CLIENT SUCCESS STORY
"This is what's missing from our marketing."
How Kip McGrath turned its franchise partners' own stories into authentic local content that corporate marketing couldn't create for them.
Karen Geloven had already seen plenty of franchise buyer content before she contacted us. She'd seen the conversations appearing online and on LinkedIn. Then she started watching more. And more.
What stood out wasn't simply the production. It was the authenticity of the people speaking.
For a brand like Kip McGrath, that mattered. Because when parents are deciding who they can trust with their child's education, Karen believed they needed to see more than a corporate brand. They needed to see the people behind it.
"I watched lots of it. Lots of the podcasts. And was like, 'This is what's missing from our marketing.'"
— Karen Geloven, Kip McGrath Education Centres
The brand had a story.
So did every franchise partner.
Kip McGrath could tell its story nationally. But Karen recognised that its individual franchise partners could communicate something the corporate marketing team couldn't replicate from head office.
Their own story. Their own passion. And their connection to the local communities they serve.
The challenge was that many of those franchise partners didn't necessarily see themselves as content creators.
"They're just like, 'Oh, it's just Kip McGrath. I'm just a teacher.'"
But Karen saw it differently.
"From a local area point of view, they can achieve so much more that we can't."
That became an important part of the opportunity. Not simply creating content about Kip McGrath. Creating content that allowed people to meet the individual people behind Kip McGrath.
When trust involves someone's child, it matters even more
Trust matters for every brand. For Kip McGrath, Karen believes it carries particular weight. Many parents come to Kip McGrath because their child has fallen behind. Some are worried. Some feel they've let their child down. And they're looking for someone they can trust to help.
"They want to see who's behind the brand."
Not only the leadership team and corporate ethos, the individual franchise partner who may ultimately work with their family. Karen wanted parents to see those people and understand how much they genuinely cared about what they did.
Social posts could tell people about Kip McGrath. Karen wanted them to feel the passion of the people behind it.
Nine franchise stories.
One day.
Kip McGrath brought its franchise partners together for its conference. That created an opportunity. Rather than organising nine separate shoots across different locations and dates, the Franchise Buyer team built a filming schedule around the conference.
Nine conversations were filmed in a single day.
For some of the franchise partners, appearing on camera was daunting.
"Oh, I don't know if I can do this. This is really scary."
So the process was deliberately kept simple. Each franchise partner arrived shortly before their session. There was a short pre-conversation to understand their story. Then, rather than speaking to a camera or reading from a script, they simply had a conversation.
Karen watched the transformation.
"By the time you got them in the chair, they were so relaxed that it just came naturally to them."
And that mattered, because the objective wasn't a perfectly scripted corporate message. It was capturing something real.
Once the conversations began, Karen saw exactly what she'd hoped the format would uncover.
"You can't script that."
The franchise partners spoke about what they did. Why they did it. The children and families they helped. And why it mattered to them. Their passion came through naturally.
"It's so easy to talk when you're passionate in what you believe in, and you can't script that."
At a time when increasingly polished and AI-generated marketing can make it difficult to know what's genuine, Karen believes that distinction is becoming even more important.
"It's so easy to talk when you're passionate in what you believe in, and you can't script that."
"When you get this authentic video podcasting and really drawing out someone's story, and you see the emotion... you can't fake that."
"That's worth more than any marketing campaign that we could produce at a corporate level."
One shoot created content for two levels of the network.
The content wasn't only useful to Kip McGrath's corporate marketing team. Once produced, the assets were also shared with the franchise partners who appeared in them.
Kip McGrath could use the content for franchise recruitment and national brand marketing. The individual franchise partners could use their own content across their local social channels and local marketing.
"Really exciting. So it's spreading the word."
One production day had created a library of authentic content that could work at both levels of the franchise network, corporate brand recruitment and storytelling, and franchise-partner local-area marketing and trust.
Kip McGrath gave its franchise partners a voice.
Kip McGrath didn't need another corporate campaign telling people what the brand stood for. It wanted people to meet the humans behind it.
In one conference filming day, nine conversations captured the stories, passion and personalities of people across the Kip McGrath network.
The corporate team gained authentic content it could use nationally. The participating franchise partners gained their own content to use locally.
And parents could see something no corporate marketing campaign could manufacture: the people behind the brand and how much they genuinely care.
The Content Behind The Story.
The Conference Shoot
Nine conversations. One conference. One production day.
The Franchise Partner Stories
Different people. Different stories. One brand.
From National Content To Local Marketing
The finished assets weren't only used by Kip McGrath. Participating franchise partners received their content to use across their own local social channels.
Your franchisees are
part of your brand story
We help franchise brands capture the expertise, passion and personalities already inside their networks, then turn those conversations into content that can work nationally and locally.