CMO Q&A: How Is Your Marketing/Branding Strategy Developed, and How Does It Flow Through the System?

In each issue of Franchise Update magazine, we profile franchise CMOs and marketing leaders, asking each the same set of questions. Their responses say a lot about who they are, their culture, their values, and where they’re leading their companies.

Throughout the year, we’ll be selecting one of those questions – and providing answers from recent CMO profiles. If you like what they say and are curious to learn more about these franchise marketing leaders and their thoughts on other topics, we’ve provided links to their full profile.

This week: How is your marketing/branding strategy developed, and how does it flow through the system?

Denise Pedini, EVP Marketing/Chief Marketing Officer, Pizza Inn

We create our marketing calendar eight months ahead of time. This gives everyone time to prepare and communicate what we will be doing to drive sales. This plan is presented to the franchise marketing board in our quarterly board meetings. All topics and promotions are voted on and approved by the board before they are set into motion. Read full profile.

Katherine LeBlanc, Chief Marketing Officer, Painting with a Twist

Our strategy is developed in collaboration with all departments and franchisees. To create a focused vision, it’s important to be inclusive in this process. Involving so many people also allows the message to spread quickly across the system. Read full profile.

Kristina Van Bruggen, Vice President of Marketing, Sizzler USA

We work closely with our team and partners to develop annual promotions for campaigns that will support the entire Sizzler system. After that is complete, the marketing team collaborates with field operations, franchisees, and our innovation team to develop actionable strategies, and then clearly articulates the overview of the marketing plans throughout each level that each department manages. Because of the up-front collaboration, deployment of these strategies is seamless through the system. Read full profile.

Kieran McCauley, Vice President of Marketing, HealthSource

It starts with a look outside our four walls, then inside. Outside we are studying consumer trends, our competition, the economy, and other influences such as government regulation. Inside we are examining budgets, forecasts, goals, and who we are and what is our reason for being. With this knowledge we create the strategy, confirm that the management team agrees with the direction, then go through the process of communicating with everyone else within the organization. Read full profile.

Michael Barrette, Chief Marketing & Sales Officer, Dippin’ Dots & Doc Popcorn

We obtain input from our overall advisory councils for Dippin’ Dots and Doc Popcorn, as well as from the marketing advising committees for both brands. Our marketing team and our franchising team work closely to fine-tune our strategies over time. We use corporate marketing investment dollars to drive longer-term strategic initiatives, and ad fund dollars to typically underwrite the cost of more near- to medium-term initiatives, working synergistically with our longer-term strategies. Read full profile.