Franchise Rock Stars: Rebranding

Yes, sir, let’s do it.

Derrick, we’re gonna jump in with you first. This was your bright idea to get into rebranding, and I think it was a good timing, because you were saying something about spring, spring cleaning, everything’s coming up a little fresher, and maybe it’s time to give your old, tired brand some new eyes. Tell me about that.

Yeah, I mean, we just came out of an eight month long winter here in New England. They’re just like brutal, hardcore blizzard after blizzard, and now we’ve gotten to the other side of it, and I’ve spent a lot of time in the yard, and now a lot of time in the basement doing cleaning, and it got me to thinking of out of the old, in with the new, and you can see all the buds on the trees, and so, oddly enough, before you even asked about the show, I watched this video that made me think of this as a topic, which is, I was thinking about Domino’s Pizza in 2010, 2009, 2010, and what they did there, which I thought was phenomenal. I watched a video about this sort of pivot that they did, where this should have killed them. They had this national television ad that showed actual footage of a focus group with real customers saying just like, brutal, brutal things like, this crust tastes like cardboard, or this sauce tastes like ketchup. And then in the same ad, they just completely owned that and apologized and then said, we’re fixing it. Here’s how, watch us. And then what goes on in the rest of the videos, all of the different cheeses and crusts and all of what they’re doing about it, and all of those things, and it’s phenomenal. What they’re able to really just stand there and own. And in the same video, they even show that they printed out some of those super negative reviews and pasted them up in the headquarters, so that everywhere you look in the pizza headquarters, you’re seeing your sauce tastes like ketchup. So there’s like these permanent stakes. And after launching their new product in this campaign, what they were able to do, and this was something I read after watching the video, was that it really like had this immediate and mega effect, where they were able, sales were bounded by like 16, 17%. Their stocks doubled and then they tripled. Like these guys were back in a very serious way. And I think personally that the reason why this was so responsible or successful was that the campaign and those videos signaled this death and this rebirth at the same time. You know, Domino’s is dead. Long live Domino’s.

And it was very authentic because they weren’t coming out saying, you know, everyone’s loved Domino’s for a hundred years. Now you’re going to love it even more. They were coming out saying what people actually said about their, shall we say, affordable pizza, right? And so they were speaking truth. And I think there’s something that is usually missing in advertising for especially food brands like that, that maybe that’s what resonated. So that’s a great example. Ali, how are you today? And what do you know about branding and rebranding? Any favorites?

Yeah, I’m just over here with the biggest smile on my face listening to Derrick share that. Now I have to go watch it because I did know that story, but I don’t know that I’d ever seen the video. And I’m just over here kind of inside geeking out as a marketer too, who how many marketers listening would like kill for a marketing budget like that to do something that also includes comedy, because it is funny too. Like, and I just think that’s so great. And my mind’s also thinking about like, what could Cracker Barrel have done differently after their issue this year too? And could they have used that example to learn from it and come out? Like, they sent a letter out, but did it have this like, wit behind it for people to buy in and be like, yes, it’s back. We won as consumers. And so I think about like, how lucky would we all be to have that kind of feedback from our own clients and our own consumers to be able to make changes like that, that so greatly affect our brand. We were at Benetrends even a year or so talking about like, what a refresh would look like and is it something as simple as darkening our blue or our orange or whatever it is? And I remember going to IFA convention, not this past year, but last year, and looking at that big humongous board they put that says, thank you to our sponsors. And there’s like 150 brands up there. And it’s on that poster usually right when you get to the top of the escalators. And I remember going through and like counting how many brands were blue and like, what would make a brand truly stand out in that moment? Because there is part of me that wishes that our flower could be the McDonald’s M, the Dunkin D, right? And so how do you get to that point of an icon being so familiar that somebody for a company like ours after 45 years is so familiar that somebody is like, oh, of course that’s been a trend. And so I’m just kind of giggling because in case you didn’t know, more than three quarters of brands have blue in them. So blue is not what I needed to redo in our logo to stand out.

But you do have orange. And I think there’s something about that orange that pops out too in literally a sea of blue because I’ll notice that at some of the booths and exhibits at some of the franchise shows, man, there’s a lot of blue with the supplier community in this space. And when we did a re-brand both of Social Geek several years ago and then Thunderly last year, that was my one takeaway was, okay, it doesn’t have to be black. It would be cool if it’s black, but it cannot be blue because every one of our competitors, every marketing agency, every marketing consultancy, everybody, like they all went with that trustworthy blue and it looks good on most logos, but you got to stand out a little bit.

Yeah, I don’t even remember what your question was, Jack, because I was really stuck on Derrick’s every word over here.

Yeah. Well, we’re just going to talk about Domino’s for the next half hour. But any other brands that you can think of that either did a really good job with a re-brand or a terrible job with a re-brand?

Yeah. I have to give a shout out to Celebree, because I was part of Celebree when they did their re-brand, and I think they did it at the perfect time. My message goes to any emerging or new somebody looking to get into franchising, that’s really the best time to do it. Celebree took these 20 plus years of Richie Huffman’s experience, and he had 26 schools at the time, and he knew he couldn’t franchise with the old branded look that he had. And they hired just all the right people and did it so perfectly, and they did it, and they waited. They were building their FDD while doing a complete rebrand. I mean, even the name changed from Celebree Learning Center to Celebree School to be more with the times, and they just took everything into consideration, and it was my first experience on a marketing team, so I’m just forever grateful to go through that. But I think about emerging brands all the time that are so eager to franchise, and they want to get their brand out there and launch their FDD and sell their first unit, and then they get 10 people and they learn, and then they have to re-brand everything, and then their franchisees are suffering with big bills and new signage, and there’s an overlap, and your brand just loses so much credibility in that moment that the best time to do it is really before you launch anything. And so if you’re lucky enough to have the capital needed to do that and you can hold off, I think there’s something really special about a re-brand before you launch a franchise.

Yeah, and I think the worst time to do it is, oh, let’s say, two years in, right? After everybody’s spent a bunch of money and then someone comes along and says, you know, oh, we’re going to re-brand already, you know? I think one of my big pet peeves on re-branding, and I see this all the time with franchise brands, is there are some brands that should have re-branded a long time ago, and they’re just old and tired, you know, like Derrick was saying with that pizza brand. But there are some brands that have re-branded too often, and I think we’re sort of stuck in this cycle of new chief marketing officer, new chief branding officer, maybe new CEO comes in, and what’s the first thing they want to do? Let’s get rid of everything from the past, and let’s get something new in here with my new team and my fingerprints all over it, and we’re going to re-brand. And then what happens is that person lasts about 18 months and then they’re gone. So then someone new comes in and it’s the same thing over and over. And I think excessive re-branding is probably worse than not re-branding at all, especially in this climate right now. So anybody else have any examples of some good or bad re-branding that you want to jump into? Kristen, go ahead.

Yeah, so I’m going to go to the color orange. Any guesses? No? Okay, well, I’m going to talk about Dunkin’s re-brand because that occurred after 70 years in operation. Dunkin’s was found, Dunkin Donuts was founded in 1950 something, right? And they were a challenged brand. People do not eat donuts every single day, right? But they do have coffee every single day. And their minor move to just drop donut from the brand, call it Dunkin and have it not be fancy coffee, just like coffee that you need every day. Like they’re not trying to be Starbucks. They’re trying to be your, you can come here every single day. If you want a donut, great, we have those. But we’re really going to shift in the consumer’s mind to being a coffee shop rather than just a donut shop. And yes, they re-branded by changing the logo, but they really re-branded more by changing their positioning. And not necessarily offering something that they’ve never offered before or changing their brand identity, but rather just the way that people do business with them. And while they’re not trying to be Starbucks, they’re on this journey to be cool, but like not in a Starbucks way. I think Super Bowl commercials and the Orange Jumpsuits and some of the new content that they’re putting out. It is, it has humor, right? And it’s cool, but in its own way, not like everybody else and what they’re doing. So I love that brand. That’s my go-to brand because of how good they’ve done with it, because it’s a franchise and I just, I can’t wait to see what they do next.

I love that you brought that up, Kristen, the humor part of when Derrick was talking and I talked about the wit and the humor behind it. If any of you here or listening have not seen what Dunkin does with their Spidey Donut for the entire month leading up to Halloween, it is one of the funniest things on Instagram. I mean, I laugh till I’m crying sometimes about this freaking donut character they have. And so you can feel the fun and the energy that their marketing team has, literally through their Instagram captions. Like they have taken it to a whole other level and I couldn’t agree more.

I will say that for 10 years when I was with Edible Arrangements at our conventions, they’d always use Dunkin as an example of a company that was continuously innovating and willing to experiment beyond their initial product. So they went from Dunkin Donuts just to Dunkin. And I think that was a direct inspiration for Edible Arrangements to become edible, so that they could expand beyond that one signature product.

And also so they could get into the weed business.

We got enough crank phone calls about that over the years. It was time just to lean in, so yeah.

That’s how franchise rumors get started, Jack Monson.

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I got into the brand and throw out you if I could. And full disclosure, they just became a client. I’m speaking at their convention later this year. It’s Burger King. So super psyched to be working with them. But one advantage they’ve had all these years is they’ve always been in the burger space, sort of number two. And so it’s nice to have a bigger nemesis that you can chase. And they’ve done a great job. You might remember a few years back, they came up with the moldy whopper campaign. Do you guys remember that? They had a print ads. They showed a picture of this disgusting moldy burger saying our burgers decompose compared to the other guys. And it was a huge risk. It was disgusting, but it generated tons of buzz, tons of talk, and I think they actually won awards for it. And not everyone loved it, but everyone talked about it. And the newer thing they’ve done is they’ve got that jingle that just gets in the ear with the guy whose voice is a little bit off key. BK, we all have heard that. Oh, sorry, Danielle, I just got in your head for the rest of the day. But that’s the idea. That’s how that stuff works. And so they have been really, for a brand that’s been around as long as they have, they have been doing some really interesting things the last few years.

And it seems to be working, I just read yesterday that their same store sales are up some ridiculous percentage over last year compared to all of the other folks out there. They’re really coming back around again. So that’s good to see and congratulations on doing some cool work with them. I can’t wait to hear more about that. Along the same lines, their big nemesis, McDonald’s, I read yesterday that McDonald’s is once again re-branding the McCafe, which I’ve never figured out, is that like a store within a store? Is it what you call your drink line? Is it an item? I don’t know, but they’re rolling that out again. And I think it’s part of this whole jump on the beverage front, the dirty sodas or whatever you want to call them and trying to get more involved in that. So Danielle, I think you had something you wanted to jump into as well with some branding.

I literally just picked up the McCaffey Cup.

Love it.

Now mind you, that’s a diet Coke, cause that’s the thing that does stay consistent. Yeah. So no, I had, like, I love when people add additional services, but I also get challenged from a franchise sales perspective is stick to what you know, do what you do and do it well, and stop trying to be everything for everyone. Like it’s okay if you’re not. So that’s my two cents.

Yeah. That goes back to the Dunkin thing. I think where Dunkin really hit was they rebranded right at the same time when many Americans, not all, decided that sugar and carbs were maybe not a great thing for them, but coffee was, and they also saw places like Starbucks doing a booming business and decided we need a slice of that pie. So yeah, I think when we see the landscape and we pick a time to rebrand, I think that’s really the magic here. And the real trick is to know when, I think.

Yeah, I think about these conversations, it’s always interesting to explore these things, but it’s Monday morning quarterbacking. Like if someone said, hey, I want some advice on how I can rebrand, and I’m choosing between having a new logo or going on national TV and saying my product sucks, 10 out of 10 people would say go with the new logo. But then you can look at Cracker Barrel and then you can look at what Domino’s did and the results are totally different. So it’s easy for us to talk about who made a bold move and who made a mistake only because now we have the benefit of hindsight wisdom and seeing the results. Those people at the time had to make some choices in real time. It’s really tough, so it’s hard to know what the takeaways from all this is. So what do we do moving forward when we have to make these decisions? It’s hard to know.

What do you do?

Do you trust the data or do you trust your gut?

I think it’s a little bit easier if you have a problem. Is this a cosmetic thing? Is this a self-directed, I just want it to be different, like I need a makeover, I want to feel fresh? Or are you confronting an existential threat? Yeah.

Back to the idea of it’s a new marketing director, so they’ve got a solution, they’re looking for a problem.

Yeah. I think that makes a big difference in how you go about it and how I think hard you look at yourself. We did a rebrand on our company a couple of maybe three years ago. Then the amount of meetings, what was happening in those meetings and the way that we had that conversation was productive. But it felt like we were looking so deep into ourselves that we weren’t looking out at how everyone else was interacting with our brand and what that meant. It wasn’t negative, it was good. We came out with some good stuff. But I remember just feeling like, yeah, but how much of this is going to read? You know what I mean? How much of this is just going to be like, cool, new logo. Okay, that’s not bad, but did we change? Are we the same? What is the tension between legacy and consistency? And being innovative.

Did you bring in anyone from the outside or was that all internal when you did the rebrand?

It was all internal, but I’m the resident outsider.

Which meant you had only worked there for like seven years at the time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anybody else ever do a rebrand on your own company? I know, Ali, we talked about some logo and color changes. Kristen, you’ve done some changes, yes?

Yeah, and they have a theme to them, which is so weird, you guys. So the first rebrand that I was a part of, I was with the Minnesota Vikings. And the big thing when we rebranded that brand was, what are we going to do? All these people have the Viking head tattooed on them. So whatever we do, we can’t do it too drastic, or people are going to be mad that they have the old logo tattooed on them. And then you would think that working in professional sports that surely is the only brand that would have that issue. But I moved to Anytime Fitness, which has the third most brand tattoos on Americans. And the same thing, same conversation, found myself just seven years later sitting in a room saying, we can’t possibly change the running man because we have 5,000 people who have the running man tattooed on their bodies. And so while I’ve been a part of a couple of different rebrands, the logos themselves have not changed very much. It was more about the space we were playing in. And at any time it was for so long 24-7 open access gym, come on in. And after Planet Fitness came into the market and kind of democratized cheap 24 access gym memberships, any time really had to move more towards this coaching, training, repositioning, something that I think they are very much still in that rebrand phase. I think, you know, sometimes it takes a decade to truly rebrand a brand. And sometimes it’s because you have a cool new marketer coming in who has these great ideas and wants to put their stamp on the brand. And other times, like in Anytime Fitness’ case, it’s a necessity in order to keep up with competition.

I love that you brought up the Vikings because I’m over here thinking about the NFL too and how it’s also a franchise. And let’s talk about the Commanders for a minute. You still can’t figure out what their name is going to be. And then I also being in Baltimore with the Ravens, Jack, you said something about like clearing out teams. And that’s almost a rebrand too that we don’t talk about either. Your brand and your name and your products don’t have to change. But if new people come in and clear house, that’s no different than a new head coach at an NFL team. The Ravens just lost their head coach after 17 years, John Harbaugh, to Jesse Minter. And everyone from coaching staff has gone. I mean, they’re bringing in like 20, 30 new coaches, wives, families, children to the area and cleaned house. And it’s like incredible because names and logos and colors and branding is not changing. And of course, new players are coming in. But when you have a front of house staff like that wipe out, it’s not a lot different than when new CEOs and new parent companies buy brands and clear house. And I don’t think we always think of that as being a rebrand, but it should be in that category too.

Oh, it absolutely is. There’s an old Seinfeld joke about in the age of free agency, when all of the players leave and new players come in, who are we rooting for? The uniforms. So, yeah, I see that happening with a lot of teams. And here in Chicago, we’re about to lose the Chicago Bears to Northwest Indiana. So they’re not even going to be in the same state anymore, kind of like all of the New York teams. So but they’re still going to be called the Chicago Bears. It might be the East Chicago Bears or something like that.

But yeah, that’s going to be a brand. Ali, are the Ravens keeping their cheerleading coaches?

I’ve heard they are, yeah.

Okay.

That’s what we’re really rooting for.

That’s the important staff.

This is an interesting conversation because like remodel, remake, rebrand. My head, just because I’m so tied to the season right now, so much yard work, I’m thinking about like rebirth. And we’re doing all of the spring cleaning. In this weekend, I came across in my basement, a box of superhero comics that I had from the 1990s. So if you join me on this hard right into deep nerd territory, I’d like to tell you a little bit about back in the 1990s. In superhero comics, there was this kind of cash grabby trend of destroying headline characters. Like Batman’s back got broken, Spider-Man’s costume tried to kill him, Superman died and then came back as like four different Superman. And even though these stories are like totally ridiculous and don’t hold up, and I was very much like 10 or 12 when I read these, the through line that I saw when I was looking at them this weekend was just the same. That every iconic character gets stomped and then limps off to recuperate only to reemerge with like a new costume or power just in the nick of time. I think it’s important to note that these makeovers aren’t voluntary. The pain comes first, so it’s not change or die. It’s die so that you can change. And so Domino’s couldn’t sincerely upgrade their ingredients without admitting that people hated their food. Dunkin Donuts may never drop the donuts if they weren’t feeling an existential heat coming from Starbucks. And it turns out that in the comics, all of those fake deaths were just practice because Marvel Comics actually declared bankruptcy in the 1990s and sold off the film rights to Spider-Man and the X-Men and the Fantastic Four just so they could fund the publishing half of their company. Jump forward a decade later, they literally wagered the film rights to Iron Man and their remaining characters to finance one movie starring a troubled, some would say washed up actor that practically nobody wanted to insure. And that gamble became a $31 billion franchise. So I guess to my point that in welcoming these little deaths, these companies gave themselves permission to become themselves. Brands like superheroes are woven into our culture. Nike will be selling shoes and Superman will be saving the day long after everyone on this call is gone. And I believe that the price of that immortality is periodic death and resurrection. It’s part of becoming not who you thought you were, but what you need to be. What you need to be to change, to grow. Ultimately, what you need to be to endure, even after death.

Thanks again to the Franchise Rock Stars for being here today. Scott Greenberg, Ali Kraus, Danielle Wright, Kristen Pechacek and Derrick Ableman. And thanks to our sponsors today, Pilot, AnswerConnect and Thunderly. And thanks to you for listening, telling a friend about us and staying connected on the Social Geek Radio Network.