Franchisees aren't waiting for permission to use AI
New Franchise Business Review and Marvia report finds franchisors are prioritizing AI while franchisees use it to create content HQ never provided
AI ranks among franchisors' top priorities for the next 12 months. Meanwhile, franchisees almost never mention AI when asked about their marketing priorities. Among franchisees who have used AI in their local marketing, the most common use case is creating content HQ never provided a template for, according to a new Franchise Marketing Insights 2026 report from Franchise Business Review (FBR) and Marvia based on responses from more than 500 people across the franchise industry.
The finding points to a gap between the AI conversation at headquarters and the practical needs of local teams. Franchisors are looking to AI for automated content creation, campaign optimization, and customer analytics. Franchisees, meanwhile, are focused on easier access to the content that already exists and fewer delays when launching local campaigns.
"AI's biggest value for franchisees isn't generating content—it's streamlining the workflows and strategy behind it,"
Christoper Brown, director of North America at Marvia
"The tradeoff shouldn't be AI or consistency—it's AI that helps every location plan, organize, and execute inside the brand's guardrails, so the brand voice stays intact no matter who's using the tools.”
That gap sits within a larger challenge in franchise marketing. Localization is the top friction point cited across all three respondent groups. Franchisees describe materials that don't fit their markets, assets that aren't flexible enough to customize, approval processes that move too slowly, scattered resources, and limited access to local performance data.
The report's findings suggest that many franchisees are focused on needs that come before AI. Several franchisors in the survey pointed to franchisee adoption, not tool access, as the real bottleneck. More than half of franchisor marketing teams spend six or more hours a week manually adapting existing assets, and one in five spends more than 10 hours on that work.
"Marketing is one of the few support functions that franchisees interact with almost every day, and every interaction reinforces or diminishes the value they perceive from the franchise system,"
Michelle Rowan, president of Franchise Business Review
“When marketing support is difficult to access, slow to execute, or doesn’t reflect the realities of a local market, it doesn’t just slow down a campaign; it erodes trust in the system itself. The opportunity for franchisors is to make local execution easier by giving franchisees the right tools, greater visibility into performance, and the flexibility to act within clear brand guidelines. The brands that treat this as a design problem, not a compliance issue, are the ones who will pull ahead.”
The report concludes that technology alone can't solve operational friction. Before investing in new capabilities, franchise brands need to make it easier for local teams to find approved materials, customize them for their markets, move through approvals, and understand what is working.
The research brings together perspectives from people across the franchise sector, including franchisees and area developers, franchisor management, marketing and field support teams, and third-party suppliers and industry-adjacent professionals. Each group sees local marketing from a different position, but their responses point to the same underlying challenge. Marketing programs created at the center don't always translate into practical local execution.
The Franchise Marketing Insights 2026 report is available today.
About Franchise Business Review
Franchise Business Review is an independent market research firm that provides franchise organizations with benchmarking research and best practices to improve franchisee and employee satisfaction and engagement. Since 2005, FBR has been trusted by more than 1,300 franchise companies to provide the people-centered data and tools they need for long-term growth in the franchise industry.
Learn more at FranchiseBusinessReview.com
About Marvia
Marvia is a marketing platform built for franchise and multi-location brands. We help central marketing teams stop fielding endless localization requests and start scaling, while giving local teams everything they need to execute on-brand marketing that drives results. Brands using Marvia have reduced localization requests by 83%. From digital asset management and customizable templates to social campaigns and local distribution, Marvia connects every part of the marketing workflow in one platform. Brands in more than 150 countries use Marvia to maintain brand consistency, activate local marketing, and free their central teams to focus on strategy.
Learn more at www.getmarvia.com.