In the realm of distributed marketing, ensuring your brand's message remains consistent across different regions and channels can be like conducting a...

What is a Marketing Asset Portal? You’ve made the investment, uploaded your assets, and onboarded your users. Now what? A marketing asset portal is a ...

In-house creative operations are becoming increasingly popular in today's business landscape and there are plenty of good reasons why. In this article...

Most franchisees sign on with you because they believe in the power of your brand concept—and are aiming to build a strong business with its support. ...

Brand marketers at multi-location brands have long relied on marketing software to manage distributed marketing efforts. While early solutions require...

Are you interested in investing in a franchise brand management solution? Even though we sell a SaaS brand management tool, we aren't blind to the pro...

For distributed brands, one of the biggest opportunities and threats to business growth is delivering a consistent customer experience across franchis...

For bank relationship managers, the annual review of a corporate banking relationship can feel like a time-consuming and often thankless chore. But if...

If I had to name one type of job that has a tendency to get on the nerves of studio professionals, I’d put my money on the last minute advertising res...

You’ve heard the hype—and the horror stories. Now it’s time to get to work using AI features in your local marketing system to save your brand team pr...

When you're supporting a large community of local marketers, approval workflow processes can be a critical brand management tool. They can also be the...

New York, NY – October 1, 2024 – Pica9, an industry leader in local marketing automation, is proud to announce that its flagship platform, CampaignDri...

If you’ve ever worked in the Support Center for a multi-unit restaurant brand, then you’re familiar with the perennial challenge of building localized...

In today's market of globalization and eCommerce, customers are used to getting what they want when they want it. Brands all around the world have cau...

Whether you're a team member of a marketing department, an in-house agency, or a marketing services agency, your primary goal is to establish a durabl...

Brand consistency is the bedrock of any successful marketing strategy, particularly for businesses managing multiple locations or franchises. The chal...

Automation has become an indispensable tool for franchise businesses hoping to streamline operations and charge up their local marketing efforts. As l...

Technology analysts have predicted that artificial intelligence (AI) will transform pretty much every domain of human activity.

It can feel almost impossible to achieve brand consistency across multiple franchise locations, especially if your franchise network is large. As comp...

The most successful brand managers invest heavily in software, systems, and procedures to guarantee digital marketing compliance. As you know, marketi...

Marketing is never easy, but franchise marketers in particular are plagued by a unique challenge. How can corporate headquarters maintain brand consis...

Maintaining a consistent and strong brand identity across various channels and locations for many distributed brands can become a significant challeng...

Today's brand managers are expected to move quickly, approve a high velocity of content, and drive results. However, your team's success isn't only ju...

Adobe InDesign has long been the industry standard for designing print and digital content, offering powerful tools for layout and typography. However...

New York, NY - June 25, 2024 – Pica9, a leading provider of local marketing automation solutions, is thrilled to announce that it has been awarded the...

Every marketer knows the importance of audience targeting. To relate to your customer's needs and experiences, your brand needs to be able to speak to...

As a franchise marketer, you know how frustrating it is to invest time and effort in building out a whole library of brand assets and guidelines only ...

The positive perception of a brand is priceless. Thanks to investments made in improving the customer experience, multi-location organizations — like ...

A brand compliance system enables designers to focus less on administrative tasks and more on their actual job description. The job of a design team c...

In an effort to market to better to millennials, Capital One launched a string of banking cafes. Anyone, regardless of bank affiliation, can grab a se...

Running a franchise business is an exhilarating journey—yet, it can also be a demanding and hectic endeavor. Managing just one location requires balan...

There are very few owners who would say "no" to an extra set of hands to help out with the many tasks involved in running a franchise's marketing outf...

If you've ever been to Sedona, Arizona, you've probably noticed that something's a little off about their McDonald's. Those iconic golden arches we al...

As franchises strive to uphold a cohesive brand image while accommodating local preferences, the demand for advanced franchise marketing software has ...

In the dynamic landscape of modern business, one thing remains constant: change. As organizations evolve, so do their strategies for creative output. ...

When you think about coffee, Starbucks probably comes to mind. Similarly, spend too much time thinking about doughnuts and you'll be search for the cl...

Introduction In the fast-paced world of banking marketing and sales, speed to market is crucial for targeting high-net-worth prospects and retaining c...

When your brand's digital assets are poorly managed, wasted time, money, and effort can put a serious strain on any marketing team's budget. Unfortuna...

What is Local Franchise Marketing? Local Franchise Marketing is the set of disciplines and tactics that franchise brand managers and their in-house cr...

What is Brand-to-Local Marketing? Brand-to-local marketing is an emerging discipline in multi-location enterprises, in which brand-approved marketing ...

Franchise brands encounter a distinct challenge in content production, as each franchisee has specific marketing requirements and local expectations t...

Major franchises including Dunkin' Donuts, 7-Eleven and Supercuts still reign as some of the world's fastest-growing franchises. How did they get ther...

Personalization in marketing leads to an average sales lift of 19 percent. As brands work to create customized digital customer experiences, there’s a...

You've probably heard that print is dead. But is it really, truly dead? Not at all. True, it may not be the best idea to quit your job as a brand mana...

In an increasingly digital world, print marketing is still popular. Brands haven't forgotten about the power of print to engage and excite their consu...

Veterans in advertising and marketing have long said that the only thing harder than building a great brand is maintaining it. Every day, in countless...

Maintaining a consistent brand image while enabling local marketing efforts can be a challenging tightrope walk. Many brands face the dilemma of ensur...

As a franchise grows and expands, it’s natural to expect that new marketing challenges will arise. Everyone wants to benefit from the success of a wel...

Is your brand ready to introduce localized landing pages into your marketing mix? Creating landing pages for every branch or store can be intimidating...

In the realm of marketing materials, there are different types of templates: dumb, dumber, and smart. While dumb templates are overly restrictive and ...

From content management to brand consistency, there are several pain points that could be addressed with a Digital Asset Management system.

As consumers rapidly shift to mobile and digital channels, competition in search engines and social media is growing at an even faster pace. This surg...

“You can’t undermine your values or standards in the name of growth,” states Heather Neary, President of Auntie Anne’s in an interview with Entreprene...

[New York City, 6/26/23] – Pica9, a leading provider of local marketing automation and digital asset management solutions, is pleased to announce the ...

In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, it's not uncommon for Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems to become outdated or present challenges d...

[New York City, 6/8/2023] – Pica9, a leading provider of local marketing solutions, is thrilled to announce its achievement in the G2 Summer Reports f...

As designers and brand marketers, the importance of brand consistency is drummed into us as an article of faith.

With somewhere between 190,000 and 400,000 hotels around the world, it goes without saying that the hotel business is one of the most competitive indu...

Nothing warms a brand manager’s heart more than hearing stories from their customers about distributed brand consistency. One loyal fan of a national ...

For the world's largest distributed brands, developing a solid organizational infrastructure provides the clarity, insight, and direction needed to id...

A modular approach to content creation and delivery takes the best of your existing content and repurposes it in ways that make it easier for your tar...

Many of the world’s most successful organizations have unlocked the secret of scaling up. Franchises like McDonald’s, 7-11, and The UPS Store have fig...

For companies with multiple locations, it can be quite difficult to prove the ROI from local marketing campaigns. Very often marketers know that thing...

It’s no secret that the universe of marketing technology options has exploded in the past decade, making it difficult for teams to sort through the op...

[New York City, 2/13/2023] – Pica9 is excited to announce that it has achieved SOC 2 compliance. This certification attests to the company’s commitmen...

As a brand manager for a franchise brand, your job is to ensure a consistent customer experience across all of your locations. Your customers expect t...

As local affiliates focus on the day-to-day operations of their respective locations, corporate marketing teams are tasked with building, implementing...

Local marketing is an invaluable strategy that drives conversions, increases revenue, and improves the customer experience. To maximize the effectiven...

Mention the term “marketing collateral” to most people, and the image that comes to mind is of a printed brochure. Multiple pages. Sophisticated desig...

According to the brand experience and advertising experts at VMLY&R, brand equity is built on four pillars: Brand Differentiation Brand Relevance ...

We may be living in the digital age, but print marketing campaigns still have power. While digital advertising is an effective tool for discovery and ...

There comes a time in every designer’s life when a request for an “update” a “tweak” or a “version” of an existing design—whether it's a flyer, a prin...

As brands adopt more methods of marketing, their digital collateral is expanding at a rapid rate. If your organization is “average,” the amount of dig...

L.L. Bean unveiled an "invisible" newspaper advertisement. Like magic, the text revealed itself when viewed in the sunlight. "Welcome to the outside,"...

Trying to manage a multi-located brand comes with a few unique challenges. From supporting local affiliates and representatives to creating repeatable...

Local marketing chaos is a condition where field-based marketers are either executing in a less than fully disciplined way or they've come to rely exc...

Today's consumers expect a lot from a brand's marketing. McKinsey research calls today's climate the "on-demand" era and states that customers expect ...

According to a study published by Borrell Associates, co-op marketing's popularity among enterprise organizations and local franchisees is growing. Bu...

The digital asset management market is growing at a rate of 18.4% each year. It’s steadily becoming one of the most important resources for businesses...

Today, Digital Asset or Brand-Asset Management systems come in all shapes and sizes—from free file-sharing tools to multi-million dollar software suit...

If your multi-location brand works with regional marketing teams, you know that effective campaign orchestration requires complete alignment between c...

Does brand consistency in the distributed environment really matter?

Join Emily George, Senior Client Coordinator of Franchise Business Review, in "The Creative Operations Podcast", as she shares her experience in the e...

In The Creative Operations Podcast, Kevin Groome speaks with Michele Whaley, a long time expert in local franchise marketing with experience in restau...

Digital Asset Management is in the middle of a renaissance, as more and more companies recognize that DAM lies at the heart of creative operations. Th...

The Creative Operations Podcast: Episode 1 - Get To Know Your Host

Local marketing chaos is a condition that arises in multi-location businesses when local marketers (franchisees, resellers, dealers, etc.) stray from ...

Did you know that, with better tools for accessing design files, some Fortune 500 brands estimate they could save up to $2 million a month? The "cost ...

How distributed brands can raise brand awareness, sales, and brand advocacy using an effective local store marketing strategy.

In-house agencies, moving marketing operations internally are expanding their capabilities— and there's plenty of good reasons why. A survey of 400 ma...

Since 1950, Dunkin' Donuts has grown to be one of the largest coffee shop franchises in the world. With more than 12,000 restaurants in 36 countries, ...

As your franchise brand grows, the weight of work on your corporate marketing team significantly increases. If you are attempting to manage your marke...

Just as a drone can deliver a package in pristine condition, a brand-to-local marketing portal can deliver brand marketing assets to local marketers w...

One of the first industries to grace our doorstep here at Pica9 was insurance (property, casualty, life, and health all). It didn't take us long to un...

Having worked with a range of healthcare systems—from 400 to 40,000 healthcare practitioners—we’ve identified a few “must-have” marketing support mech...

According to expert estimates, close to 75% of hotel demand is driven by online activity. For decades now, leading hotel companies like Marriott Inter...

With a library of more than 2,000 menu items, The Melting Pot needed to empower their 132 locations to assemble menus that were on-brand, and filled w...

One of Pica9's oldest customers (no pun intended) is a leader in the senior-living and assisted-living categories. Over the years, we learned a lot ab...

Back in 2008, as the world was heading into the financial meltdown, we began working with a leading wealth management firm to help streamline local ma...

If a picture speaks a thousand words, the font you choose is worth millions. Or it could cost you that if you end up choosing a font that you don’t ha...

The pandemic has cast a whole new light on the importance of regional marketing, as we see communities opening up or locking down on their own unique ...

If you’re involved with content creation, you’ve probably already heard the rising chorus of enthusiasm for modular content—that is, small content com...

If there's any franchise business that can't afford inconsistency, it's a hair salon. While brand consistency is the cornerstone of customer loyalty f...

With customer journeys becoming more self-directed than ever before, the importance of marketing collateral—once seen as a handmaiden to the flashier ...

Our post on barriers to brand-to-local success generated a lot of discussion in the CampaignDrive admin community. I heard from designers who talked a...

Digital asset management (DAM) tools help streamline and speed up content production for marketers, designers, and local affiliates.

Brand compliance systems help businesses maintain and monitor distributed visual assets across tens, hundreds, or even thousands of franchises. These ...

Building consistent and powerful branding should be a priority for both small and large businesses alike. In fact, there are seemingly endless benefit...

In my role as Chief Evangelist for Pica9, I encounter hundreds of companies every year that are intent on improving their brand-to-local support and e...

Want to learn the secrets of how successful brand managers strike a balance of control & flexibility with marketing collateral templates for local...

So often, it can be painfully difficult to see eye-to-eye with your local marketing partners. The only thing they seem to care about is how fast they ...

As a brand manager, it can sometimes be hard to appreciate great marketing for what it is. You know first-hand the amount of approvals, coordination, ...

Template installation is a crucial step in the local marketing automation process.

When you think of coffee shops with a global presence, Starbucks probably comes to mind. While there's not a green mermaid on every corner quite yet, ...

If a world-renowned expert in astronomy were to make a prediction about our celestial future, there's a good chance that this expert would be wrong.

From franchise owners to dealers, the success of your brand lies in the hands of your local marketers.

I recently sat in on a beta-user training session with a Pica9 customer in the banking industry, to see how their power users responded to the launch ...

Have you ever seen an example of great local marketing done by a franchise brand?

By now, most people are familiar with the definition of digital asset management and have a basic sense of the history of this category of software. T...

A practical, effective marketing workflow is vital to the success of a franchise. Marketing can help you reach new customers, engage existing customer...

For distributed brand managers, these creative "assets" make you laugh – when they're not your brand – and make you cry when one of your local outlets...

Brand integrity is founded on the consistency of the brand through several different touch points, including marketing, public relations, and formal c...

Print advertising isn’t going anywhere soon, especially not for restauranteurs. For the $799 billion restaurant industry, print marketing collateral p...

Are you a brand manager at a multi-located restaurant franchise? Here are the top restaurant marketing tools you should invest in!

For more than a decade now, the “in-sourcing” trend in marketing and advertising has been gathering impressive steam. Clients both major and minor, ac...

Having spent almost two decades working with great companies on big, marketing-oriented DAMs, I’ve had the chance to see great brand-management system...

Cloud-based digital asset management provides companies with a secure and easy way to manage assets online. For businesses with multiple locations, di...

DAM Vendors and consultants have long emphasized the need to monitor DAM usage closely. But when I began searching for data on specific benchmarks tha...

Over the past two decades, we've studied DAM usage across more than 250,000 businesses, from mom and pop retailers and franchisees, to the in-house ag...

In the past decade, digital and print marketing has experienced many new and exciting innovations. From the rise of social media to artificial intelli...

Does co-branding really work?

What's the difference between brand recognition vs. brand awareness? It's a question that we get all the time and the answer might actually surprise y...

What is omnichannel marketing? You've heard the phrase before, right?

It all comes down to marketing consistency. The problem is that activating consistent marketing is easier said than done. And when you're trying to ma...

What do the most successful financial institutions do to drive increased brand awareness, brand equity, customer loyalty, and revenue? It's actually q...

This year, the most successful multi-location brands will look for opportunities to maximize the customer experience. The fact is, in the increasingly...

For many distributed brands, print marketing is still one of the most effective marketing channels out there. In fact, according to recent reports, pr...

At the start of every year, it's always a good idea to review your franchise management tech stack. According to studies, U.S. companies waste an aver...

The U.S. travel industry is one of the fastest-growing markets in the world.

For any corporate marketing team, improving the customer experience (CX) is a top priority in 2018. In fact, eConsultancy called CX the "most exciting...

Today, corporate brand managers face an incredible challenge.

Four Ways To Manage Small User Communities in Minutes Per Month.

Creating effective field marketing initiatives can be a complicated process. At the local level, it is important to align messaging and branding with ...

Three tips for getting in front of your local customers

Is your business experiencing rapid growth and struggling to keep up with local franchise locations? If you answered yes, keep reading to learn how th...

Today, the U.S. accounts for 53.2% of the global stock market. The U.S. market may be the largest, but it certainly isn't the only contender. As the d...

Leading brands use CampaignDrive By Pica9

DAM Vendors and consultants have long emphasized the need to monitor DAM usage closely. But when I began searching for data on specific benchmarks tha...

Conducting a brand audit is an essential task in maintaining the health of your brand equity. Marketers that invest the time to take a closer look at ...

Trying to initiate high-value marketing in the distributed environment comes with a few unique challenges. When it comes to digital marketing complian...

A great customer experience drives increased revenue for multi-located brands.

If you’ve ever felt like your local marketing tools are an absolutely perfect fit for your brand, you’re in a very small (lucky) minority. The vast ma...

Is your distributed organization buried under a mountain of creative files?

The U.S. travel industry is one of the fastest-growing markets in the world. Only the best hotel brands with exceptional local marketing are able to k...

For an advertisement that didn't say much and hardly made any actual noise, Burger King's television spot generated a ton of buzz during Super Bowl LI...

As a brand manager, you face an enormous amount of pressure. A recent study found that brand management keeps over 25% of business executives up at ni...

As you know, brand equity is the value of customers' perceptions of your brand. Unfortunately, negative brand equity can mean misalignment between you...

This year, more than 1,000 internationally recognized enterprises applied for Entrepreneur's Franchise 500. Forty years after the very first Franchise...

Helping your local franchisees market themselves effectively has always been an enormous challenge—and it’s getting more complex every day. After all,...

The most successful multinational banks make the same mistakes over and over.

Test automation is a means of testing software, by using software other than the software being tested, to automate repetitive tasks in a formalized p...

Have your local marketers gone rogue?

Enterprise marketing management (EMM) is an incredibly important and highly visible business function: one whose effects can be felt throughout the en...

With the rise of CRM systems and Big Data, the promise of AI is dominating marketing discussions these days. But the backlash against the excessive or...

How can large finance brands attract and retain more customers this year?

Franchise marketing systems are becoming more important to corporations with multiple locations. Franchise marketing has traditionally been a corporat...

It's no secret that the popularity of newspapers and magazines is on a steep decline. And while this may seem like the death of print marketing, it's ...

Are you ready to scale your multi-located enterprise just like the world's most successful businesses including Marriott, Polaris, The Melting Pot, an...

In order to design software, developers must first understand the task at hand (the business need), break the task down into its component parts, and ...

So, you purchased a new marketing resource management solution. Now what?

For distributed marketing managers struggling to balance reporting, oversight, and creative delivery, marketing resource management (MRM) software can...

Why does brand consistency matter? The most successful multi-located brands know that brand consistency means everything. In fact, recent reports indi...

If there's one thing your brand marketing team and all of your local marketers can agree on, it's the idea that your technology should be flexible. Us...

Brand managers for distributed enterprise brands are in charge of marketing initiatives that may reach thousands or even millions of consumers. Enterp...

As brand managers or marketers working at headquarters, deploying marketing campaigns to local users comes with a few inherent risks. Unfortunately, a...

To maximize marketplace competitiveness, the most successful multi-located brands are producing more creative and marketing assets than ever before. N...

In the late 1980s, brand equity emerged as a topic of discussion among industry-leading, multi-located enterprises. In most instances, brands with pos...

As a distributed brand manager, you know that print marketing isn’t going anywhere. From direct mail pieces to in-store signage, research continues to...

Have you considered investing in a cloud digital asset management system for your multi-located brand? More than 70% of businesses and organizations u...

Is marketing and creative misalignment plaguing your multi-located brand? For any enterprise brand, driving local brand compliance is an integral comp...

Are you proud of your brand? In recent years, an increasing number of distributed brands have prioritized marketing activities that bolster brand equi...

You just invested in a distributed marketing automation tool – now what? What do you need to know right now to escalate the creative potential of the ...

How often has your brand management team poured heart, soul, and budget into a campaign that your local affiliates don't care about? Watching marketin...

Remember that time a major toothpaste brand decided to branch out into manufacturing frozen dinners? While it’s a little-known marketing mistake from ...

How IHOP Quadrupled Burger Sales and Updated Their Brand Image With Creative Campaigns

Tips to help graphic designers avoid copyright infringement with real-life examples.

How Chipotle turned around a brand reputation that was negatively impacted by food poisoning outbreaks through consistent marketing campaigns focused ...

What do logos and legal copy have it common? Both elements are the cornerstones of any piece of marketing collateral. If local affiliates misuse eithe...

Quality assurance expert Vontz Benoit explores how effective communication along with a quality product can increase customer loyalty for SaaS compani...

For large enterprises and organizations, brand management and brand image is among the top priorities. The brand is everywhere, from the website, land...

The Shim Solution: How I Integrated An External Digital Asset Management System

As a brand manager, you're tasked with one of the toughest marketing challenges, and likely, even your boss agrees. One 2016 American Marketing Associ...

Evolving Technologies and Changing Marketing Behaviors Are Turning Old Content Into New Marketing Collateral.