Brittany Graff got her exposure to the franchise space early — as an intern as her first job out of college, in fact — and 15 years later is helping shape the future of one of the top names in the “DIY” franchise category.
Currently Co-CEO of Painting with a Twist, Brittany has spent the past six years leading marketing for both Painting with a Twist and recently-acquired Pinot’s Palette with her “small but mighty” team of four. Under her leadership, Painting with a Twist has been named the No. 1 DIY/Paint-&-Sip Studio in Entrepreneur magazine two years in a row — and found new ways to get local franchisees engaged in marketing execution to get the word out there.
She has driven impressive returns on ad spend (19-21:1 ROAS in one campaign) and major increases in franchisee engagement in marketing campaigns through a deep focus on franchisee collaboration. Her franchisee-first mindset is more than a talking point: It’s a tested philosophy that has helped achieve real results.
In our interview, we dive into how she builds trust across her system, systems that have driven improved marketing execution from her franchisees, and specific marketing tactics that have helped her brands succeed.
What do you see as one of your most exciting achievements as a franchise marketer?
Our franchisees at Painting with a Twist had been asking since even before I joined the company for us to do a national TV commercial, but our national advertising budget just could never support that type of initiative.
Then I started researching “connected TV,” which is basically running commercials on the apps of cable networks on smart TVs and other devices. It seemed like a way to get our franchisees what they want in a trackable, targeted way.
So we launched our first ever national CTV commercial in late 2022, and it's given us the ability to advertise our brand on a completely different medium than we've ever used before. And it was wildly successful: We had a goal of a 4:1 return on ad spend (ROAS), and we’re consistently at a 19-21:1 ROAS.
We have so much variety across our locations — different event types, different demographics — so trying to produce a video that captures everything without being too specific was a challenge. We worked with our team and our franchisees on developing content that we felt best represented the majority of the system.
Painting with a Twist’s successful CTV ad: Sip. Socialize. Create!
"It was wildly successful. We had a goal of a 4:1 return on ad spend (ROAS), and we’re consistently at a 19-21:1 ROAS."
How do you collaborate with franchises to make marketing campaigns they’re excited to execute?
The number one goal in our department is to make marketing easy. We've had times where we thought we were providing what our franchisees needed to execute, but we were missing the mark until we really got to the root of the pain point. And it was pretty simple, we just needed to ask them.
One of my very first projects when I came on in 2019 was switching to ActiveCampaign. We got the system up and running, and the adoption was very slow. So we asked ourselves: What can we do to make it better? We decided to provide a library of branded templates for our franchisees to choose from and customize. Still nothing. Next, we tried giving them weekly templates where all they had to do was change the copy and link it to their site. It still didn’t happen.
Finally, we set up our first franchise task force and asked a group of our franchisees: What can we do to get franchisees to send weekly emails? What’s the roadblock? And their response, unanimously, was that it takes them one to two hours to write the copy for the emails because they are not marketers.
I thought, oh, is that all? So we kept the weekly templates, but delivered them fully completed. Instead of filler text, they had images, fully written copy, and buttons. All the franchisees had to do was insert a link to their specific site. Immediately, we saw a 65% increase in the number of emails sent and a 25% increase in revenue from the email category.
"Immediately, we saw a 65% increase in the number of emails sent and a 25% increase in revenue from the email category."
You shared in another interview that you all have been experimenting with ways to integrate AI to streamline your marketing operations. Can you share any particularly valuable workflows?
One of the most exciting things I used AI for recently was to help answer the question our franchisees are constantly asking me: How much should I be spending on our digital advertising platform, Eularity? And my answer has always been, it depends on all sorts of factors.
So, I compiled this massive spreadsheet of each studio’s monthly spend, their return on ad spend, and data, like population density, market type, whether it was urban or suburban, and digital competition.
I uploaded that into ChatGPT to analyze, and it produced a matrix laying out: if you are this and this, here is the budget range you should start with on a monthly basis. I was blown away and our franchisees were enthralled when I presented it to them. For some of them, it was reassuring that they were in range, and for others, it was encouraging that they could increase their budgets. It gives them a place to start and they can adjust as needed. I'm hoping this helps some of our franchisees realize they can boost their budgets and helps them get the results that they're looking for.
How do you ensure brand consistency across all of your locations without slowing down local innovation?
The solution is Canva — it has been a game-changer for our system.
It allows anyone to be able to produce something that looks professionally done. Our marketing team will develop templates that our franchisees can use so they're all on brand. The Canva enterprise comes with all of our brand colors and fonts and logos pre-loaded in there so they can’t deviate from that.
We offer franchisees fully customizable weekly email newsletter templates to help them promote the week’s events in their stores. We deploy win back and re-engagement automations at the headquarters level.
But we're able to create templates that can drag and drop any of the 20,000 art pieces in our collection — we probably have 1,000 or so now. It’s been the perfect solution to help them customize an email while having brand control.
Two templates that Painting with a Twist’s franchises can customize.
What’s one thing franchise marketers should be talking more about — but aren’t?
It's really easy to fall into a trap where you're corporate and you're the expert, and franchisees need to listen to what you're saying. But when you do that, you're going to lose trust and create resentment in your system. I’ve witnessed this firsthand.
When we started taking a franchisee-friendly, franchisee-first approach — such as by working with a franchise advisory council for strategic decisions and franchisee task forces for marketing, art, operations, etc. — that's when the magic happened for our brand. Actively listening to the pain points and working with them on the solutions is going to get you the buy-in that you need to help with program adoption, keep you competitive, and keep your franchisees engaged. Because if your franchisees are engaged, they're going to have more passion for the brand, and their sales will come as a result of that.
"It's really easy to fall into a trap where you're corporate and you're the expert, and franchisees need to listen to what you're saying. But when you do that, you're going to lose trust and create resentment in your system."
