No big brand, no budget? No worries

Buying a franchise in 99 per cent of purchases is all about investing in a brand. However, it's a different approach with the Telcoinabox computer and internet franchise set-up which provides a system but no group branding for individual franchisees who create and develop their own brand. Which begs the question, how do you market a product when the name is just one small company among many?

Paul Wells and Simon Gould set up Fat Free Fones four years ago in Sydney. One of Telcoinabox's earliest franchise partners, the pair launched a brand that, unlike many of its sibling franchises, has taken a no-limits approach driven by website presence.

Many fellow franchises are locally driven, friends and family networked businesses. Fat Free Fones is going head to head with the big boys — Optus, Telstra, AAPT and Vodafone. Working out what they are doing well and doing badly has helped define the brand. And in using the web to market the product it is attracting customers who have responded specifically to the message.

And the message is transparency. With a philosophy of 'be frank, be functional and be riendly' applied to all elements of the business, including staff employment, Wells and Gould aye developed the brand's personality.

"At Fat Free Fones, we don't like to fall around," says Wells. "The fat is the unnecessary bit hat you don't need."

His ad agency background puts him in good stead in marketing his own brand but it is not backed up by a large marketing budget to play with.

"What is marketing but perception?" he asks. "The wonderful thing about the web is letting people find us. Our shop window can be as big as Optus. It's the greatest leveller."

By harnessing the web's democratic platform Wells has side-stepped what could be a big issue in promotion particular to Telcoinabox business services franchisees — lack of group branding.