Franchise Update Magazine Issue III, 2015 | Page 55

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F R A N C H I S E

C O N S U M E R

M A R K E T I N G

Day 2 dawns

A continental breakfast awaited and
awoke attendees before they headed
into the day’s first general session.
Conference Chair Rich Hope welcomed everyone back and introduced
a new panel on technology and marketing called “Ask the Experts,” which
brought together representatives from
Google, LinkedIn, and Angie’s List.
Linda Shaub, senior vice president
of marketing at Interim Healthcare,
moderated a high-tech panel consisting of Christine Merritt, Google’s head
of premier SMB partnerships, channel
sales U.S.; Kellee Van Horne, LinkedIn’s
head of customer marketing, sales solutions; and Kevin Weinmann, national
corporate sales manager at Angie’s
List. Each outlined their brand’s latest
endeavors and product tweaks before
addressing questions from Shaub and
a very eager audience.
The breakout sessions that followed
offered panels on vetting vendors, tracking and reporting results, local store
marketing, and managing online and
social media reviews. Again, the sessions integrated tried-and-true marketing strategies with online and social
media. At noon, the doors opened for
a final visit to the Sponsor Networking Gallery.
Attendees returned to the general
session room for an open forum with
four franchise marketing executives
selected by the attendees, who voted
for their favorites using the conference’s mobile app: Checkers’ Terri
Snyder, BrightStar’s Jayson Pearl,
Hungry Howie’s Jeff Rinke, and Jersey
Mike’s Rich Hope. The panel, moderated by Luis Zuniga, former vice
president of marketing and communication at CruiseOne, held a lively
discussion on marketing and technology issues facing their brands.
Topics and questions from the floor
touched on building a great marketing team, agency partnerships, online
ordering, developing mobile apps, ad
budgets, ad funds, and targeting and
collecting customer data—and what
to do with it.
The panel was followed by a final
round of breakout sessions before ev-

J.B. Bernstein, keynote speaker

eryone reconvened for the conference’s
final keynote.
Million-dollar keynote

J.B. Bernstein, legendary sports marketing
agent whose life was chronicled in the
movie “Million Dollar Arm,” delivered
a motivational and inspiring wind-up to
the two-day event. His message was tied
to his new book, Hey… Where’s My Big
Idea? and Bernstein regaled the crowd
with tales of his groundbreaking marketing deals for superstar clients Barry
Bonds and Emmitt Smith. He broke
down his own process of idea formation
into six steps: 1) information overload,
2) cross-referencing/good thinking, 3)
a Eureka moment, 4) idea to business
plan, 5) capital, and 6) successful product or business.
The first three steps, he said, are theoretical, while the last three are about
execution and the “four P’s” (product,
package, promotion, and price). However, he added a fifth “P”—perspective—which comes from identifying
the need or want. Without perspective
(“where everything flows from”) he
said, the other four “P’s” are worthless.
Ideas, he said, are created by a system,
not magic. Most people, he said, make
the mistake of thinking great ideas come
in a “Eureka moment,” whereas in his
experience, it’s the first two steps that
make such a moment even possible:

C O N F E R E N C E

1) intensive research to the point of
information overload (“Any part of
an idea that is not in your head will
ensure you don’t think of that idea.”);
and 2) cross-referencing/good thinking (“It is critica