How Canva is powering leading global franchises

Since the very beginning, we’ve strived to build an all-in-one visual communication platform that transforms the way the world works by democratizing design. We now have a community of more than 135 million people around the world using our platform each and every month including many organizations as the look to supercharge collaboration and creativity. When it comes to franchising, the ability to create on-brand, visual content at scale is incredibly important, and we’re proud to have a range of world-leading franchises using Canva for Teams to empower their franchisees to take visual communication into their own hands.

Maintaining brand consistency through growth

Maintaining your visual brand identity across all consumer touchpoints while growing at scale is easier said than done. Many individual franchisees lack design expertise and work in silos. Not only does having the same brand colors, logos and fonts ensure customer recognition and grow brand awareness, but it also helps grow brand trust – which is critical when expanding into new markets and territories.

For Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu brand, Gracie Barra, which now has 800+ schools around the world, rapid global expansion didn’t come without growing pains. Having a global footprint meant their visual brand identity was in the hands of hundreds of franchisees. Many of them were time-poor or lacked expertise in design, making it difficult to achieve consistency across marketing materials. These inconsistencies diluted their positioning as a premium martial arts brand. Since rolling out Canva for Teams, they’ve garnered glowing reviews from franchisees, with the schools now easily designing everything from social media assets to marketing collateral, with ready-to-go templates from the Brand Hub.

Driving efficient workflows

Brand compliance and design go beyond just aesthetics – access to a collaborative, streamlined tool to empower users is important for efficient workflows. We know many businesses are home to multiple brands and sub-brands, so finding ways to equip teams to take design into their own hands, without compromising on unique styles, can be challenging. Under-the-pump design teams often have to take the lead – one of the many reasons we introduced our Brand Hub last year.

We’ve had thousands of brands utilize Brand Hub since launch – and we’re proud to know we’ve played a part in helping businesses streamline their workflows and unlock efficiencies. For a business with multiple brands like global fitness franchise F45, adopting Canva’s Brand Hub was an incredibly effective way to set up each brand with folders of localized content in one central location. It ensured franchisees can access the content they require while allowing designers to update or introduce fresh content swiftly – and they’ve seen fantastic results. With the help of Brand Hub including branded templates, F45 saw design efficiency for its franchisees increase by 60% in just one month, with design turnaround times dropping from 10 days to 24 hours.

A self-serve content library

One of our core values at Canva is ‘empower others’ and it’s something we’ve infused into our product from the very beginning. For many businesses, finding time and resources to source high-quality content can be challenging and expensive, so we’re always growing our content library with thousands of free stock images and videos suitable for a huge variety of uses. One of the world’s largest real estate groups, Ray White, adopted Canva for Teams for its corporate HQ teams and global network of franchisees, improving efficiencies when designing on-brand destination marketing materials, saving time and money along the way.

Our recent case study showed Ray White franchisees no longer have to start designs from scratch. They can go into Canva and select from approved templates, alongside direct access to the video and image library – meaning an entire series of templates can now be created in minutes.

Easy localization

For many franchise businesses, teams are based all over the world – and there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach for content. What works for one market won’t necessarily work for another, and having the ability to produce on-brand content to suit different locales, calendar events, and formats is increasingly important.

For fitness-brand Orangetheory, having access to editable, ready-made templates has been particularly beneficial. They’ve not only expanded to markets where social media needs are very different, or international campaigns need to be tailored to the local market – but they’ve also been empowered to roll out rapid response communication on an ad-hoc basis. Being able to translate designs into local languages can often be time consuming and costly, but with the help of Canva’s AI-powered Translate tool, franchisees can translate any design into over 130+ languages with the click of a button.

“Canva has allowed us to give our studios flexibility to add their local flair while maintaining brand consistency,” said Jessica Chin Fong, Social Media Strategy Manager at Orangetheory Fitness, adding “It's also helped us to be nimble and fast”.

Streamlining print deliveries

When it comes to local marketing, delivering print materials at scale can be a time-consuming and expensive process for franchise HQ teams. Designs are often limited to one or two variations, resulting in some franchisees receiving materials that aren’t suitable for their market or customers. With Canva Print, franchisees are able to create their own on-brand assets and print directly to their doorstep – saving money, time and wastage along the way.

For growing bakery brand COBS Bread, Canva was an effective way to streamline their print deliveries across their 160 locations. Our recent case study showed how impactful having an easy-to-use, all-in-one visual communications platform can be for saving time and finding cost efficiencies, without having to compromise on brand consistency. “The fact that Canva partnered with Staples and FedEx in the US really allows our franchisees to have more independence and get what they need quite quickly. So that's been a huge improvement and a huge added bonus,” said Alina Pejkovicm, Local Marketing Specialist at COBS Bread.

Interested in how you can streamline your brand approvals and empower your franchisees with Canva? A visual suite built for collaboration, check out Canva for Teams.

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