Several decades ago, advertising communication discovered that brands could not address their consumers in the same way. The channel, suddenly, took as much prominence as the one that had the message until that moment. It seemed that with the disintegration above and below the line we had discovered the magic formula of communication … until the Internet arrived. In this garden we are still dating, sometimes with more success than in others.
Is it possible that this could be further complicated by advertising? Is it possible that the marketing departments of customers are involved in even greater chaos?
We need only look at the daily activity of the marketing director of any brand that develops your business through the franchise system or a chain business.
It is not enough to seek the success of brand communication, as do the rest of advertisers. They have the important responsibility of making the values of their brand, the benefits of their product, reproduced in a clonic way throughout their NETWORK. And there is the real challenge for him and his advertising agency.
Now that we hear so much and so often about holistic communication, a path is opened that will undoubtedly come to facilitate the advertising activity of these franchise systems. The context in which we currently work advertising agencies is much more complex than it has ever been. The specialization of the professionals that make them up is one of the models adopted by some of them, to guarantee the quality of the results.
In the case of franchises, this specialization becomes a fundamental factor. Regardless of the communication channel we are using, wherever you look, the brand is always the same. No matter how, where and who manages each of the points of the network, the strength of the brand resides there, in that clonal reproduction of its identity. It is the sum of the efforts of each point of the network that brings coherence and credibility to the whole. And for this reason, these business models must pay special attention to global communication strategies. Fortunately, the agencies with integrated specialists are beginning to have the tools and knowledge necessary to solve these needs for chain businesses.
It no longer serves with a powerful mass media strategy, the consumer lives the true experience with the brand at the point of sale and the marketing and advertising department of a franchise can not put into the hands of chance the way in which its network adopts that strategy . The point of sale, in many occasions, is the scenario where they play it and that is where the agencies have to evolve. We have to adapt the use of new technologies to this environment, interact with the consumer by integrating in the same space Internet, advertising on mobile, etc. But before reaching the consumer, and to achieve success, we must place in the place that deserves communication with the network.