Comments on: Crude PPC Trademark Rules Screw Hotel Franchise Owners.

By: bonus

bonus — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 23:41:59 +0000

bonus…

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By: Marty Weintraub

Marty Weintraub — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 10:59:46 +0000

Sam, track this: my client OWNS the Best Western Hotel and can’t call it a Best Western in the SERPS.

By: Sam Freedom

Sam Freedom — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 09:00:02 +0000

Frankly, I’m glad to hear this. I think it’s a GREAT idea. Why should Best Western not have the right to prevent unfair advantage between its franchisees? Doesn’t B.W. ultimately have the right to protect lesser franchisees from getting overshadowed by bigger franchisees?

What if 1 franchisee owned 12 B.W.s across 2-3 states and another owned 3… guess who has the bigger advertising budget? Guess whos gonna feel screwed when he goes to use ppc and finds out that 3 franchises 4 times his size are competing with him… etc…

The point is that it should ultimately be up to the parent company to deny useage of the brand name if it’s going to cause a rift in the ranks. At least BW could come up with some kind of a solution where all franchisees a share based on how many hotels they own and then BW runs the campaign while geodirecting traffic to specific places OR (more likely) having all traffic come to a main site to pick their location.

The right to deny use or to find an equitable solution should always be the right of the franchisor…

Sam

By: Marty Weintraub

Marty Weintraub — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 16:09:06 +0000

Thanks for the excellent perspective Scott.

By: Scott Clark

Scott Clark — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 04:22:34 +0000

As any of you who know me realize, I do a lot of franchise marketing. I have approached google at conferences as well as through my rep telling them we need, badly, an on-line method for granting adwords permissions “by ID” that works a bit like the multi-client interface. The last response (at SMX Advanced) was that Google had “something coming” for this. That’s all I heard.

This is a major, and growing local search issue – soon to become a mobile search issue, too.

For example… If you own a franchise leather repair center, but your franchise doesn’t provide any kind of comprehensive local marketing solution – you need to be able to sign up for Google Local and put your company on the map with PPC in a way that lets you utilize the brand boost that comes with a namebrand franchise purchase.

As it stands, franchisors must use an arcane method of filing a form, etc, making it impractical for a 500 unit franchise! The corporate center (franchisor) needs a way to control permissions ON LINE, or frankly, they’re not going to do it.

Bit since many franchises are in hyper-aggressive markets led by not so sophisticated marketers, you’ll find many trademark violations – so blocking blatant trademark violations (by competitors for example) is important.

I know your greyhat methods, and often we must resort to them even when we don’t want to. But when a playing field isn’t level, you need to do some earthmoving from time to time.

By: Favorite Blog Posts of the Week « LocalMN Blog

Favorite Blog Posts of the Week « LocalMN Blog — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 02:06:55 +0000

[...] Weintraub (Duluth) writes about PPC trademark rules that screw hotel franchise owners. I’ve never really thought about it before, but it sounds like all PPC ads need to be made at [...]

By: Marty Weintraub

Marty Weintraub — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:59:15 +0000

I am hopeful that the representative Hotel Chain SEM firm(s) and in-house marketing staff join us in this dialog.

By: Daphne Talbot

Daphne Talbot — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:57:49 +0000

I’ve heard in a seminar but not had to go down this road that if the parent company provides a letter to Google allowing the marketing that you can then bid on the terms. It could be hear say but have you asked the parent company if they have had a dialog with Google about this? You’d think it would be in their best interests to do this.

Just a thought.

By: Carrie Hill

Carrie Hill — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:20:54 +0000

We have also run into issues w/ Best Western. Sometimes we can get Holiday Inn snuck into our ad text. The worst part is ad text from corporate PPC campaigns is poor because of the mass quantity and the impersonal ad copy. Letting the individual franchises run ads if they choose to would increase CTR and bookings in my opinion.

By: Marty Weintraub

Marty Weintraub — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 12:33:05 +0000

Funny thing. Best Western is advertising the Altus property in Google Adwords today. Search for “Best Western Altus.”