Franchise QB

Episode 86: Jimi Gibson, VP of Brand Communication @ Thrive Agency

• Mike Halpern • Season 1 • Episode 86

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In this episode of the Franchise QB podcast, host Mike Halpern speaks with Jimi Gibson, VP of Brand Communication at Thrive Agency, about the intersection of magic and marketing. 

Jimi shares his unique journey from being a professional magician to a marketing expert, emphasizing the importance of communication strategies in a noisy digital landscape. 

They discuss the significance of local presence for franchise owners, effective marketing strategies, and the role of AI in enhancing business operations. 

The conversation highlights the need for authenticity and community engagement in building a successful brand.

Takeaways

Jimi Gibson's journey from magician to marketing expert is unique and insightful.
Effective communication strategies are essential in today's noisy digital landscape.
Franchise owners must establish a local presence to connect with their communities.
Authenticity is key; people prefer to engage with individuals, not just brands.
Video content is crucial for modern marketing strategies.
AI can streamline operations and enhance marketing efforts for franchise owners.
Building brand consistency while allowing local personality is vital for franchise success.
Franchisees should leverage storytelling to connect with their audience.
Community engagement can significantly boost brand visibility and trust.
Franchise owners need to focus on customer experience rather than just their services.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction
02:37 From Magic to Marketing: Jimi's Journey
05:16 Navigating the Noisy World of Brand Communication
08:10 Franchising: The Importance of Local Presence
10:52 Building Brand Consistency with Local Personality
13:33 Effective Marketing Strategies for Franchise Owners
16:25 Empowering Franchisees with Storytelling Tools
19:19 Leveraging AI in Franchise Marketing
22:05 Standing Out in a Competitive Market
24:51 Creating a Local Content Strategy
27:34 Conclusion

https://thriveagency.com/

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Contact me and my team with any questions along the way. www.calendly.com/franchiseguy
Mike Halpern, CAFC
mike@franchiseqb.com

This is the Franchise QB Podcast, where we empower entrepreneurs to win big in franchising. We huddle up weekly to educate our audience about the most successful small business model ever created, franchising. Welcome to the Franchise QB podcast. I'm your host, Mike Halpern, a 20-year industry veteran and entrepreneur. My mission is for listeners to achieve their American dreams of creating wealth and independence through franchise ownership. Every week we speak with franchisees, franchisors or vendors that support the industry. Thank you for joining us and let's get started. Joining us in the huddle today is Jimi Gibson, VP of Brand Communication at Thrive Agency. Welcome to the show, Jimi. Hey, Mike. Glad to be here. It is great to have you here. So in addition to being the VP of Brand Communication at Thrive, you're a TEDx speaker and a former professional magician. That's really cool. I did watch your TEDx speech."You have magic power. Use it for good." Really insightful stuff. And I did. observed the rope trick and I still don't know how you did it. And I don't want to know. I like the magic. And I know that was a point you made in the presentation, but very powerful stuff, very entertaining. So before we get into Thrive Agency, tell us how you became a professional magician. I think a lot of listeners would be interested in that. um Try to connect all the dots here. I was looking through some boxes a couple of years ago and I found a membership card. to Merlin's Mail Order Magic Club when I was four years old. I'm like, wow, that's pretty early to get hooked on something like that. I got a birthday uh magic kit for a birthday when I was six. when I was in middle school, I was performing birthday parties for my friends and their parents would pay me to perform for my friends' birthday parties. And then in high school, I was part of an organization of magicians and there was a guy in there that worked at an ad agency. And he said they were looking for a promotional entertainer to help promote the products. Interestingly enough, it's an international franchise that we've all heard of. And for the next 16 years, I worked doing promotional shows for them. I did go to college and study marketing. I was fascinated with communication and the ability to uh impact behavior and purchasing decisions. And I worked at agencies while I was also performing. And then I did open up a theater. I shows, I did corporate shows, had a show at the MGM in Las Vegas, and there was always sort of this lens that I saw the world through that was magic and giving people that wow experience. So yeah, it's been a fun time. Yeah, that's awesome. I love the confluence of your background with magic and creating magic for business owners and helping them get, you bodies in the door and sales, and we're gonna get into all that stuff. uh you've been in marketing, as you mentioned, for a long time, 25 plus years. In your role as VP of brand communication at Thrive, what is it that you do to help business owners communicate? It's a very noisy environment out there with everything that's going on with social media and everything else. What is it that you do that helps them? Yeah, so I've enjoyed, actually started as a graphic designer. and became a creative director. then um at one point in my career, I was working in an agency, an Omnicom agency, which is basically a holding company for large ad agencies. And the branch manager decided that she wanted to leave. And so we're all looking at each other going, what? So I sort of threw my hat in the ring and I became the branch manager as well as the creative director. So it was always cool to see and have the conversation with the business owner. and then come back and create that campaign. And I think it all starts with a strategy. I've been at Thrive Ad agency for five years and they brought me on to start their strategy department. I'm a firm believer that if you don't have a strategy, you're gonna end up somewhere very expensive and probably not somewhere you wanna be. And so I put that together and then just through the course of um we're a very uh large and growing agency and so. I actually started to run the operations of all of the teams that did the work for our clients. And then recently the owner came to me and said, hey, uh we've sort of been the secret in the world for the last 20 years. We want to give back and teach people some of the secrets of the tricks of the trade, if I can coin a phrase. And so right now what I'm doing is I'm trying to educate business owners on how to stand out in that noisy world. And I think it... is very confusing, it moves very quickly, things change rapidly. And just being able to sort through based on where you are as a company, if you're a startup, if you're part of a large franchise organization, whatever the case may be, what makes sense for you and your market because it's not the same as somebody else in another market. And I know we're gonna get into the nuance of how do you stand out specifically under the umbrella of a franchise organization. But yeah, I would say it's sorting through all of that mess. being okay to give tough love and to tell people the truth because a lot of folks come to us because they've been burned by somebody telling them what to do and how to do it and it hasn't worked out. And so we are passionate about relationship and results. And so if you tilt one way or the other, it's not gonna be a good relationship. So we wanna give good results and we wanna be easy to work with. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And we are gonna focus here on franchising, do here in the Franchise QB podcast. And I think it's important. There's kind of a misconception that if you join a franchise system, it's all done for you. Franchisors are going to make recommendations. have a brand identity. They have a logo. But the way that you run your business in Charleston can be a lot different than the way I run my business in Northern Virginia. So why is it important for franchise owners to step out from behind the logo and show up as the face of the brand in their local market? Yeah, great question. I think within the last six months, that has been a vital part of how we recommend a franchise owner to show up. We work with a very large B2B cleaning brand. They're part of a 10 brand group. And they just hired a new CMO. The CMO was at a conference that I attended. I said, well, hey, you're new. You have thousands of franchisees. What's gonna be your first order of business? She said to run each franchisee through a brand playbook to develop their personal brand. We've seen that when they show up in their community, when they're present on social media, their referrals can increase 30%. And so you're right. There's a personality to each market that you're in. Everybody wants to know the business owner. um You've got to get out. You've got to shake hands. You've got to show up at ribbon cuttings. You've got to invest in local charities. And then unfortunately, oh you have to show up on social media. I know a lot of people hate that, but it doesn't mean that you have to do a TikTok dance. um You can congratulate your team publicly. You can highlight a win that you've had for a client. What's happening when AI searches are showing up and we call those large language models, is there is a preference and a deferential ranking to businesses that show expertise, experience, authority, and trustworthiness. And so when somebody is using an AI tool to create content, it doesn't have any of that in there. And so it's getting pushed down in the rankings. And so when you show up as the owner, and you put your face out there and you talk about your business and we can get into specifics, it makes a huge difference. Not only in your community, but visibility online. Yeah, that's an interesting point you bring up because I think a lot of people get intimidated about an influencer. It's like, well, how am I going to get tens of thousands of followers and how am going to build this whole audience? And you're saying, well, you know, let's just get in the game and do things that are important to you, important to the brand, important to the business. and those things will follow, but it's a lot better than just sitting on the sidelines. Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, obviously the name of the podcast is QB. Maybe your kids are involved in local sports. Maybe there's a football team that you care about. Maybe there's um a local nonprofit that you can become involved in. Maybe you live in an area that's cold and you do a coat drive and you become the person that initiates that. All of that goodwill. pays back not only because it's the right thing to do and it's a good thing to do, but people have warm and fuzzy feelings about the brand when they do that. And so you can't hide behind the logo and you can't rely on the corporate brand to do that for you. That's not really their responsibility. Yeah. I recall in your TEDx talk, you mentioned a stylist that one day a month she'll give free haircuts to homeless people. it's one day a month, right? There's still, all these other business days that are for profit, but that one she gives back to the community. So I can see things like that to promote goodwill and say, hey, I'm here and part of the community, I'm helping out. That can go a long way with consumers. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, very cool. So how do you balance brand consistency across locations when they all need local personality and they need a connection to the local community, but they could be geographically in different places? Yeah, well, we'll keep with the QB. uh sort of metaphor, oh if you have a favorite team, you understand that team. But guess what? There's individual players on that team and each one of those players has an individual personality, but they all represent that team or that league overall. And so that's really the mindset that you have to take. um Certainly you have to work within the bounds of the brand language and things that are appropriate based on color scheme and logo placement and uh what you can and can't do. But I would say based on our experience, there's a wide margin of opportunity for you to be yourself. basically we're giving permission for somebody to be excited about their community. Like why did you set up? Why did you buy this market? uh What is it about this market that you moved your family if you moved from out of town? um You made a choice to invest in this area um Be the hero down the street next door around the corner and let that be known Join a local Rotary um That doesn't conflict at all What you do is you actually have an advantage because if your brand has name recognition that gets your foot in the door But it is a crowded market. There are a lot of other people You know, we used to live in Savannah, Georgia, and there were brands that we wanted to do business with. But because that owner operator or that franchisee was not responsive and wasn't representing the brand, well, we decided to go with somebody else. When we moved to Charleston, South Carolina, we said, all right, we'll give them another shot because overall that brand has a good reputation. That owner operator was completely different. There you have a perfect example of you are reflection of the brand and you're either gonna lean into it and you're gonna deliver on that promise or you're going to actually erode that brand strength that, you know, that franchise or has worked so hard uh to build over however many years that business has been around. Yeah, I think it's really great advice about being authentic and, you know, bringing your personality and your experience to the table. That's what I train when new consultants come in our network, you know, what makes you different from every other franchise consultant out there? You come with your own unique set of experiences with business ownership and entrepreneurship and like, you know, be authentic, talk about those things. Like that's how people get over their fear, uncertainty, their doubt. They want to learn from people that have been there and done it and then decide, okay, is ownership right for me? So I think that's pretty cool to kind I see how that translates in a franchise model. So, you know, sticking with franchising, What marketing strategies do you find are most effective for driving that local traffic and leads in a franchise system? Yeah, I would say there are some things that you can ignore. uh One of them being your Google business profile. uh It's a GBP. It's changed names a couple of times, but that's the current name. uh You want to make sure that that's uh decked out with photos and pictures and they have video now. I would say reviews are extremely important and you want to make sure that you have a process to get those reviews. um Those reviews are one of the key factors that allow you to show up in that map pack, which is that three spot um map location. We're getting into a world where we call it uh zero click results on a search because of all the Features that Google has added into the mix and so somebody might not ever visit your website But you need to make sure you have your call to clicks in place those types of things um And you know, I would say the other thing that pairs with that is what we've been talking about. You have to be authentic um You know when you're considering Okay, how am I going to show up? put some of those customer spotlight videos, put that video about why you started the business or why you bought into this franchise in this particular location. um And the other thing is if you are used to traditional modes of marketing, like direct mail, door hangers, uh radio ads, you really need to bridge that digital component. QR codes have become very popular. uh There should be a link to a landing page that you know, features that conversation. So I would say there's a variety of techniques. You really want to be omnipresent in your area and you want to make sure the things that happen in the background allow you to show up um over top of your competition. Yeah, it's a really good point you make about like making it frictionless because someone could be halfway into typing in something in the Google search box and it's already displaying things that. are gonna be useful in decision making. And that's the thing, it's like when that first opportunity to make a choice, you want your client or your brand to be the one that's, know, that's the first one that's seen, that's visible, that's relevant. um So let's kind of look at the flip side of that. What are some of the big mistakes that franchise owners make when they're trying to promote their location? Probably lot of them, right? Yeah, I would say it's similar to most other businesses. It's always talking about yourself. It's talking about how many trucks you have. It's talking about how long you've been in business. It's talking about that you're family oriented and you have good values and you're not talking about the customer's life. m When somebody is interested in something, so let's say you have a gym franchise, they're not interested in how many treadmills you have. They're interested in the fact that they get to show up to their class reunion looking buff or hot or whatever the adjective you want to use is. Yeah, it's how they're going to feel when they use that product. Yeah, if you have a plumbing franchise, it's not about yeah, we can come in 24 hours and fix your leaky faucet or your clogged drain. It's, got the in-laws showing up and this is not gonna be pretty if we don't get this fixed. um So it's peace of mind. It's, you know, trust that they're actually gonna show up when they say they're gonna show up. All of those types of things are what somebody is. thinking in their head when they're considering the various options out there for whatever product or service that you have. And so you really have to put your mind in the state of your potential customer and go, like, what are they frantic about? What are they excited about? Why would they consider you and stop talking about yourself and start putting yourself in the day of the life of your customer? That's really, really good advice. I like that a lot. Thanks for sharing that with us, Jimi. Sure. can franchise systems, how can the franchisor empower their franchisees, their franchise owners with better storytelling tools and content frameworks? Because if the franchisor is encouraging that and enabling that, it's going to allow the franchise owner to be able to participate a little bit more and tell a story. how can they help? Yeah, I think it can come bottom up or top down. So if you have a franchisee who is doing a great job, should be their responsibility to... know, empower the entire network and bring some of their strategies up. The other thing is, if the franchisor is keeping up with the times and, you know, knows about the things that we've talked about right now, they should be doing what the CMO is doing and putting together a playbook. um There can be scripts that are sent out. There can be um very specific instructions that anybody could follow. You don't have to be a marketing whiz to be able to uh follow a certain number of steps, what platforms would be the best to show up on. Here are some frameworks that you can insert your name and copy into. I think it, again, be, it doesn't have to be a three-week masterclass. could be some, I work with, we work with a lot of franchisees I've actually put together. an eight part digital marketing masterclass and put that on their LMS and so they share that. um I've showed up at Lunch and Learns, so there may be a marketing partner that a franchise company works with and so invite them into the conversation because they should be giving you tips for free if they're interested in giving back to the relationship. So I think there's a lot of things that can be done, um but again, it's really, when it comes down to it, that franchisee has to just sort of grit their teeth and go, okay, it's a brand new world. I've gotta face this and I've gotta do it. And I think some people are very excited about the opportunity. And once they see some traction, they go, my gosh, why wasn't I doing this a year ago, two years ago? This is kind of fun, actually. Yeah, and I think a lot of the franchise owners that collaborate and they have peer networks and power teams and they talk. It's like, what are you doing to kind of make your business better? be a conversation. think a lot of them would share with each other is like, well, look at how I tell the story and look at the results I have. And like you said, when that traction's there, the word can spread pretty quickly within a system, especially if there's healthy collaboration between the owners. um So you mentioned before, chat, GPT, AI is obviously like the big buzzword that's being used in every industry, not just franchising. um How should franchise owners think about AI? Is it a time saver? Is it a risk to their brand? How do you view this and how should they tackle the whole idea of implementing AI to make their business better? Yeah, I think there are a lot of things that come out and people... There can be some scary things that people hear and there's definite fear. I would say we see... uh various owners taking advantage of some of the operational savings and time. And so it can analyze data very quickly. It can uh create SOPs if you want to be able to put those out to your team. I was talking with a client the other day. They had actually cloned his voice and they had sent voicemail messages out to all the customers on behalf of the owner. um I've cloned my voice, playing around with it, because I'd like to create some video. If you know me, it doesn't really sound like me. So I would say be careful, because we have very smart consumers, and they may be able to detect that something funny is going on here. um I would say specifically related to chat GPT, it can be very helpful if you have a series of marketing emails and a sequence that you send out after somebody requests a quote. um if you're sending out emails, but I will warn you, it can hallucinate and it can give you false data. You've got to really pull and tug and guide it. Where we've seen good traction, and we've actually created a couple of these for our clients, is creating custom GPTs that's in a closed environment. It can't go out and look at the internet. You load it up with a knowledge base that could be anything related to your brand or how you communicate. And then this is a little, you know, basically a little app that your field technicians or your field crew, your customer service folks can just have at their disposal. And if they get a question or they need an answer to something, they can use that and type that in. So we've seen good success with things like that. I mean, AI has been around for a while, especially in uh ad platforms for uh targeted bidding and things like that. But I think in day-to-day use, we're going to see a lot of ability not only for time savings, but just to be able to navigate all the communications things that come and go in running a business. Yeah, I interviewed a brand recently that used that closed loop GPT in their system and they're testing it before they roll it out to their franchise owners. But I think that's a really creative and interesting way to load data that's very specific and kind of train it accordingly. So I think a lot of that is in its beta. testing stages, especially in franchising. So how do you help franchise brands stand out in a competitive market, especially when a lot of locations are offering the same thing? So whether it's a painting franchise or whatever the commodity is, something that there's a lot of independents that do it, there's a lot of franchise systems that do it, and everyone's looking for a differentiation. How do you help with that? Yeah, so, and we're all familiar with it and we're all guilty of it, right?$99 special, limited time, book now. That just becomes noise to everybody, right? And so when we're talking about coupons and urgency, what breaks through is presence, relevance, and desirability. You want folks coming to you, and that comes from referrals, that comes from reviews. You gotta be the person that people want to buy from, not just another deal in their inbox um or on their phone if you're using it. texting or a messaging platform. um So I think it goes back to what we've been talking about the entire time. You have to know your customer. You have to know where they are. If it's moms, you have to get involved in moms groups. If it's a lawn service, you've got to get in the car and ride the neighborhoods and shake your hand and get involved in community groups. um Most areas around Charleston have neighborhood Facebook groups. Don't get on there and spam anybody. m Introduce yourself. um People are all the time asking, hey, does anybody have a good lawn care? Does anybody have a plumber? I need a roofer. Where do you work out? What's the best coffee in town? The more you show up and the more you're present and the more people identify with you, the more you're gonna get recommended. And so I would say it goes in, And I can't give a blanket statement. think it depends on market size, it depends on what your service area is, and then it depends on the personality of the area. But all the things that we've talked about, even if you think you have enough business, those leads are gonna ebb and flow, especially if there's some seasonality, get involved in a business networking group. oh So I'm throwing a bunch of things at you. um I read a very smart. uh piece of advice from an advertising professional who said, somebody came to him and said, could you give me a way to get 100 clients? And he says, absolutely not. But I can give you 100 ways to get 100, or to get one client. And so I think that's what you gotta do. um And then also to use your team as ambassadors. What do they care about? Give them a day off to go volunteer somewhere. When they rub elbows with somebody on a community event, who do you think? they're gonna think about the next time they have a need for that product or service. I like the idea of not spamming them, like show up, add value, provide content, and then people are going to come to you for that service. So I think that makes a lot of sense. And you've kind of touched on my next question, which is what's a local content strategy look like for a franchise location? You've mentioned a few things like joining a local business group, participating in neighborhood forums, anything else that comes to mind? Well, I know we talked about this in our back and forth, so I'll just go ahead and jump ahead. Take your phone out of your pocket and shoot some video. It is an extremely versatile tool, and this year, 82 % of all web traffic is going to be video related. so whether you're doing a paid social campaign, organic social campaign, you're posting on your organic profiles, uh video is the way to go. And so it won't take a lot to get good at it. I made a promise myself to post a video Monday through Friday every day this year. Yeah, it's scary when you begin, but just keep doing it. You can do it in the office. If you have a team in the field, they can film some video. um That's what people are watching and that's what people have time for and don't make it boring. uh you know, be a little entertaining. If there's somebody in your office that has a little flair for showmanship, um they can help the group. um So I would say as far as local addressing all of the structural things like GBP and reviews and, you know, all of that type of thing is to start producing content in a video format and sharing that on platforms where you know your audience is. Yeah, it sounds like a key to success there is consistency because if you don't have consistency, can't continue to build a following. And I have friends of mine in the space that are consultants, franchisors, mean, different aspects of our industry, and they'll set aside a day and just film and film and film. And that one day can represent an entire month of content. So it's not like you have to dedicate your entire life to be on camera, but if you use it effectively, it can be pretty interesting for your business. And I've heard you say that people follow people. not just businesses, can you kind of explain what that looks like in a franchise environment? Sure. I think we've probably all heard the phrase, I've got a guy or I've got a gal. And what does that mean? It doesn't mean I've got a company. It means I trust this person. I'm going to get you in touch with this person. And again, I think it is stepping out from behind the logo, making sure people understand where your heart is, where your servant approach to what you do. and making sure they know your name. And again, every conversation should not end with smashing a business card in their hand. It's an authentic uh exchange of I care about the community and if there's anything I can do to help or anybody I can connect you with, let me know. I don't know why this popped into my head, but if you've ever seen the movie Miracle on 34th Street, there was a... Santa Claus was sending everybody else out to all other places. Be that connector. Be that person that knows everybody in the area. Introduce yourself to like-minded um or, you know, if your business can benefit from knowing a realtor, get to know all the realtors in the area. there's, when you want to help somebody, then it's going to come back to you tenfold. So I think you need to be a person and make sure people know who you are. No, I love that. Do good stuff and good stuff will come back your way. uh You mostly answered my next question, which is, what change or shift can a franchise owner make today that would have a big impact on their local marketing? And one thing you just mentioned was putting yourself out there and contributing and adding value. Anything else that someone can do today as an action item to make their business better as it relates to local marketing? Yeah. uh uh Sit in on various webinars and try to educate myself In a social platform the ones who get the most eyeballs on their accounts are the ones who authentically go out and comment on other posts and so uh whether your business uh is more of a LinkedIn vibe or a Tick-tock vibe or an Instagram vibe or a Facebook vibe uh spend 30 minutes every morning as you drink your cup of coffee or whatever it is and just sort of scroll through some of those platforms that are neighborhood focused, especially if that is your area, and just engage and make sure that your name is there and if it's a personal profile, just make sure it lists where you work and people are gonna start to go, you know that Mike guy, he's always helpful. And he's not creepy at all. He's recommending things that have actually provided value for this group. That's how you build it. um If you can't go out and shake hands and be in the community as much as you want, you've got the world of internet and there are people you can find um that are in your local area. And so just put some time in and be helpful. Well, Jimi, this has been great. I really appreciate all your advice. Really pragmatic and practical. stuff that owners can use to impact their marketing and grow their business. Anything else you want to add to the mix before we wrap up today? No, I would just say give yourself permission to be yourself and go out there and smile and be happy that you have this business and you can impact your community and tell them what you care about and where your heart is and you won't believe how much people are just like, my gosh, tell me more. That's awesome. So, yeah. Well, this has been both educational and magical. You still got it, Jimi. So if anyone listening would like to connect with Jimi and his team to learn more about partnering with Thrive Agency, contact me at FranchiseQB.com or on X @QBFranchiseQB and I'll get you connected. Thank you so much, Jimi, for taking the time to get in the huddle to discuss Thrive with us today. Yeah. Thank you, Mike, for having me. You got it. Thank you for listening to the Franchise QB podcast where you're at the helm of your future as a franchise owner. If you enjoyed the content, please rate the show and recommend it to anyone that might be interested in franchising. Make sure to visit FranchiseQB.com to subscribe to my newsletter and for an actionable playbook to go from walk-on to legend in your new business. Follow us on Twitter @QBFranchiseQB and join us every week for a new episode. See you next time. franchiseQB.com to take the next step of your journey towards wealth, independence and franchise ownership. And remember, When working for the man gets old, you must do something bold. Thank you for listening.