Melissa Gallagher can be very convincing.
While working as a business consultant with Torsub Franchise Services, Subway Restaurants’s parent company, she persuaded the development team to launch a regional marketing department. Working on the operational side of the business had allowed her to understand the various challenges facing the 500-plus Ontario franchisees, and how local store marketing could help overcome these obstacles. And as the daughter of one-time Subway restaurant owners in Burlington, Ont., Gallagher felt “a true connection” to the brand.
“I told [the development team] that I was going to work with franchisees one-on-one with their marketing budgets and show them where the opportunities are, and it wouldn’t cost the office any additional money except it would have to cover my consulting hours,” says Gallagher, who graduated from George Brown College in 2007 with a business marketing diploma.
Becoming a “local store marketing specialist,” Gallagher not only worked closely with restaurant owners on the chain’s popular “Sub of the Day” campaign and school lunch program, but also liaised with Cundari, Subway’s advertising agency for the Ontario market.
The relationship between Torsub Franchise Services and the Toronto agency had become frayed and Gallagher was tasked with mending it, she says. The company was “essentially ready to leave the agency” when Cundari poached Gallagher in 2009.
Subway, she says, is an extremely complex account with “many different opinions at the table.” Cundari was having a difficult time “connecting and understanding what it would take to build the brand.” Gallagher was able to smooth the waters and assure Torsub Franchise Services that Cundari was the right agency partner.
As field marketing manager at Cundari, Gallagher continued to build “Sub of the Day,” an effort that proved to be a hard sell to franchisees that were still basking in the success of the $5 Footlong promotion that helped see them through the recession.
Gallagher presented the campaign, which would eventually include a logo and series of radios ads, during a quarterly meeting to a room full of naysayers. “There was a group of franchisees that were completely dead set against [the campaign], they said it wouldn’t work, it would kill their profit and ruin their business,” she says
“We just had to walk them through it and prove to them that it would work. We were confident it would. We had done the research,” adds Gallagher.
Gallagher convinced the room. “Sub of the Day” launched in September 2010 and saw record-breaking sales within two months. It delivered an 11% year-over-year sales increase in Ontario and increased year-over-year traffic by 6%.
In 2011, Gallagher was promoted to account director at Cundari. She continued to work on the Subway account along with the Toronto Zoo and 3M until she left the agency in January 2014.
Ready for a change, Galllagher was contemplating a move back to the client side when she received a call from Darren Baumgardner, president at Twist Marketing, which specializes in destination marketing and corporate branding.
Twist was ready to open a Toronto office to serve its Eastern clients and needed someone to run it. Having worked together on the Subway account (at the time Twist held the Subway account in Western Canada), he was impressed by Gallagher’s work ethic.
“Not only was she highly organized, but she was a real strategic thinker… I saw that in her on that business and thought she would be a great addition to he team,” says Baumgardner.
Since Twist officially opened in Torontos in May, Gallagher has been busy pitching and winning new business. The agency recently won Volunteer Gateway – a legacy program that’s part of the Pan Am Games.
“There’s not many people that you meet that have her wisdom at her age. And I think that’s the best way to capture it,” he says simply. But he doesn’t need to convince us of that.
Meet the rest of the 30 Under 30 for 2014
