Page 212 - James Caan - The Real Deal
P. 212
The Real Deal
partly for that reason that we made a very early decision that the
franchising operation we were about to set up wouldn’tbe
branded as Alexander Mann.
One of our first meetings was with a branding agency, and we
told them we needed a name for our headhunting franchise that
would operate all over the world. Coming up with a name that
means something in China and Brazil and France – without
offending people in Indonesia or Finland – isn’t as easy as you
might think. The agency suggested ‘Humana’, which we both liked
because it was generic and was easy to pronounce. It also
suggested that it was a business about people. We then asked them
to come up with a logo and other corporate identity material,
because when you’re selling a franchise the brand is an extremely
valuable part of the franchise package.
Franchises generally work like this: franchisees pay an upfront
fee and then a percentage of future profits to the franchiser. In
exchange, they are taught how to operate the franchise and given
help in managing their business. With Humana, we were going to
teach people how to headhunt for a fee of £30,000 and then take
10 per cent of what they billed.
Some of the biggest names on the high street are franchises –
McDonald’s, the Body Shop, Kall Kwik – and it’s easy to see why
you’d buy one of their franchises: the chances are you’ll do much
better selling Body Shop cosmetics than unbranded ones. With
Humana, I realised, we had no track record to offer and no brand.
It was a huge oversight and I couldn’t believe that neither Doug
nor I had anticipated it. We’d got so caught up in replicating MRI
internationally that we forgot we didn’t have MRI’s brand.
Oh, my God, I said to myself, I’ve just hired this guy. I’ve
brought him over here, paid a fair whack of cash to a branding
agency and this isn’t going to work. So I took Doug out to dinner
for a crisis meeting.
‘Tell me again how this is going to work.’
202