These challenges gave rise to Restaurant Marketing Group™ (RMG), where we build tools (that I desperately needed when I was running a brand’s marketing efforts) including:

Leaky Bucket®:      The Leaky Bucket® Study identifies ‘leaks’ in a brand, measuring their size and prioritizing the top three areas that need action.  This simple direct no-nonsense study brings marketing and operations to the drawing board together.  In the words of guru Lane Cardwell, “The results of the Leaky Bucket® makes actions seem inevitable.”

Food Actually™:
Food Actually™ is a measure of a consumers  perception of the ingredients a brand uses.   As consumers are getting more and more savvy about what they put in their mouths, this study by RMG (Restaurant marketing group) reflects on consumer perception of actual food offered by different brands.

Rapid Ad Feedback™:
Rapid Ad Feedback delivers a quantitative-qualitative feedback on your upcoming campaigns after the creative is done but before you go on air or in that magazine to ensure your message is effective (and tweak if necessary). To eliminate the fear of spending thousands of dollars with an ad that doesn’t work, we use online focus groups to rapidly determine in 24 hours:

• Communication: what was the main message of the ad and what was confusing
• Perception: what did respondents feel about the brand
• Motivation: what actions (not just purchase intent) will the respondents will take based on the ad

Competitive Recon:
Gone are the days when one could sit in the corporate office and think that all markets and trade-areas are the same.  Today’s marketing leader needs to understand market-level differences and act on competitive forces at a local level. RMG’s Competitive Recon tool assists in identifying state of the business by market and creates the platform of local-level guerrilla marketing.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):
Large amounts of information (arriving via paper, phone, email) hit you daily. RMG identifies and summarizes your brand’s KPIs (e.g. sales, transactions, ticket average, other topline measures, other bottom line measures, brand measures, customer measures, team member measures and leading indicators) into one page.  That becomes your game plan. 

Comparative Ad Claim:
RMG has taken numerous brands through the diligence of comparative ad claims.  Comparative Ad Claim tool assists brands in each of the following areas:

• Identify claims
• Conducting marketing research to validate claims
• Develop PR plans to maximize opportunity

Franchisee/ Team Member Satisfaction Measurement: Building a brand starts with strong stakeholders.  RMG uses its proprietary research techniques to measure franchisee/team member satisfaction.  This study goes beyond identifying symptoms and defines actionable next steps.