Franchise Update Magazine Issue IV, 2015 | Page 23

the acquisitions there is much due diligence and subsequent team integration
to execute, all the while keeping 7, then 8,
then 11 brand marketing balls in the air!
What’s the most challenging part of being a VP of marketing today? Speed of
change that has come through technology!
There are so many options coming at us
every day: various marketing automation
platforms, each offering subtle differences;
automated review generation and response
monitoring platforms; and online marketing agencies touting all of the greatest
technology and support, just to name a
few! It is difficult to not be distracted by
“shiny squirrels” for fear of missing out
on that “newest thing” that will catapult
one or more of our brands to new heights.
Because of this technological revolution,
there is also an enormous influx of data
we now have access to that could lead us
down millions of rabbit holes. We have
to be diligent in choosing the right data
to scrutinize or we can get lost in analyzing for analyzing’s sake. Of course, the
benefit of having this unparalleled access to customer data is that it gives us
a holistic, 360-degree understanding of
our customer on levels we never would
have even dreamed of diving into in the
not-so-distant past.
What are the 3 most important keys to
being an effective marketing leader
today? 1) Staying agile. 2) Taking risks, a
necessity in today’s world of rapid change
because of technology advancements. 3)
Talent acquisition and retention—while
traditional marketing skill sets are needed,
specialists with additional skill sets are
a necessity as well, and many of those
skills are relatively new and therefore
difficult to find.
How do you prepare a marketing plan
and execute the strategies? Marketing
plan development for a single brand is
managed by the brand managers. They
work with the operations team as well as
the brand advisory council to solidify the
plan the ad fund dollars will support. The
brand manager is also responsible for overall execution of the plan, including tracking and reporting results, which prompts
responsive changes to the marketing plan
throughout the year. In addition, we have
a team of local marketing managers who
influence the overall local spend, which

is much greater than the ad fund budget.
While the brand managers create strategic
plans to implement system-wide, franchise
owners are not required to implement the
plans on a local level. This is where our
local marketing managers serve to educate
franchisees on the benefits and importance
of using the corporate campaigns, which
are thoroughly researched and anchored
by deep data analytics.

How do you go about creating a “customer-centric” marketing and brand
philosophy for 11 brands at once? We
have done a lot of research into who our
core customer is, what their lifetime value
is, and how we can tailor our marketing
to those segments that bubble to the top
as “high value.” Because of the nature of
our business, we have to ensure that every experience with our brands revolves
around providing the customer with an
outstanding, value- YY^\