Heather has been stewarding brands through the shifting digital landscape for over 15 years. She has worked on integrated teams in small start-ups and in media agencies; planning and buying, comms strategy, branded content and sponsorships, as well as acquisition media, social and search. Heather has been with Mindshare for almost eight years, and is passionate about motivating brands and teams to adopt digital best practices. She loves getting deep into the data that creates new opportunities for her clients.
When she started working with the Air Canada account, the airline had never advertised outside of its home market. Within 6 months, she helped them launch in four countries, and the results caused them to immediately plan Wave 2 while in the midst of the initial launches. “Travel decisions,” she acknowledges, “are not the same in every country, nor is the media landscape. But in a transactional habitual category, we pushed for a digital-first mindset, using every possible screen in the right way to change behavior.”
She adds, “A great idea may motivate travelers in France but not in Quebec, or in California but not in Vancouver. International programs need to be consistent but not same-y. Adapt means to repeat successes, but resist the cookie cutter. Keep learning and testing the tiny nuances. Global marketers have to make decisions on the fly but not skip to the tactic they know when it comes to local strategy deployment. For a growing global brand, it is tempting to just want to repeat and get quicker in a world of adaptive retail. But no team should approach a new problem with old tricks - there is a line somewhere between. And that is a hard (and emotionally tiring!) conversation for many marketers and agencies. That no matter how much you know, you never know everything on a world stage. At some point there is a bet to make.”
Yet, she’s keenly aware that new ideas are just the beginning. “Limits,” she said, “are what make you think. Give me a barrier and I'll out figure a way around it.” Heather has found that applying a decision tree to balance the merits of an idea against the right challenge is more meaningful to clients. This helps to guide the conversation in an innovative, solution-oriented way that is governed by the realities and restrictions that really push the right idea through to creation.