Patricia McQuillan

Patricia McQuillan founded Brand Matters in 2000 based on a career of innovative brand management including RBC, TD Waterhouse, Kraft General Foods and Tandem Consulting.

Brand Matters is a leading brand consulting firm which delivers brand strategy solutions successfully connecting business to brand. Brand Matters’ strategic approach is grounded in market research and branding best practices. Clients include Leaders of innovative organizations including Air Miles Reward Program, Canada Life, Canadian Diabetes Association and Siemens Canada to name a few.

Patricia’s academic qualifications include an MBA and Economics Degree from Queen's University. During her corporate career she served as VP Marketing, RBC Dominion Securities where she led the Royal Bank of Canada Wealth Management re-brand. Prior to this, she held the position of VP Marketing, TD Waterhouse where she directed the marketing launch of the first on-line brokerage in Canada. Earlier in her career, she led successive business turnarounds over a 6-year period as a Senior Brand Manager at Kraft General Foods.

Today, she continues to participate as a thought leader as an owner of one of Canada’s leading brand consulting firms. She is not only an active member of the Canadian Marketing Association’s Branding & Strategic Planning Council but also serves as a Director on two Boards: the American Marketing Association and the MS Society of Canada, Toronto Chapter.

Branding to Gen Y – Part II

Referring back to our previous post, we received some interesting comments on what your experiences were like in marketing to Gen Y. With this blog posting, we delve further into the subject and offer some insight as to which events we think have helped to define this generation.

There is a tendency for Gen Y to actively seek out unique businesses, particularly those who produce hand-made items or market themselves as an ethical practice. Think of local boutiques or businesses like Lululemon and the Body Shop. This generation is willing to pay a premium for their products. Why? Perhaps it is that Gen Y is very aware of socially responsible activities and they want to hold companies responsible...by voting with their dollars.

We also stated in our previous post that Gen Y is socially connected all the time - simply because technology enables them to do so. With that social connectedness comes a greater interest in word of mouth peer reviews and viral trends. This generation is exposed to more ads and brands at an ever increasing rate. As a result, Gen Y is extremely media savvy and out of necessity, they have quickly learned to filter out to the content that THEY want to see. This in turn has led to websites focused on content which is customized to what Gen Y wants. Think of personal Facebook newsfeeds where you can control what kinds of stories show up, Twitter streams where you can choose to follow who you want, or blogs that you can decide to subscribe to. As we move to customizable content, the greater the expectations to cater to the individual.

What are your own ideas as to what has helped form the unique characteristics of this generation?

Patricia McQuillan

Branding to Gen Y

How do you reach out to a media-saturated generation with a short attention span known as Gen Y ? They fast forward through TV commercials, text their way through movie previews, and skip radio ads by downloading music. Yet, as seemingly tuned out as they may be, this is also one of the most brand-savvy, socially-connected generations to date.

With new books being published like The Secrets of Advertising to Gen Y Consumers by Aiden Livingston (2010) or Small is the New Big by Seth Godin (2006) it’s a clear trend the way we brand ourselves is changing. The brand strategies of the past are simply not as effective when it comes to Gen Y. Previous generations flocked to well-established brand names in the belief that they produced superior products. Branding campaigns were broader and the commercial goals more obvious. In contrast, Gen Y tends to view big box retailers as firms that value its bottom line over its people. This is a generation who will actively seek out small businesses in the belief that hand-made or unique means higher quality. Subtlety, irony, and humor are now the name of the game. Campaigns try to stay local and more than ever, are fully customized to its consumers.

Mass-produced and mainstream is not what Gen Y looks for when deciding how to spend their money. In order to stay relevant to them, branding strategies have to become edgier and more risk-tolerant. This target audience interacts heavily with social media; seeking online reviews or reading blogs in the hopes of kick starting the newest trend amongst their peers. Constantly connected and always on the go, Gen Y has a short attention span.

What has your experience been marketing to Gen-Y?

Patricia McQuillan

Branding Social Media - How to Break Through the Clutter

Just about anyone who has access to the Internet can sign up to a social media website. Having reached the tipping point, there has been a proliferation of commercial interest in social media, from start-up companies to large organizations. With so many businesses broadcasting messages across different channels, establishing credibility is necessary for building trust and gaining a loyal following in the virtual world. This is a type of branding in its purest form. Reflecting on what makes for a successful brand, several social media branding considerations come to mind.

Outlined below are some dos and don’ts of gaining credibility or brand building through social media for business:

DO be genuine. In pretending to be an expert on an unfamiliar subject—more often than not, the audience will recognize your lack of authenticity and consequently you will lose their trust.
DO stay relevant to your brand. Your company wants to add value and build awareness, not distract the audience.
DO show brand personality. Sometimes in trying to stay professional, a firm loses its accessibility and approachability. Personality reminds the audience that there is a real person operating the brand’s social media pages.
DO engage the audience. This gives you the opportunity to stimulate interest and receive feedback. Open up the lines of communication.

DON’T spam. Sending a mass message is similar to pushing brochures into everyone’s mailbox. Junk mail gets tossed out, and mass messages get tuned out.
DON’T forget to update. Staying current and refreshing content consistently shows your commitment and gives people a reason to keep coming back.

In the end, credibility through social media is about transparency and trust; two of the key pillars of effective brand buliding. Fostering trust through social media takes time and is achieved by staying relevant, showing your brand personality and engaging the reader. Most importantly, staying true to your company brand ensures that your image is kept intact which goes a long way in building brand awareness.

Patricia McQuillan

What can Brands Learn from the Not-for-Profit Sector?

The importance of engagement.

I revently had the opportunity to participate in a retreat as a new board member of the MS Society of Canada.

The first day of the retreat included a session led by an expert facilitator (recipient of the Order of Canada) with expertise in volunteer engagement. Several of the topics which she discussed have direct relevance to corporate Canada and successful internal branding practices.

The session started with a discussion of the core values of engaged volunteers which included the attributes: helpful, committed, caring, motivated and team oriented. Indeed these are several of the key values which corporate Canada promotes to engage its employee base. However, the non-profit sector does have an advantage in that their employees and volunteers also possess a passion for their cause.

Non-profits acknowledge that volunteers are the glue of their organization. Their focus is not about how to manage volunteers but how to engage volunteers. If only corporations could take more of this type of focus with their employees. Imagine if employees were passionate and engaged in their work and treated more as a customer and less like human capital; a resource to be managed and measured.

With a re-newed emphasis on Employer of Choice status, several corporations appear to be moving in this direction. Or are they?

Patricia McQuillan

IDEO Shares Learning

I had the opportunity to attend a Rotman Lecture on the TOPIC: “Knowledge Sharing at IDEO: Designing for Social Interaction” January 28, 2010. The guest speaker was Gentry Underwood, Head of Knowledge Sharing Domain, IDEO

Gentry described a series of tests that his organization had conducted to learn how to design the optimal knowledge sharing system that can be implemented at companies. Much of this learning can be applied to the selection of social media programs and strategy development. Note that he cited as key to consider openness of company culture to collaboration.

Assuming that this is in place, he described the following top 5 considerations in designing the optimal knowledge sharing system as the following:

1. Building pointers to people, different from old school systems management. Service capability companies find this especially valuable. Shared people database
• Similar to facebook people like sharing about themselves
• Integrate available systems, like HR systems for office location and contact information
• Include your personal interests and your external blogs
• Tell your story in no more than 3 bullet points
• Upload documents related to your recent projects
• Team can share what they liked or not about their projects

2. Build rewarding systems, reward individuals - How to build rich people and project pages
• Three main sociological motivators
• Recognition: human nature
• Project staffing: help build better teams
• Career development: connect feedback through the system
• Able to look at individuals in the context of their peers.
• Compliance is not mentioned but included with an animated character in the system named Milton. This animated character appears as a man dressed in a suit and tie; he pops-up on the user’s screen if inappropriate information is being shared or vulgar language etc. The appearance of this character is almost comical as he waves his finger at the system user. In keeping with the intent of increased collaboration and sharing; Milton serves as a reminder rather than a harsh admonishment.

3. Design Intuitive interface, for example, iphone
• Must be really easy to use
• Reduce blocks to usability
• People already had account in system, did not have to set it up
• No training, not set-up, no hand holding->make it as easy as possible
• Information already existed and just needed to be bought together in an easy-to-use format

4. Take the road more travelled - Integrate with existing work flows
• Bring information to people through their in-box
• Public gathering place, in-office cafes now include large wall screens with the 20 most recent people page status updates. People paid attention to people pages and felt more connected. This encouraged passive and ambient connection between offices

5. Iterate early and often - Try lots of stuff and see what sticks
• Learn early and change fast
• For clients, develop software prototypes
• Social software is complicated the human factor is added to the computer interaction. Intuitive and understandable but appropriate social preferences integrated. Social software is in its early stages. Computer and human interaction integration is challenging.

Interesting, at the end of the presentation, the speaker reminded us that none of these on-line collaboration or social networking tools replace face-to-face communication. This may appear obvious, but we really do have to remind ourselves of this.

Patricia McQuillan