The lineup includes six Keynote speakers as well as innovation forums and breakout presentations. With almost 700 attendees already registered, the conference is sure to foster engaging conversation about a wide variety of industry topics. For more information about this year’s program, click here.
Throughout the month, right here on our blog, we’ll give you a sneak peek into the conference themes, welcoming special contributors and featuring panelist and attendee interviews. After the conference, I encourage you to check back in to see our response to the topics presented. I invite you to engage in the pre- and post-show conversations through the comments section below every blog post.
If you’ll be attending, look for us in Culture Keepers Hall West, Booth 126, on Monday evening at the sponsor fair and throughout the conference. In the next few weeks, keep an eye out for an email and a direct mail piece with details about a special promotion we’ll be giving away during the event.
I’m excited to announce that we’re now providing our full spectrum of services to The Krystal Company, the oldest quick service restaurant in the South, and a cultural icon. Krystal is known for its innovative menu, small, square hamburgers, late-night hours and made-to-order breakfasts.
Krystal chose us to handle their marketing execution in order to ensure efficiency and accuracy in the delivery of the appropriate POP to each one of their restaurants. Their primary goals were to streamline their POP execution process, service individual location preferences, and provide a seamless process for their restaurant operators.
We’re looking forward to meeting Krystal’s needs by offering them superior customer support, sharing our innovative practices, and lending our knowledge and experience in the QSR industry.
Two years ago, we began an annual tradition of awarding special recognition to members of our sales organization who demonstrated exceptional effort and commitment to Synq Solutions. These individuals go well beyond what is expected of them—key components of the award include effort, creativity, commitment, knowledge and confidence in the pursuit of bringing in new business to Synq Solutions, or securing existing company business. Our success as a business relies on our people and the effort they put forth everyday. This award distinguishes individuals that consistently went above and beyond throughout the calendar year.
The award is titled “The Shovel Award – An Award for Effort”, and includes the following transcription:
- For taking the initiative to create opportunity
- For being persistent in pursuit of opportunity
- For demonstrating knowledge of the solution
- For demonstrating confidence and commitment to that solution
- For determination to make a difficult situation successful
Our sales team members submit nominations for this award. This year, we expanded the award and gave recognition to two individuals – one in the sales organization and one in any other department that supported our company goals this year. The winners of the award receive a plaque and recognition at our annual sales kickoff meeting. The 2nd winner is also invited to attend and participate in our kickoff meeting held each January in Las Vegas.
Four finalists emerged from our nominations this year. Selecting two winners was an extremely difficult decision—each candidate was very deserving in their own right.
The nominees included:
Doug Fergusson
Cristi Mege
Debbie Blake
James Hughes
Without further adieu, the two winners of this year’s Shovel Award for effort go to Doug Fergusson and Debbie Blake. We congratulate them and the other two finalists for their loyalty and contributions to Synq Solutions in 2010. Debbie and Doug both received plaques, and Debbie was invited to attend the kickoff in Las Vegas. We have also awarded $100 gift cards to Cristi and James.
We want to extend thanks and recognition to all of our nominees for their remarkable efforts in 2010!
Last week we enjoyed our much-anticipated yearly holiday brunch at Synq Solutions. Each year, our executive team comes together– aprons in hand– and we serve brunch to all of the Synq employees. The event is always a great time– it gives us the opportunity to show our employees how much they’re appreciated, and everyone has a chance to slow down and enjoy each other’s company.
This years’ festivities included holiday trivia and raffle prizes. We’ve created a slideshow for you to view featuring several photos from the event:
From everyone at Synq Solutions: we wish all of you a safe and happy holiday!
Doug Fergusson, our EVP of Solutions, recently returned from Beijing, where he attended the International Printers’ Network (IPN) fall meeting. The IPN is the world’s foremost global alliance of leading edge companies in the printing, visual communications, and graphic arts industry. The meeting focused on industry trends, new product development, and future strategies.
Be sure to view the video below and listen to Doug share highlights from his experience:
I’d like to commend Doug for his excellent “Outside Insights” article, The Franchisee’s Frustration, published last week on QSRmagazine.com. He gives a thorough overview of the local marketing obstacles many franchisees face, as well as the key elements to overcoming these pain points. Here’s an excerpt from the piece:
One of the greatest franchisee frustrations centers on local marketing and the struggle to obtain marketing materials targeted to their particular location and demographics. Too often, operators are provided with little or no local marketing support—when they are, the options they receive are ineffective. The issue is driven by the lack of attention that local marketing receives as a part of the overall marketing plan of the brand. > Click here to read the full article.
I’d like to issue a reminder to all of you about the webinar we’re sponsoring tomorrow along with QSR Magazine. As of today, we have over 650 registrants, which is a strong testament to the fact that Local Marketing is a topic quite worthy of attention and conversation.
The webinar begins at 2pm EST tomorrow (6/24/10), and you can still register here. Be sure to submit any questions or topics you’d like to hear our panel cover when you register. Additionally, don’t miss our live Twitter stream coverage of the event by following the hashtag #synqwbnr on our Synq Solutions Twitter page.
After the webinar, we’ll post a summary of the event on our blog along with the live Twitter stream transcript.
Please let me know if you have any questions about the event– we look forward to your participation tomorrow!
June is an exciting month for Synq Solutions as we partner with QSR Magazine to host a webinar regarding the successful execution of Local Marketing campaigns. The webinar takes place on June 24th, 2010 from 2-3 p.m. ET, and will feature Brad Haley of CKE Restaurants, Inc. and Doug Fergusson of Synq Solutions.
In the past, many companies have been slow to adopt local marketing: however, CKE is a prime example of a brand that has successfully integrated local marketing into its overall marketing strategy, while maintaining its identity across multiple brands.
A little background on Brad Haley: Brad has been the Executive Vice President of Marketing for Hardee’s since September of 2000 and took on the additional role of marketing for Carl’s Jr. in 2004. His responsibilities include brand positioning, advertising, product development, merchandising, sales analysis, marketing research, publicity, pricing and promotions.
Our webinar is a prime opportunity for you to submit questions related to Local Marketing execution. With two weeks still remaining before the event, we have nearly 500 registrants and hope that you are one of them.
This month we’ll also highlight our recent whitepaper on Local Marketing, discuss innovations in our profiling services, and post follow-up coverage of the webinar.
If you haven’t had an opportunity to do so, you can register for our ‘How To Execute a Local Marketing Campaign’ webinar here.
If you’ve ever considered local marketing for your brand or wondered how to better leverage the LRM campaigns you are doing, you won’t want to miss our free webinar: How to Execute a Successful Local Marketing Campaign. Registration is now open at qsrmagazine.com/webinars.
Sponsored by Synq and QSR magazine, this webinar will feature Brad Haley, EVP, Marketing CKE Restaurants, Inc. (Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s) and Synq’s Doug Fergusson, EVP, Solutions. Brad has successfully deployed Local Marketing tactics to enable his brands to compete more effectively in this very competitive marketplace, while maintaining CKE’s brand standards and messaging guidelines. He’ll reveal best practices, challenges and solutions. Doug will add his experiences working with multiple brands and explain how technology helps streamline this process and makes it easier than ever to execute.
We hope you’ll join us on Thursday, June 24 at 2 – 3 p.m. EDT for what’s sure to be an informative and engaging event! And if you have questions or topics you’d like our panelists to address, let us know by commenting on our blog.
For the month of April, we’re dedicating our topics of discussion to Restaurant and Retail Industry Trends.
To combat economic challenges, restaurants and retailers have created innovative ways of reaching customers. Some brands are honing in on shopper experience, while others concentrate on price reductions, health conscious consumers, local marketing and eye-catching promotions. We’ll cover these points and discuss the unique challenges of getting great marketing ideas from concept to in-store delivery in the most efficient and cost-effective manner. Last, we’ll touch on sustainability in print to commemorate Earth Day on April 22.
As always, we encourage you to share your thoughts and opinions through commentary.
It occurred to me that my previous posts on the subject of Local Marketing have been directed at the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of local marketing, but really didn’t address the ‘why.’ It is easy to assume that most people appreciate the value of local marketing; however, I think in reality many are far less certain.
Most local marketing activities are initiated by individual store managers or franchisees on trial and error basis to increase revenue during slow periods or increase loyalty with the local consumer. Their methods are often not ideal, and their means to measure results are limited; however, when they find something that works for them, they stick with it.
I see the rationale for local marketing falling into several distinct categories:
Coverage: Some local marketing approaches provide an added medium for communicating with customers that aren’t covered by national campaigns (i.e. flyers handed out to local businesses or schools)
Conditions:Local marketing provides a means to speak to specific market conditions (i.e. competitor is offering a special across the street, local high school makes the playoffs, etc.)
Community:Local marketing enables store managers to customize the store experience to match the interest and tastes of local customers. (i.e. Spanish signage in heavily Hispanic areas, etc.)
While the first two reasons tend to be the primary drivers for campaigns, I am beginning to believe that the third may be the most important. Changing consumer interests, fed by social media trends, are leading buyers to expect a more personalized experience at the retail locations they frequent. These ‘New Consumers’ are favoring locations that have a buzz; how you create and maintain the buzz is the challenge.
In my next post, I will share ideas that I have collected about New Consumers. While much of this information offered by ‘experts’ is speculative, it does raise some interesting possibilities. And now, I’d love to hear from you—what are your thoughts on the ‘whys’ of local marketing?
I’m proud to say that we’ve partnered with CKE brands for more than ten years now as their in-store marketing execution provider. What’s great about this partnership is that it truly illustrates the power of a one-stop shop approach for printing, fulfillment, shipping and technology solutions to reduce costs and increase efficiencies. We’ve published a two-part case study on CKE brands titled “Synq Solutions Provides Series of Innovative Solutions to Hardee’s® and other CKE brands”. The study focuses on Hardees in particular, and reveals how ‘intelligent profiling’ enabled them to reduce their inventory costs by 18%. We hope that our study provides you with some insight as to how your business can execute its marketing campaigns more efficiently.
As always, we invite you to post comments or questions and share your thoughts on the subject.
If you liked this post, you may want to take a look at Doug’s blog post on Local Marketing Profiling.
This month, Synq is focusing on Local Marketing. We believe it’s a topic that is more relevant than ever. Given current economic conditions, local operators have expressed the urgent need to market directly to their customers’ unique preferences and react to local opportunities. If you’re wondering how Local Marketing can be leveraged for your business, be sure to read Doug Fergusson’s blog series on local marketing. He covers everything from “What is Local Marketing?” to how campaigns should be executed. Our guest blogger, marketing consultant and QSR magazine contributor, Roy Bergold, argues in his post that local marketing should be a part of every national marketing campaign. Later this month, we’ll be publishing a white paper on the tools needed for a successful Local Marketing campaign.
With a new year well under way, it is the perfect time to reflect on what was a remarkable 2009 and look forward to an even better 2010.
Last year was proof that the marketing execution needs of the QSR, fast casual and retail market place are unique. Some of these requirements might seem simple on the surface, but if you put them all together and then spread them across your entire system, things can get pretty complicated. That’s where we come in. You’ve got multiple menu board systems and sizes – no problem! You’ve got varying price points by market, by franchisee, even by individual location – been there, done that! You’ve got caloric disclosure requirements varying by jurisdiction – Synq’s got you covered. You’ve got all of the above, plus you’re changing your menu, rolling out a complete new pricing structure and you want it changed out overnight – BRING IT ON!
We are also champions of Local Marketing, and we will help you take it from the concept hatched at your agency or in your board room to a completely integrated campaign at your locations. Let us work with you to apply the best practices that can only come from someone focused on this market. At Synq, we eat, breathe and sleep this stuff.
That is why in 2009 we were able to add 7 new major QSR, retail and fast casual brands representing over 12,000 individual locations to our already impressive list of customers. We are extremely flattered and humbled by the trust they have shown in us, and we will serve them with the same dedication as we do all of the 50,000 plus locations we currently serve.
In 2010 we will continue to be your industry partner, focusing on the issues that matter most to you. Beyond print, fulfillment and technology, we will focus on innovative solutions for the QSR, fast casual and retail markets that make your job easier, save time and reduce costs.
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