Shared Advertising Notification Policy

Effective local marketing is crucial to the success of your business (please see the Operations Manual for detailed information on local marketing and promotion). As such, per your franchise agreement you are required to spend a specific percentage of your weekly gross sales on local advertising and promotion. 

Shared Advertising Guide

The Shared Advertising Tool is a great way to collaborate with other owners in your area on marketing efforts, while reducing your marketing spend and allowing you to stretch marketing dollars further in different marketing opportunities. This tool allows you to submit the ad under your own terms and conditions. The description section provides space to include more details about the ad, payment requirements, and more. Here are the guidelines for using shared marketing which should be followed when using this tool: 

• The Shared Advertising Tool, while it is a recommended tool to use, is NOT required for any local marketing efforts in your area for shared, non-exclusive zip codes/postal codes between stores. You and the surrounding stores can implement any independent marketing efforts you decide, including Grand Opening/reopening marketing efforts. 
• Free Media (non-paid radio segment/TV interview/magazine or business article), local partnerships with companies, business accounts (car dealerships, fundraisers, etc.) or any media exposure not paid for by you DOES NOT require a Shared Advertising request. 
• All shared advertisement requests expire in 48 hours. If you are invited to join a shared advertisement, you have 48 hours to respond. If you do not respond, it is considered a no response. If you miss the deadline and wish to participate in the ad, you must contact the facilitator of the Shared Ad invitation to see if they can accommodate your request. It is the responsibility of the Advertisement Originator Store to ensure that all stores wishing to participate in the advertising are shown on the ad. 

 Exclusive Zip Codes 

Some of you may be faced with the situation of other stores having exclusive zip codes. Although there are few cases of this, there are guidelines which must be followed. The following marketing methods require that a Shared Advertisement Request is sent to the store with the exclusive zip code(s): 

• Magazine/newspaper/Clipper/Valpak ads 
• Billboards 
• Post cards/direct mailers/EDDM 
• Coupons/flyering 
• Purchasing TV commercial spots 
• Purchasing radio commercial spots 

Please contact the Marketing Department with any further questions regarding the Shared Advertising Notification Policy. 

Instructions for using the Shared Advertising Tool 

Advertisement Originator Store: 

• Click on the “Shared Advertising Tool” link found on the left side of the Marketing Homepage in ncompass. 
• To start a new advertising initiative, click the "New" button. 
• Fill in all the required fields: Title of the Publication, Price of Ad, Zip/Postal Codes, Date Ad will appear, Ad Color, Ad Size, DMS design cost (if applicable). Franchisees with shared zip codes or for which your ad/promotion includes their Territory and/or Delivery area will use this information to make an informed decision as to whether or not they want to advertise with your store, so it is to your benefit to include as much information as possible. Use the Description to give other franchisees as much additional information as possible, including, but not limited to: creative, offer (if applicable), circulation, drop date(s) and payment schedule. Remember to put in a date for payment. 
• In the Zip Code field, enter all zip/postal codes this ad will impact, i.e., the zip/postal codes this advertisement will reach. It is the responsibility of the Advertisement Originator Store (store seeking to place the ad/promotion) to obtain ALL zip/postal codes from the media vendor and enter ALL zip/postal codes that your ad may impact. ncompass will then automatically cross check all these zip/postal codes to ensure that all the appropriate neighboring stores are alerted. 
• Stores that may be affected by this ad will automatically be notified of any shared advertising opportunities via a pop-up message on their ncompass Homepage.