How Subway and Precision Turned Hyper-Local Direct Marketing Into a Scalable Growth Engine
Subway had an exciting mandate for Precision: boost local footfall and grow loyalty in a crowded QSR market – without sacrificing brand control or speed. The twist? Do it across 2,027 independently run UK franchises, each with local pricing, offers, and trading patterns, and reach millions of households with tailored, on-brand messages in print and digital.
With CHILI GraFx at the core, Precision didn't just meet the brief – they built a modern, data-driven direct marketing engine that delivers personalization at massive scale, fast.
The Challenge: 2,027 Stores, Millions of Customers, Endless Variations
Traditional artwork workflows couldn't keep pace with this level of variation. As Gary Howard, Chief Digital Officer at Precision, put it: data is everything – but it takes creative automation to translate data into on-brand, high-quality, personalized communications at scale.
The challenge was multifaceted. Thousands of franchise locations operated with unique pricing and local promotions. Millions of targetable households required hyper-local catchment targeting.
Perhaps most critically, there was a need for consistent brand execution with local relevance across print, out-of-home, and digital channels – all while maintaining the speed and flexibility that franchisees demanded.
The Solution: Data-Driven Creative Automation with CHILI GraFx
Precision built Subway's direct marketing engine on CHILI GraFx – CHILI publish's visual content automation platform – turning complex data into ready-to-print and ready-to-publish assets with near-zero manual production.
What Made the Difference Inside GraFx Studio
The transformation began with design systems that adapted intelligently to content. Designers created flexible, brand-locked systems that respond dynamically to store-level inputs, ensuring every variant looks like it was handcrafted. Using conditional breakpoints, pricing tables, offer tiles, legal copy, and QR zones all adjust seamlessly based on the data fed into each template.
GraFx Brand Kits provided the foundation for brand consistency. Centralized brand colors, typography, and assets ensure every output – from a door-drop mailer to a bus shelter poster – is pixel-perfect and on brand, no matter which store or region it serves.
Data bindings in GraFx Studio created powerful connections between content and context. Fields like store ID, pricing, menu item availability, offer logic, geos, and household segments are bound directly to data, meaning copy, imagery, and layouts update instantly based on real-world information.
Conditional logic and responsive layout capabilities brought true intelligence to the system. Show/hide modules adapt per store or audience, auto-resize image and copy blocks switch offer sets by eligibility, and reflow layouts for multi-offer campaigns ensure every piece feels custom-built, not cookie-cutter.
How the Cross-Channel Flow Worked
The process begins when franchise and campaign data flows into Precision's production pipeline, which integrates seamlessly with CHILI GraFx via API. Templates pull in the relevant data for each store or household, automatically generating personalized creative variants.
GraFx Studio renders high-resolution print assets and digital-ready formats in parallel. For direct mail campaigns, this means generating thousands of unique household-level mailers with localized offers, store details, and catchment-specific messaging. For out-of-home placements, the system produces geo-targeted poster variations optimized for each location's demographics and trading patterns.
Digital channels receive the same treatment, with display ads, social media graphics, and email assets all generated from the same data-driven templates. This ensures complete brand consistency across every customer touchpoint while maintaining the hyper-local relevance that drives performance.
The entire workflow operates at scale without manual intervention. What previously would have required weeks of production time and armies of designers now happens in hours, with quality assurance built into the template logic itself.
The Result? Subway UK now runs hundreds of localized campaigns per year, reaching millions of households with messaging that feels personally relevant – all while maintaining pristine brand standards and moving at the speed franchisees need to stay competitive.
Company profile
Subway is a fast-food restaurant chain that began in 1965 when founders Fred DeLuca and Dr. Peter Buck opened their first sandwich shop in Connecticut. Now one of the world's largest restaurant brands, Subway is known for its made-to-order sandwiches, wraps, and salads, with locations in over 100 countries and a business model built on franchising. The company's core principles have always been to provide fresh, affordable food with excellent service.
