If you’re a franchisor seeking public relations and marketing support, your first thought may be that you should work with an agency that focuses exclusively on franchises. The logic makes sense – if an agency works with only franchise clients, they must be experts and will provide efficient support for your team. But there are smart benefits of working with an agency that has multiple practice areas to support your franchise team.
- A variety of practice areas leads to fresh, creative ideas. Different industries require different ways of thinking and having a franchise-only mindset can get repetitive. Agencies and staff that work in or have experience with other types of clients are exposed to different news, current events and media that could serve up a unique way to support your company.
- Franchise-only firms know franchise media, but they might know them too well. If your team has 10 other franchise clients, they are likely constantly contacting your trade media with announcements, which can bury your news among the others. Look for an agency that has experience and healthy relationships with your key media and can share your news in an impactful way.
- All franchises aren’t the same but you may get a cookie-cutter PR plan from an agency that regularly churns out campaigns. Find an agency that has long-standing franchise clients, showing that they are able to regularly develop unique plans and keep the PR momentum going year after year.
One example of successful cross-practice planning at T/K involved TCBY and a Google Android update. Based on our work with Verizon Wireless, we knew that an upcoming Android update was going to be named Fro-yo. We decided to playfully ambush the news by leaving a 50-acre message or 30 palettes of freshly planted grass next to Google’s headquarters. The strategy scored us about 25 million media impressions and a great deal of online debate: real or faux.
Of course, experience in the franchise industry is important but consider a firm that has a variety of clients and experience. Trevelino/Keller has years of experience with franchise clients, with some of our longest standing clients fitting in our franchise practice. Explore our site or contact us to learn more!
