Saepio

Marketing Asset Management Case Study: Cartridge World

Cartridge World relies on an online marketing resource portal built with Marketing Asset Management solutions from Saepio Technologies. With this solution, Cartridge World has enhanced control over the branding of all franchisees’ marketing assets while making it easier and more cost effective for franchisees to produce the marketing deliverables they need.

Background

Offering great value to customers and an environmentally friendly alternative to throwing away used cartridges, Cartridge World has developed a business model that is fueling explosive growth. Originally founded in Australia in 1988, Cartridge World has become the world leader in printer cartridge refilling and recycling, with over 1600 stores in 61 countries. Four years after entering the U.S. market, Cartridge World had established 650 stores nationwide—and the number continues to grow.

Challenge

While the number of franchises in North America was expanding rapidly, the corporate marketing team was not. Responsibilities for delivering marketing support to a network of 650 franchisees nationwide fell to a corporate marketing team of three. The marketing team fielded ad hoc requests from franchisees, which was inefficient and time consuming. Ultimately, franchisees bore the responsibility for creating and producing marketing materials, and brand consistency suffered.

Solution

To better ensure brand consistency and staff efficiency, Cartridge World developed an online marketing portal built on Saepio’s Marketing Asset Management solution. Named the Marketing Resource Center (MRC), this online interface enables franchisees to easily access the customizable marketing assets they need. Cartridge World also brought in the Saepio professional services team to manage development of the MRC.

Benefits

With the MRC, Cartridge World franchisees can easily browse available resources, customize them as needed and get them ready for production. The solution makes it easier and more cost effective for franchisees to do marketing, which means each franchisee—and the company as a whole—can be more successful. Plus, the deliverables going out under the Cartridge World brand are now consistent with corporate guidelines.

Setting the Stage for Franchise Success

Cartridge World’s lean marketing team had little time or resources to support the marketing efforts of each of the 650 franchisees, making it very difficult to manage the company’s branding. Working on their own, franchisees often created pieces that were at odds with the company’s branding guidelines. For the franchisee, who often is a small store owner with few internal resources, the process of creating marketing deliverables was time consuming and a distraction from other business responsibilities.

By deploying a marketing resource portal powered by Saepio, Cartridge World has fundamentally changed these dynamics. Further, by relying on the Saepio professional services team, Cartridge World’s marketing staff was able to continue to focus on all their immediate responsibilities while the MRC was being developed, tested, and deployed. Saepio’s staff acted as the project lead by not only managing development, but also coordinating the efforts of internal staff and Cartridge World’s creative agencies.

An Easy to Use, One-Stop Resource

The MRC represents a one-stop resource for all the marketing materials franchisees need, including in-store collateral like banners, brochures, posters, and loyalty cards. In addition, it provides reusable assets for all the core brand elements, such as business cards, stationery, logos, stock photos and more.

“Saepio’s solutions have made the MRC easy to use, which is a key component to its success,” said Sharon Kinkade, Cartridge World’s Director of Marketing. “Our franchise owners come from range of backgrounds, and many have little or no marketing experience. The beauty of the solution is that anyone can use it.”

Because of its ease of use, the MRC is truly a self-service system, one that users can access 24/7. Now, franchisees can easily locate the resources they need, customize them to their specific requirements and get ready for production. Saepio delivers these sophisticated capabilities:

• Digital asset management: users can browse through all images available, and search for those best suited to a specific deliverable.
• Collateral customization: enables users to easily customize deliverables to the needs of specific locales, while core branding elements remain consistent.
• Marketing automation: dramatically streamlines an array of production efforts, for example making it easy to resize an ad to accommodate specific placement requirements.

By offering these robust capabilities, Saepio is helping Cartridge World enjoy the best of both worlds: Empowering franchisees to access and customize everything they need, while at the same time gaining better control over corporate branding.