1851 Spotlight: St. Jacques Marketing

Philip and Michael St. Jacques have always worn many different entrepreneurial hats over the years, starting out in high school and college with a car waxing business, moving on to a shopping service, then owning a retail store. “We would just keep trying different businesses out because we loved the idea of creating something from nothing,” said Philip. “St. Jacques was the first business we started that we were truly serious about.” It sure did stick. Today, St. Jacques Marketing is known in the industry as the go-to marketing firm for franchises. The St. Jacques marketing team looks at franchises and identifies the hurdles a brand might have in the way preventing growth and awareness. From helping with franchise development and expansion to local marketing and brand positioning, St. Jacques is essentially a one-stop marketing shop for franchises. However, just like the franchises they are now working with, it took time for Philip and Michael to build their niche. “We decided that when we both didn’t enjoy what we were doing, we would start our own business together,” said Philip. “We thought now was the time to start a business and do what we always wanted to do – I had creative skills, Michael had tech skills, and we decided we wanted to get into advertising.” That time happened to be the late 90s. Going from two incomes to zero income, Philip and Michael described the early years of St. Jacques as “lean.” “We literally started finding clients by looking in the Yellow Pages, calling people on the phone from a bedroom in our parents’ house,” said Michael. “We didn’t take any clients from our previous jobs, so we needed to build a whole new client base.” Being the late 90s, Philip and Michael started their business right at the beginning of the dot com boom. “We thought ‘hey, this is easy,’ and grew very rapidly,” said Philip. “Fast forward to 9/11 and the dot com bust, the recession, and soon our client base was eroding. We had some legacy clients, but if any of them had left, we would have been finished.” This is when Philip and Michael took a hard look at themselves and their business and decided where to go next. “We looked at the market research for our target audiences and out of this came franchising,” said Michael. “Our staff also came from different positions that had experience with franchising, as well as real estate and the hotel and travel business. We realized we know more about franchising than most people in the country, so we thought ‘let’s focus on that.’” With this new structure, the brothers decided that 100 percent of their outbound marketing efforts would go towards solving problems for franchises and franchisors. From that, the company published its own research study that demonstrated their knowledge on the industry and basically gave it away for free, which some may see as just giving business and proprietary knowledge away. “As far as we know, we are the first and last company to just give something out like this,” said Philip. “We basically gave this to the franchise industry and said ‘hey, here’s some knowledge that you can use to help build your brand,’ and they definitely took it. Even some of our competitors used it.” The International Franchise Association also took note, which helped establish St. Jacques as a major player in the industry. “We went back to the basics of how we started the business in the first place – creating relationships and creating value for our customers with a focus on quality work,” said Philip. “The fundamentals of the business have not changed.” With a new focus on the franchise industry, St. Jacques established itself as key problem solvers for franchises. “Lots of the challenges franchises have when it comes to marketing are unique to the franchise industry,” said Michael. “Some of these problems are very deep rooted, so clients need to be ready to engage in a strategic conversation while being honest and even vulnerable so we help them do what it takes to move them forward.” With 26 employees and clients that range from 7-Eleven to Jack in the Box and T-Mobile, St. Jacques continues to blaze new paths in its own business and for its clients. With a focus on marketing and media, St. Jacques has helped its clients turn an eroding brand into a thriving one, creating new leads and helping a system’s franchisees market the business in the most effective way possible. “And that’s how we got to where we are today – we do what we say we are going to do, it’s as simple as that.” by Ben Heinemann