Can I locally market my franchise independently of my franchisor?

The franchise agreement should explain the franchisee’s obligations or rights to carry out local advertising. It may be that the franchisor requires the franchisee to spend a fixed percentage of gross income each year for this purpose. If the contract is silent, you will need to ask the franchisor what its policy is on local advertising by franchisees.  Where the franchisor does permit or require local advertising, the franchisor will insist on control of the form and content of all advertisements and promotional material in order to protect its brand name, to ensure that standards associated with it are maintained and to ensure uniformity across the network. The franchisor will usually require that it approves all advertising prepared by franchisees before it can be used.  Sometimes the franchisor will specify in the franchise agreement the type of local advertising that the franchisee must undertake (for example, Yellow Pages or local newspaper), which may leave the franchisee with very little of its advertising budget to spend on other types of local advertising activity.