Neighborhood marketing: don't just do it; do it right - restaurant marketing - Opinion - Column

It happened again last week.

We were conferring with a prospective client over our proposal to do their neighborhood marketing program. And just like so many times before, each area that we covered with these folks was greeted by the company's president saying: "We know that," or "We've done that before" or "You may do that with a little more polish, but we already do that."

I bit my tongue. But I don't know how many more times I can keep from saying: "Yes, sir, I know you know how to do neighborhood sales building. (Everybody who's been in this business more than one day knows how.) My question is, 'Are you getting it done successfully?'"

Last September I was proud to be a panelist on the "Neighborhood Marketig Panel" at Nation's Restaurant News' Multi-Unit Foodservice Operators (MUSFO) Conference in Los Angeles. I told this group the same thing that many of you have heard from me before.

The biggest reason contract marketing has been so successful is that we value applications over ideas. We do have ideas. Chain marketing departments have ideas. Our advertising agencies have wonderful ideas. And the best marketing ideas of all come from our franchisees and operators.

But who at your chain is in charge of getting those ideas applied in the neighborhoods where those ideas can make a difference? Who is making it easy for the operators and franchisees to access your ideas and build sales in their 10-minute radius?

At most chains the answer to these questions is either "the most junior person in our marketing department," or "the advertising agency." And those answers are not good enough.

Great ideas are useless if not applied. You must get those ideas out of the home office and into someone's hands who can use them. Or, as my brothers would say, "Get the hay down to where the horses can eat it."

So how you get your great ideas applied at the store level? At MUSFO we suggested the following:

(1) Make a commitment to a formal neighborhood marketing plan, not an addition to the agency's media plan but, instead, a dedicated local store marketing plan.

(2) Focus on only one LSM effort per quarter. Why? Because you can't accomplish what we can't comprehend. And your store operators' No. 1 marketing priority is to run a great store, not learn how to execute five new marketing ideas. And yet most chains who have neighborhood marketing plans also have a 20-pound manual that includes 40 programs and ideas. Few will ever be used or read.

(3) Very few chains I'm aware of train their LSM plans with their unit operators on a face-to-face basis. They just send the new LSM manual or the promotional "spin" idea with a "memo from corporate." That's a big mistake. Brief but intense on-site training sessions regarding the programs you've developed for your franchisees and company operators are essential. How else can you be sure they know what to do?

(4) Finally, if you don't already have one, you must set up a fulfillment system for neighborhood marketing program requests from your franchisees and operators. And I don't mean the voice mail number of your most junior staffer! See even if you plan your work, focus your effort and train those who are involved, you still need to make your program materials available on demand through a user-friendly system. Otherwise, your operators and franchisees will be too easily defeated when they confront the barriers they are sure to face. Problems and questions happen when they happen, not when you want them to.

How do you fulfill program requests, answer questions and continually train your franchisees and operators when you have 100 stores... or 1,000...and barely enough people in your department to accomplish what you already have on your plate?

My answer to that is: "Live in the now."

We are now in the information age. LL Bean probably takes, records, ships, invoices and follows up 10,000 calls a day. Just think how easy and simpler tracking LSM requests, costs and sales results are for your relatively few store requests.

There are computer hardware and software solutions to every massive information problem you may have. All you need do is investigate with an attitude.

Our approach is lile "The Little Train that Could." That is, when Denny's said, "How can we take, record, fulfill, report and evaluate neighborhood marketing requests from 1,400 operators?" we said, "We think we can."

Then we went out and built the system that, so far this year, has handled more than 14,000 LSM item requests. And our capital and human resource commitment is surprisingly small.

Best of all, more than 75 percent of Denny's operators and franchisees are implementing corporate-approved neighborhood marketing programs this year. What percent of your operators can you estimate are using your LSM manual?

My message: If we can do it, you can, too, because I know you know what to do. But for your sake, it would be better to hear. "We're getting it done."

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