Eric Keshin featured in a list of some of franchising’s “Best of the Best” marketing officers
Great Harvest Bakery Cafe, a franchise and specialty bread concept known for fresh, made-from-scratch bread and desserts, has recently announced that Eric Keshin, President & CMO, has been featured in Entrepreneur’s 50 Franchise CMOs Who Are Changing the Game.
To celebrate the top marketing officers of the year, Entrepreneur selected a list of the most influential men and women in the franchising industry who are representative of the all-important CMO role.
When asked to name one impactful thing that Keshin has done to innovate, create, inspire or grow Great Harvest this year, Keshin mentioned many accomplishments over his time with the franchise.
“Our legacy franchise agreements do not have a marketing fee. All advertising is done locally. Before I arrived, very few stores were doing any form of consistent advertising campaigns. We tested different media in a number of markets to understand the return that stores could expect,” said Keshin.
“Once we understood potential return, we launched our Guaranteed to Breakeven Campaigns, where if the results from our campaigns do not pay for themselves, then we (the franchise) pays the difference,” stated Keshin. “Today, we have had over 50 stores on these campaigns using Google Display or local cable TV interconnect campaigns whose results drive as much as 30% improvement on year-over-year comp sales. This is unheard of in the industry, as no other franchise that I have ever been involved with is able to guarantee advertising return on the dollar.”
Keshin also noted that a key challenge marketers face is being able to prove the return on marketing investment down to the individual store level, as most franchises require a percentage of sales be donated towards a national campaign. All of Great Harvest’s marketing investments are local, and as such they are able to track and now guarantee individual store ROI.
Keshin is responsible for implementing all branding and sales growth strategies for the franchise with over 200 stores across the U.S. and internationally. He has helped Great Harvest to cultivate a united corporate culture that continues to go back to its core value of authenticity and inspire continuous creative freedom of ideas among its locations.
“As we continue to achieve significant growth throughout the coming years, we are thrilled to have the right people guiding our franchisees.” said Mike Ferretti, CEO of Great Harvest Bread Company. “Our brand is stronger than ever post pandemic and much of that is attributable to the marketing efforts Eric has led. As a system, our sales are ten percent (10%) higher than they were pre pandemic. That is not coincidence. We don’t achieve that success without the marketing programs Eric developed and delivered on. We expect that success to continue in the future.”
Great Harvest Bakery Cafe is dedicated to using the freshest ingredients and making almost all breads and pastries from scratch. Their wheat comes from the Montana Golden Triangle, and owners spend five hours in the morning baking their bread. Their goal is to have labels as clean as possible, and strive for high quality products that are made with real ingredients. The company also offers a unique stance on franchise ownership, called “freedom franchise”. This means that they allow their franchise owners to operate their business in whichever way best fits their community’s needs.
To learn about franchising opportunities with Great Harvest Bread Company, go to https://www.greatharvest.com/franchise.
