What-Franchise-Issue-20.1

12 WHAT FRANCHISE Issue 20.1 uncan Cork is no stranger to brand building. The former creative consultant is behind F45’s growth across North America, which saw the brand go from a single studio to more than 700 in the region. Now, he’s picking up the mantle at X-Ponential Fitness, where he’s hoping to grow boutique fitness franchise, BFT, across the world – including the UK. Here, the new BFT president shares what he assesses when joining a brand with ambitions of rigorous growth, and what you can take away from it. THE RIGHT PHILOSOPHY Don’t be afraid to make mistakes and know that little failures (if acknowledged quickly and dealt with swiftly) are as much a part of the journey to success as the big wins. I draw inspiration from adages like ‘always hire people that are smarter than you’, ‘take time to hire the right fit while protecting your team from the wrong one’, and ‘small teams of A+ players can run circles around a big team of B and C players’. One more philosophy I recently read was James Clear’s ‘You don’t rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems’. That speaks volumes, especially in franchising. BIG BRAND MISTAKES In the extremely fast way we consume media these days - doom-scrolling through content online - it is becoming more vital to bake in the fundamentals of a brand story to all customer touchpoints. This covers messaging, content, colours, tone of voice, music, and having that be consistent across all accompanying media channels. Frommy early years in advertising and design, I have developed a (sometimes annoying) habit of focusing on brand story and how that translates into design and product experience. Newer brands often throw out the fundamentals, favouring feeding a hungry content machine. Brand detail and consistency often gets left out these days, but it is as important as ever. D STRATEGY I believe in building branding strategies correctly early on. Even if it’s as simple as picking the right colours and ensuring they match on screen as well as in print. Consistency of brand is vital for recognition, and a lot of franchisors get that wrong. That said, I ammostly a proponent of any marketing initiative that grows word-of-mouth. This starts by building an incredible culture inside your four walls, hiring the right team, teaching them the ethos of the brand, and how to empathise with your customer’s journey. The best franchisors build this early into all aspects of their methodologies. Formulas in franchising can lead to industry homogenisation and standardisations that disconnect the customer from experiencing the full benefits of the product or service. Building relationships, empathising, connecting on a human level, and delivering a great product… that is what builds word-of-mouth, and will always be your best marketing. MARKETABILITY Most ideas are born out of observing and improving something that has existed before that wasn’t quite working or meeting expectations. Once you discover how to connect that idea with a true customer need, you can create marketable concepts. At a corporate level, this is where Xponential’s scale and cross-brand learnings really help me. We can highlight these points of differentiation and have those learnings separate our brands from others in boutique fitness. On purely a product level, in an increasingly segmented market, brands need to work harder to find a large enough differentiating selling proposition, while not alienating so much of the wider audience that you don’t have enough customers. You can’t be everything to everyone, conversely you can’t be only one thing to someone. So, it’s about finding that balance. World building and word of mouth: how to really create a household brand in franchising Duncan Cork SIX IDE AS.