LaMar's Donuts

The hole story on brand-powered public relations

With quick-service restaurant franchisees operating in six states and three time zones, how do you get everyone delivering the same brand message and identity?

This becomes more important when a system-wide PR program promotes franchisees to their own hometown media for news coverage.

For LaMar's Donuts, Vanguard developed a series of print and radio ads for use in co-op advertising programs. Additionally, in contrast to typical franchisor habits, LaMar's encourages franchisees to engage in PR in each market as part of robust guerilla marketing.

As part of the formula, Vanguard crafted a new, more upscale brand palette for LaMar's, one meant to reposition the brand as an elegant gourmet donut.

Despite a 4.3 percent drop in donut sales nationally, LaMar's sales increased 15.4 percent in one year.

Encouraged, motivated and now media trained, franchisees not only facilitate more community awareness of LaMar's; they've also innovated unique promotions that generate more word of mouth by putting LaMar's products in more mouths.

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