AI was not used in the creation of this podcast. This is the Social Geek Radio Network. Hello, Geeks, and welcome to the Social Geek Podcast. I’m Jack Monson, your host and marketing concierge. It’s the marketing and innovation update for Q2 2026. Today, we’ve got Steve Buors from ReShift Media with a new innovation they’re revealing next month, and Lauren Fernandez of Full Course is back with a So Here’s the Thing segment on spring cleaning for restaurant franchise marketing. All right, today’s show is brought to you by AnswerConnect, Citrin Cooperman. And before we get going, a quick note from Thunderly. Are your FranDev marketing agencies, content creators, and PR teams really working together? Learn how Thunderly’s amplified integrated marketing can drive franchise development growth at thunderlymarketing.com.

We’re back on the Marketing & Innovation edition of Social Geek for the second quarter of 2026. Joining me now, it’s Steve Buors of ReShift Media. Hey Steve, welcome back to the show.

Thanks, Jack, happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Congratulations again to you and your team. I had the honor of serving as MC at the Global Franchise Awards last month at the IFA convention in Las Vegas. And you guys have won the Marketing Agency of the Year now for a fourth straight year. That’s amazing, dude.

Well, thank you. And it’s a testament to our team and our clients. I’m so happy that our clients love doing new things, which allows us to put that forward and just showcase the great work that’s happening out there in franchising.

I like these awards too because unlike some awards out there, that who wins is kind of based on how big your ad spend is. These are things that are voted on by your clients. So, you know, you’re getting a good vote of confidence from all of your clients there.

Yeah, thank you. It’s actually a great award because, yes, it’s real franchise executives that really know the business. So, it’s not really a popularity contest. It’s actually who’s delivering the most value for franchising. So, that award is very, very special to us and we couldn’t be prouder and more honored to be recognized. Four years in a row, as you said.

Yeah, well, you know, we always say three in a row is a hat trick. So, now four in a row, we call it a re-shift.

So, I like that. I like that.

So, you know, not that you want to rest on your laurels too long. You’ve got some big stuff coming up. Tell us about this this big reveal you have coming your way in April.

Yeah, so we’ve been working with franchise companies for more than 10 years, as you know, Jack, and we’ve seen the challenges that franchise companies have firsthand with digital advertising. Obviously, we’re a digital advertising digital marketing company. We do organic social media, paid advertising, et cetera. And time and time again, we kept seeing that today’s digital marketing tools aren’t really built for franchise companies. Sure, there’s lots of multi-location platforms out there, but they’re not really built for the way franchises actually work, just because of the unique way of the business model. You have local franchisees who are entrepreneurs in their own right. You have a head office who’s obviously trying to sort of keep things coordinated. And so, we kept saying, jeez, this thing is so broken. And we, as an agency, are always doing our best to add value to our clients and do things in the best way possible. And so, finally, we said, you know, we just got to fix this. So, we decided to build a software platform. We called it Franify. We spent the last two years building it, and have invested more than $2 million in its development, all funded within our own company, just because we believed in the idea so much. And we’re unveiling it to the world for the very first time on April 8th, in a live stream which anyone, anywhere can attend. We’ve made it completely free. No registration, no nothing. We just want as many people in the franchise community to come out and see what we’ve built, because we’re so darn proud of it.

So, you’re going to be somewhere live yourselves. You’re going to be at an event, but then the rest of us, like, down here in the States, we can tune in. Is it on YouTube, or where’s the live stream going to be?

Yeah, it’s a YouTube live. Yeah, we will be in a professional studio, and we will have a bit of a live audience. But it’s really geared for people who are attending on the live stream, so they can see it firsthand. So, there’s a YouTube live. You can see a link. It’s at reveal.franify.com. Again, completely free, no obligation. You don’t even have to put in your email address or anything. Just show up. And we’ll be walking through the platform itself. We’ll show the details of how it works and why it’s built specifically for franchise companies. We’re going to have a nice testimonial from one of our clients who’s been beta testing it for us. And we are launching a program we’re calling the Franify First Wave, which allows only 50 franchise partners free access to the platform for three months. We’ll on board you for free. You get to use it and try it completely no cost just because we want to add again to the franchise community.

Very cool. So who should attend this event, this live stream event? Is this for, is it more for operations people or I would assume your Chief Marketing Officer and other marketing people? Who in franchising do you want to have there?

I would say it’s a great opportunity for everyone to see innovation happening in franchising. So whether you’re a franchisee, franchisor, a supplier in franchising, if you’re in law or accounting or what have you, come on down and check it out or I guess go online and check it out. Yeah. But it’s really geared for franchise marketers. So anyone who’s involved in marketing at all, that would include the CEO, the CMO, maybe even some of the tech people would be interested in it because it is a really interesting tech platform. Yeah, I’m sure that you’ll see value in it. And it’s only gonna be about an hour, so not a big investment of your day.

Okay, and you said franchisees too. So I assume there’s a local flair to this as well. Maybe some multi-unit people, because there’s more and more of those, feels like every week, they should be involved here too as well, correct?

Absolutely. In fact, that was a big focus with the platform. So we do have a couple of software platforms already called the Brand Amplifier, which go part of the way there. And we’ve had a lot of learnings having those platforms in market. But the big focus with Franchise we’ve built, what I would humbly say, is the most powerful local dashboard on the planet. It’s a mobile app. Any franchise you can use it on their Apple or Android device, you can use also on your desktop or through a browser. And it provides a ton of functionality specific to franchise owners, which is a piece that we’ve really found is missing. Because it’s about that collaboration. And that was kind of the a-ha for us through all of our work with franchises, is everyone wants it to work together. You have your head office. Their thing is about making sure their franchise owners are successful. But at the same time, obviously, they have to make sure that you have brand consistency. And that’s the value of a franchise.

And the brand, sure. Hey, if I’m another franchisee from another part of the world, I want my franchise or to protect the brand more than anything.

Absolutely, right? And that’s the value. If you’re a franchisor, the value is the brand. But as a franchisee, you’re an entrepreneur in your own, right? And you want to be able to own your own market. And maybe your market’s a little different than across the world or even across the street. And so we’ve, I think, really found that nice balance where franchisors can feel comfortable that they’re putting their franchise owners in a position to be successful and where franchise owners have enough flexibility and enough power in the toolset we’re providing to be able to really own their markets and drive business for them.

Yeah, I like that you’re really focusing this on franchise owners and multi-unit owners and not just looking at this as another multi-location play. Because I hear that word a lot and I think, yeah, that works for Starbucks and Walmart and people who are not owners of the local unit. But I don’t think a lot of software and technology companies out there really understand the franchise and the franchisee value the way that you guys do.

I appreciate that. And you’ve just hit on exactly what makes this platform so different. So we’ve seen the multi-location platforms and frankly, we’ve used some of them. And we’re always frustrated because I feel like you’re fitting a square peg in a round hole because it’s like, yeah, it’s kind of close. I’m kind of getting what I need. But geez, like we’re creating friction here or I got to work around here, I got to do something over in a Google Sheet or the franchise owner can’t necessarily have the flexibility I think they should. And so that is literally the problem we were solving. So I thank you for saying that. It was perfect.

Yeah, no, that’s what I see all the time with the difference between multi-location and franchising. There’s, I think we tend to see them get put in the same bucket and it could not be more different, especially if you’re the franchise owner, right?

Absolutely.

So great. So the big reveal is coming. That’s April 8th at one o’clock Eastern time. And we’ll have a link to reveal.frantify.com in today’s show notes so everybody can join you there. So good luck with the big reveal and the big kickoff. Can’t wait to see it. And I will also see you next month, April 18th through the 21st. We will be at the Canadian Franchise Association National Show. I can’t wait. It’s in Ottawa this year. That’s going to be fun.

Yeah. I’m so glad you’re coming, Jack. It’s always a great convention. When I heard you were coming and that you were going to be MC-ing, I couldn’t have been happier because you always do an amazing job. It’s such a good convention. As you just said, franchising is different than multi-location. People there are just so wonderful and so open with sharing best practices and ideas. We as ReShift have been sponsoring the convention for 13 years I want to say now and going for 13 years. I can’t say enough about how amazing it is. The Ottawa one in particular is great because it’s a great facility. Obviously, there’s the franchise awareness festivity that goes on as well.

That’s happening a couple of days before the convention, right? The government relations end of it, right?

That’s right. Yeah. Where a bunch of franchisers and the CFA staff obviously go up to Parliament Hill and just try and educate people about franchising. It’s so misunderstood as a business model, even at the highest levels of government where they just don’t get what franchising is.

Oh man, they’re the worst.

Well, I didn’t want to go that far, but yes.

Well, in the US they are anyway. So yeah, well, thank you for the work on that. And as my joke of the month, every time somebody says, so what’s the Canadian Franchise Association like? I say, you know, it’s a lot like the IFA, only they say please and thank you. So, that’s…

That’s a good assessment.

Comments like that over the next month. So anyway, I will see you next month, my friend in Ottawa. And also, like I said, best of luck on the big reveal on April 8th. And we will see you then as well.

Thanks, Jack. I really appreciate it.

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Hi friends, welcome to part two of our Spring Cleaning edition of So Here’s the Thing with my friend Jack Monson.

And we’re going to focus on marketing things that really need to be cleaned because that’s probably the biggest problem in any sort of restaurant system or franchise system or right now, in my opinion.

Yes, problems we see. One, brand marketing funds, advertising funds, creeping that rate up to keep pace with all of the tech that’s been dumped into. In past podcasts, we’ve talked about this, all of the responsibility that’s being dumped on marketing as a department and marketing heads. And I think what’s really interesting is, are we seeing results? So, more tech is coming in, more AI enablement, a lot more has been put on marketing and fees are growing up, especially in franchising as it relates to marketing thoughts.

Well, I think spending money on AI tech is kind of like spending money on advertising. About half of it will be worthwhile. You just don’t know which half. So, I see a lot of people buying a lot of apps and a lot of solutions and a lot of consulting services on AI. But some of that will actually work. Some of that will actually help them grow their businesses. Some of that won’t. And it’s just money that’s being burned right now. So I know we’re going to talk about conferences as well. But I’ve recently been to the International Franchise Association annual convention, the Restaurant Franchising and Innovation Summit, and just last week the Multi-Unit Franchising Conference. And guess what everyone talked about? 20 hours a day, AI. And some of it was good, some of it was helpful. But a lot of it is still, we’re still in this phase, at least in franchising, of, you know, here are some cool apps. Here are some cool technologies you should check out. Oh, you use ChadGPT, you should use Claude. Oh, you use Claude? No, you should use this other one, right? So I think we’re still sort of in this testing phase. And a lot of people are spending a lot of money on things that they won’t be using next year.

I think you’re being really generous. Did you get a good night’s sleep last night or something?

That’s me, I’m generous.

I’m ready to like rip into this. I disagree. I think that a lot of snake oil has been sold. Oh yeah, yeah. To our industry.

Oh, I agree with that.

I think we’re about to see a lot of crash and burn. Where you added this, you thought it was gonna be the silver bullet because let’s face it, to go back to your previous comment in our part one is unit level economics are under attack. It’s the cost of labor post COVID. It’s the food costs with inflationary pressure and shortages, well, what started with shortages and then became just straight up inflation. And it’s an attack on profitability and one of the common lovers to fix this is price. And if you can’t take too much because consumers can’t afford it, then it’s driving sales. So in many ways, people are being sold AI tools, air quotes on that, to solve for labor. You know, they’re using buying collectives and leveraging buying power where possible to help with food. You can only take so much price. So what do you do? You throw more money at marketing. And I think part of this is trying to solve it with a silver bullet. But part of it is we’re in new territory. We’re pulling those levers that used to pull before don’t work. Because we went under so much change post COVID with delivery, off-premises, all of it. And just consumer behavior radically shifted. So I don’t know. I’m of the mindset that if you have bought into AI super early, make sure it’s actually AI that’s being sold to you.

You know, I’m not even sure what that means, being bought into AI. And it runs right in there with AI experts. To me, that’s like saying telephone expert or electricity expert, like it’s everywhere. If someone says that they’re an AI expert, I want to get out of that conversation immediately. And I did that a lot in Las Vegas over the past month. Just, oh, I’m an AI expert. I’m an AI consultant. Okay. Oh, you know what? I think the next session is about to start. See you later. Because what you got to do is, this is my advice for everybody, is use AI in the places that you’re already working. Yeah. Right. So whether it’s your CRM or your whatever you use for media buying or your social media platforms, there are AI things happening within all of those pieces of technology. Use those to the nth degree. It will help you target your ads better. It will help you be more efficient with your time. If you’ve got some scheduling software, terrific. I guarantee it’s using AI. What you don’t need to do is say, let’s add a whole new line item for this really cool shiny object that I just saw at a conference. That is the last thing you need to do. Because when you said crash and burn, I think that’s what’s going to crash and burn. Facebook and Google will be okay a year from now. But all of these, jackai.com, that’s not going to exist a year from now. They’re either going to go broke, or if you have some good tech, Google will buy them, or Facebook will buy them.

Right, and integrate, and roll it up almost immediately. No, I mean, I think there’s like if you label yourself an AI use expert, you basically just have admitted you’ve spent way too much time on Chat GPT.

Yeah, or you’ve been out of work for a year, and now you’re certified by, you know, Claude or something like that. So, well, and there’s, there’s, it’s the same thing we saw with social media 15 years ago. We saw all of these people coming out of the woodwork. I’m a social media expert. Really?

What does that mean?

This is where I cringe. It’s not, no, you’re an early adopter.

Yeah, yeah.

That’s it. And so one of the risks-

You read two more blogs than I did.

This is sort of where I was getting at. It’s not a crash and burn because like your software is going to die and it’s not going to be supported in your although that’s possible. It’s more that you are on the early adoption curve here. And if that is true, then you also are assuming some risk that you may have adopted the wrong thing. And I think even some people who adopted ChatGBT are now going, oh, I forgot to move over to Claude. And tomorrow it’ll be the next thing called Banana. Who the hell knows? But like, right, it’s… We’re just in still a very turbulent time. I will go back to this hill to die on. I think that our unit level economics are messed up as an industry. We have to be very smart about how we use AI as a tool to reduce labor, to reduce friction in the customer experience, to improve the experience of eating in any kind of restaurant. It’s not going to substitute for the decades of experience that you get from people who’ve done this and who can analyze the situation and more predictably read the tea leaves, right? I mean, I think there were, we were reacting so quickly to the change. Like we compressed so much digital behavior into like maybe 30 months. It’s like 30 years worth of behavior where suddenly everyone’s ordering food online and having it delivered to their door. And no one has actually stopped to think about the things that they put on those platforms are actually profitable for them after commission. To think about, are their marketing dollars being spent smartly? Are they cannibalizing delivery from another location? And this goes back to another comment. Location, location, location. What was an acceptable real estate play for any brand in any given market? You felt like you were covered. They were appropriately spaced apart is immaterial now with delivery. And you don’t control that delivery radius. It’s what the third party platform picks for you. So this is a whole new world. And I think we’re still playing with old tools. And that’s what bothers me. Like we should be using AI. We’re just not using it right yet.

Yeah, that’s correct. There’s this meme that everyone’s jumping on for the past month about comparing 2016 to 2026. Here’s what we looked like 10 years ago. Here’s what we look like now. And I think the real problem is we’re using 2026 technology the way that we would have used it in 2016. And I don’t think there’s a bigger problem right now than lead generation with, especially when it comes to search, social as well, but really paid search is just, it’s a dumpster fire right now. And I think so many restaurant operators, so many restaurant brands, franchise brands, their solution and some bad advice they’re getting from some really bad marketing agencies is pour more fuel on that dumpster fire. And you’re not getting enough leads? Well, you need to spend more. I see that all the time from brands all across franchising. And if you have a marketing person or a marketing agency saying you need to increase your budget significantly because Google isn’t working anymore, my question to that is, if it’s not working anymore, why are you spending more money on it? You know, it suddenly turned into, it’s like a government problem, right? Well, you know, schools aren’t working, so let’s spend more money. Or, you know, this department’s not working well, let’s spend more money on it. That’s what I see happening right now with lead generation.

And this is going back to the unit level economics issue that we discussed at length in part one, is if you need to fix a restaurant that’s working and you don’t see enough profitability at the bottom, there are two ways you do this, right? You drive more at the top or more margin with price. You do more, more revenue, more margin, or you save more. That’s it. I mean, it’s just the simplest of math. And the problem here is we’re being tempted to spend more and being told to spend more. I’m just going to pick on third party platforms for just a second. But as one example of where we’re being told to spend incrementally more than we ever did 10 years ago, that wasn’t even a category 10 years ago, right? Right. And we’re not addressing the core issue, which is we’re not adjusting for savings that we need to find somewhere else because we’re getting just absolutely like, profitability is being eaten up on food and labor. So the model is broken. Make no mistake. This is time for some innovative pruning, cleaning, shining, polishing and re-strategizing. And I think that’s the message. Like, this is a great time to sort of get in there and start adjusting those unit level economics and figuring out the new lovers to pull. And I think…

The scrub brush for spring cleaning. I think for lead generation, my recommendation is don’t just spend the way you would have in 2016, right? Because let’s face it, in 2016, all you really needed was a website and some Google ads, and you were good to go. So don’t just spend more there, but look for other avenues, right? Where are you getting customers? Where are you getting leads for franchise lead generation? You know, look at things like TikTok, which also did not exist in 2016. Look at TikTok, look at other social channels. Things like Reddit are really blowing up right now. Look at other places where you might get those leads, you might get new customers. That’s where people are talking and having conversations right now. So instead of just pouring more money in the old places, let’s go find the new places. That’s really what I see as my advice for anybody doing some spring cleaning on their marketing right now. I know we’re running short on time, but is there anything else in the marketing area that you wanted to hit real quick when it comes to your spring cleaning to-do list?

I still am very much on the fence on conferences. Like I just am really struggling with the expense, the return, the proliferation.

I mentioned earlier all of the shows we just did. And there are some great shows out there, great speakers I saw over the past month. But, wow, it’s the cost of everything from fuel to airline tickets to food in Las Vegas is outrageous right now. So I think maybe that’s another thing to put on your spring cleaning list is take a good hard look at the second half of 2026. And instead of going to, let’s say last year you went to six shows in that second half of the year. Maybe think about making that three or four.

I’m on for three, only three.

There you go. Two is not bad.

Well, it was two and then I did a favor for Franchise. No, it’s three.

Pick a number and stick with that. And I think, you know, the other thing is with all of these shows, go to fewer shows, but go all in on the shows that you go to. And maybe spend a little more time there. Maybe it’s an extra day, right? Or maybe it’s make plans with people and set up meetings and things and really go all in. You’re not just going there to check the box to say I was at the the, you know, NRA show or whatever. So, very good. I hope to see you at one of these shows in the next six to eight months. But until then, we will be back here next week with another So Here’s the Thing.

Thanks again to Steve Buors of ReShift Media and Lauren Fernandez of Full Course. Thanks to our sponsors today, Citrin Cooperman, AnswerConnect, and Thunderly. And thanks to you for listening, telling a friend about us and staying connected on the Social Geek Radio Network.