a sustaining impact. All of this should be complemented with an ongoing communication strategy that reinforces the value of the brand and business model through relevant and open franchisee discussion. The balancing act can be tricky, but consistently executing these four strategies will make it easier. By educating the network on the risks of non-compliance to their own investment, you’ve provided them with a rational reason to follow the rules. And by giving them a flexible platform of marketing tools, you make it easy and practical for them to market their business while creating true brand advocates. And when your network is emotionally engaged in building and protecting your brand, they become the brand itself. They talk it, they live it, they promote it and they defend it.

Steve Friedman is president and co-founder of Creative Producers Group, a full-service creative, experiential engagement and marketing agency, specializing in the franchise industry. Find him at fransocial.franchise.org.