Silvercrest Advertising has expanded its operation to, include printing and manufacturing by opening their own print shop in Palm Springs, CA. In addition to printing, they have bought specialty products and apparel decoration in house. Making their marketing eco-system complete. Silvercrest expanded into manufacturing it’s own products after nearly a decade of offering a portal that provides access to planning and purchasing all marketing channels at both the local and national level.
Franchising USA spoke to William Rodriguez, Co-Founder of Silvercrest, as well as a Certified Franchise Executive with the International Franchise Association. He explained how Silvercrest brought print media manufacturing in-house to adapt to supply chain disruptions.
“When COVID hit, supply chains became impossible to rely on. That coupled with industry wide paper shortages we predicted we wouldn’t be able to meet the demand of our clients. Because of that, we opened up our own print shop and thought, let’s bring apparel and specialty product decoration in too while we are at it.” said Rodriguez.
Silvercrest has long been the home of LMap. Short for Local Marketing Automation Platform, LMap is a sophisticated yet simple martech platform that allows franchisors to overview their entire marketing landscape and also pinpoint local needs. For franchisees, it provides the knowledge on where media is available for them to use with already negotiated rates and access to creative that is brand compliant. Now Silvercrest offers both strategy and media in a one-stop shop that includes, “Any media, any printed products and any specialty products and apparel,” said Rodriguez.
Bringing franchise marketing together
Rodriguez told Franchising USA why franchises, who may have several stores all over the country, can find that as they grow, their marketing gets complicated and hard to keep working in concert.
“Most Franchise vendor partners focus on one product line or service. This means that nothing is vertically integrated and as such nothing works together. You have one vendor for direct mail, one vendor for digital, one vendor for social, one vendor for e-mail.” Rodriguez observed, “The more a brand spreads across all of these vendors, the more they lose the ability to be cost-effective.”
Rodriguez noted that with fragmentation, “Media works against itself. You aren’t able to create automatic triggers in one media based off the behaviour or the consumer’s interaction with the other.” Since LMap allows franchises to aggregate large amounts of nationwide data, it also offers the simplicity they need to zone in on regional and local strategies Down to the household level.
Now that Silvercrest is providing planning, buying and manufacturing, it has truly become a self-contained marketing eco-system. “We control every aspect of the process from start to finish, allowing us to save time, money and mistakes” said Rodriguez.
Adapting for longevity
The addition of media and physical products is just one more of a series of evolutions that Silvercrest has undergone since Rodriguez founded it with Ryan Gesler in March 2011.
“We started off as an advertising agency,” said Rodriguez. “Then we realized the industry needed technology.” The company stays flexible and keeps up-to-date with the needs of the market and its clients, so that, “When we couldn’t find what we thought would be needed for our clients, we built our own.”
Willingness to adapt and grow has kept Silvercrest strong over the last twelve years. In addition to its corporate office in Palm Springs, the company now has employees and coverage in six different states. “We help all kinds of businesses from large corporations to the traditional mom and pop and everything inbetween with local, regional and national marketing.”
A future with franchises
Looking forward, Silvercrest’s aim is to help more franchises stay on top of their local and nationwide marketing. “Our services have really been tailored to assist franchisors and their franchisees,” said Rodriguez.
Silvercrest specializes in the unique needs franchises have, compared to other types of business. “Franchising is a special beast when it comes to marketing,” said Rodriguez. “It’s a decentralized decision making tree in most cases, and you need to aggregate the behavior and roll it up to a national level for the franchisor to effectively see and manage what is going on locally across the system.” So Silvercrest aims to meet that need for unity from the store level up to the brand. Rodriguez described it, “We focus on a local level nationwide.”
Helping franchises understand and communicate with every location is why it’s so important for Silvercrest’s suite of services to be complete. “For the franchisor we help provide marketing assets and access to marketing and media channels on a consistent local level. That helps maintain brand integrity and brand consistency,” said Rodriguez.
While Silvercrest offers vital insights to franchisors, it’s a massive time saver for franchisees. Rodriguez said, “We give franchisees a portal where they can access everything from business cards to direct mail, Facebook ads to e-mail marketing. Getting everything from one place without having to go to multiple platforms helps them become more efficient and brand compliant quickly.” Most importantly, “It lets them to get back to running their business.”
Now that Silvercrest has added manufacturing to its offerings, it has everything franchises need, “To bring effective media and marketing solutions to brands when they need it where they need it on a local level,” as Rodriguez described it.
It’s just one more way for franchisors to, “Help their franchisees get access to the media and marketing assets they need but provide flexibility in customization on a local level.”
To learn more about how Silvercrest can help you reach out!
