Brand Management

A State of Washington Appellate Court ruling (Marte v. Hernandez, May 16, 2011) demonstrates that deception can cause even blood relationships to disintegrate.
In this case, two brothers formed a partnership and purchased two McDonald's franchises. McDonald's does not sell franchises to partnerships. It sells franchises only to individuals or to entities wholly owned by an individual (both the equity interests and any interests in profits). To avoid McDonald's requirements, only one of the brothers applied to McDonald's as a franchisee, while the other was a financial investor and partner providing a portion of the money needed to purchase the franchise and fund the initial operating costs. The brothers concealed the existence of the partnership and further misrepresented the purpose of the investor brother's financial contributions to the partnership...

Consumers have an infinite number of ways and places to talk about your brand. Social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, online blogs, podcasts and YouTube are fundamentally changing the way we work and interact with each other, with an increasing blurring of business, commercial, social and personal communications. As a result, these social media platforms can provide beneficial (and inexpensive) ways for franchisors and franchisees to market and promote their products and services.
While social media can provide great brand promotion opportunities, it also can be very dangerous. Social media is often viewed as a fast and informal means of communication, and given the fast-paced nature of social media, one can easily get caught up in the rapid back-and-forth responses inherent in the social media environment...