Ask a Community Business leader
An interview with Donna McLaren
At Brandmint, we believe that community is an essential part of conducting business. We look at establishing relationships with other brands and building each other up as necessary positive reinforcement that only makes us stronger. Listening to others who are also experts in the business world allows us to collectively share knowledge, and thus grow and prosper as individuals. Rochester itself is a hidden gem, and so are the people who live and work within it. Not only are we home to the legendary garbage plate, we also have some pretty incredible business leaders within our community. Our “Ask a Community Business Leader” series highlights some of the most profound voices who have significantly made an impact within the marketing & business realm. Our third interview is with Donna McLaren, Chief Marketing Officer at Roberts Wesleyan College.
Jenna: Let’s start off by having you give me a brief overview of your overall career in general, specifically in marketing, but including how you got started, and anything else that was significant along the way.
Donna: I started at Xerox in 1986 right out of college. That opportunity came my way because I was an intern with Xerox in their health management program, which really didn’t relate to marketing per se. I got to know people, and there was an entry-level systems analyst job and I interviewed for it and got that job. I stayed with Xerox until 2001, and then I had the chance to go over to Kodak. I worked in the graphic communications business for Kodak Nearly seven years ago I transitioned to higher education as the Associate Vice President of Branding & Marketing Communications at Roberts Wesleyan College. I manage public relations, branding, and marketing communications. It’s about telling the story of the college so that people can see the great programs that we have here, and what a great student experience it is.
Jenna: Tell me a little bit more about your role here, what’s your average day-to-day like & your typical responsibilities?
Donna: Every day, I think about what are those good stories that we can share with the public about what’s happening here at Roberts, and there’s a lot of good stuff. For example, yesterday we celebrated one of our faculty members, Amy Kovach, who received the 40 Under 40 Award. Every day, I look for opportunities to tell the story of our brand and people. I look for how we can highlight our faculty; how can we recognize our leadership here. For example, we nominated Deana Porterfield, our President, for the Athena Award and she’s one of the finalists. We are very excited about that honor!
My team also has responsibilities for the web and social media. We know that that’s the first point of contact for a prospective student, they’re always going to look for the website first. We focus on really being relevant and tailoring our content to what we know they are looking for. Also, my team does all of the marketing communications. Anything that goes out externally, my team designs whether it’s traditional printed material, brochures, billboards, postcards, and anything digital, too. I'm always looking for, what can we do next? What can we do better than we do now? What can we bring that’s unique? One of the big projects that I did in 2016 was leading the rebrand of the college. I’m still very proud of that accomplishment, it was very rewarding to be able to launch a brand logo that told our story – being founded in 1866, providing a Christ-centered education and having students who serve others.
Jenna: That sounds like a huge task to take on! What three words or phrases do you feel best describe you as a business leader?
Donna: I think I empower my team. I’m not a micro-manager. From my perspective now, I really want my team to shine. I want each of them individually to have the opportunity to make contributions that allow them to shine. I see my role as their coach, their mentor. I feel I have had a lot of achievements in my career, and now it’s more important to serve my team and allow them to grow and flourish and have those achievements. I really focus on that on a daily basis.
Jenna: I think that like you said, it’s definitely really important to get that recognition within the team, and that will further motivate them to rise up to the occasion and come up with new ideas, and be able to be proud of what they’ve done. There’s so many different types of creative avenues that are available today, so it’s definitely important to highlight that whenever you can.
Donna: I have one employee who does the work that used to take three people to do. By looking at her role of graphic designer and production manager together, we analyzed it and said: how is this functioning now? What can we do to improve it? One outcome was streamlining the work process and removing repetitive tasks and having internal customers order through an online portal. As a result, the tactical jobs are “off her plate” and she is able to be more strategic.
Jenna: That’s really good that everything can be consolidated and there’s room for more creative opportunities.
Donna: Being strategic and creative gets me excited too! We just came up with a new communications piece to support our recently launched fundraising campaign called “Connect the Community.” I pitched three ideas for the look and feel, so a couple were more traditional. One kind of built off of our last campaign look and feel. The new idea I came up with, people making a finger frame, so that they can picture or imagine what things could be. This was the fun example, and I was delighted that everybody loved this as much as I did! It turned out so beautifully. The photo captured the Frederick Douglass/Susan B. Anthony Bridge in the background with the student. It’s a lot of fun, we can do it on the website, and as we grow. I love doing stuff that’s creative but still drives the goal. It’s more engaging!
Jenna: I feel like that’s the most important thing, trying to captivate people, trying to give them an incentive to want to learn more, get more information, and peak their interest. What are some of the biggest lessons that you have learned throughout your marketing career?
Donna: When you’re in a role, always be honest and truthful with your management. I can remember a time at Kodak where I had stepped in to an interim role to take that on in addition to my current role because someone had resigned and moved on. I was doing my job and my former bosses job at the same time. I was managing it, my nose was above the water, but I really couldn’t focus on any one thing or be strategic because I was juggling so many things. The hiring manager brought me in and said, so tell me why you want this job. And I said, I don’t want this job. He looked at me and was like, really? No one has ever said that before, tell me why. I explained to him that I am meeting all deadlines, nothing is dropping, but I’m not able to spend any time to make things better. I’m really just moving things along. He went away and thought about that, and he decided to break up the job and split it into two positions. So I received a nice promotion because I was truthful and honest. If I hadn’t said it in that way, because I could have said no I’m not interested, take my name off the list of applicants. But because I explained, it created an opportunity and that moment opened the door for me. I learned to be honest and take that risk to speak the truth.
Jenna: That’s like the best case scenario. I definitely agree, I think that giving as much feedback as you can when you have the opportunity to give it is beneficial and it definitely worked out for you. I always think about too, even from a negotiating type of perspective. When I was in school, we would always talk about this in our classes with our teachers and they would give us tips about if we were getting a new internship or something, or if we were trying to negotiate a career out of an internship, they would tell us to not be afraid to speak up and don’t be afraid to ask for what you want. I feel like a lot of the time, especially younger people that are just entering the workforce, they are less apt to do that because they’re so scared and they’re so hesitant and they have never really done it before. I think skills like that are really important within your work life in general and it’ll help you for the rest of your career, basically.
Donna: I think another lesson too that aligns with Roberts is to take that job that’s going to allow you to make a difference in other people’s lives. It’s very fulfilling. Here in my staff job as the Associate Vice President for Branding & Marketing Communications, I have this opportunity to make a difference and give back to my team and mentor them and coach them from my experiences. I also step out of this job and I teach an undergraduate class each semester. I co-teach with Meg Hartman on my team We teach every other class and we are very buttoned up and “In the Know” of what the other is teaching. I really love being able to share about hands-on real life scenarios that are applicable to the concepts that we’re teaching in class. It is a more active approach for engaging in a conversation for what went well and what could be done better. For example, in our advertising class, we are having the students come up with digital ads, video, social media posts and telling us how each of them aligns with the facets of advertising. Everything becomes an integrated learning experience. I gave an opportunity for all of my students to attend the Public Relations Society of Rochester, the PRSFA Apprenticeship Program that was held recently. It was a two-day apprenticeship program on a Friday night and Saturday morning. I said to my class, anybody that wants to take this, I think it would be a great opportunity. One of my students stepped up, went outside her comfort zone, and participated. She said she learned so much. It’s really rewarding to see these students step up to these challenges, go outside their comfort zone. Doing it and then seeing, what did I learn and how can I apply that to other classes and coursework down the road.
Jenna: It’s valuable experience that they can take with them. The whole aspect of networking is something you need to become familiar with at some point. It definitely seems like a great opportunity. How would you say that the marketing process is different or unique specifically within higher education?
Donna: People may not know; we have more than one audience at Roberts. We have traditional undergraduate students, we have adult undergraduate students, online students, and a doctoral program too. I think that the one thing is, depending on the college size, if you look at Roberts, we’re a smaller college. We have around 1,746 students total. It’s important to align under one brand campaign because we are small and not dividing things out into different niches and activities. I think it’s important that we align under an integrated messaging platform, and the same look and feel. Again, it’s tailoring the messages to different audiences and the cycles are different. When I was at Kodak, I was in the business to business division, so it’s a little bit different. If you were on the consumer side, you would think of the cycles as going back to school, graduation, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, Christmas, etc. You would think of those cyclic events. This is a little different. I would say one of the things that we have to think about is being consistent with our messaging because we are building the brand of the institution. One thing that I think is different about Roberts Wesleyan College is that we are able to develop those relationships with our students where they’re not just a number. We have an 11:1 student to faculty ratio. The students really know that the faculty members care about them and their success and will go that extra mile to help them. We even have faculty mentors who support sports teams. What is the same though, is that so much is digital today. I think it’s the same in that we have to figure out the best way to target your prospects where they are, and being intentional about that. The difference can boil down to our differentiators. Here at Roberts, we’re a Christian college. We are the only Christian college in greater Rochester so students can come here to have a faith based education. That’s a unique differentiator. From a marketing standpoint, we have to figure out how to share that message with our audiences. However, we also know what’s important to students. They’re coming here for their majors. I say to my team a lot, advertising and marketing is like painting the Golden Gate Bridge. Once you get across it, you’re starting all over again.
Jenna: Yeah it’s a lot. All of these efforts have to be cohesive and blend together and remain consistent across all platforms. As long as you have the same type of messaging and branding, everything will match up.
Donna: We just launched our new campaign in June, it’s called “heart and mind aligned.” When we launch a new campaign, we create a brand message about faith and academics that would live for about three years. We just finished a fun piece for our undergraduate students. We came up with this really unique red-washed look, and to make this be more interactive, we added in arrows and circles and made it more engaging to take notes and add goals. All of the majors and programs are so important, so they can write in the booklet what their interests are. This gets them to engage a little bit more, we ask them questions like, “How would you like to serve others?” The service component is something all of our students do here. I really love how the view book came out. The center spread features our alumni and what they’re doing. Sharing the success of alumni is important as prospects may see themselves doing that same thing someday.
Jenna: I think that like you said, the overall message for a campaign, if they last about three years, it almost kind of follows them on their academic journey for every year that they’re here. I think that’s good to connect with the students.
Donna: When we’re updating things, we’re trying to figure out how we can do this to best engage the audience.
Jenna: Yeah, you can relate to them and you understand. It’s always important when people are understood, especially when they’re searching for something as valuable as their college education. On that note, why is community to you and to Roberts as a whole?
Donna: I think that as a college, we definitely serve our community. Many students come from within 100 miles of the campus. We also have a fair number of international students as well. I think it’s important that when students come to Roberts, that they feel like they’re a part of the fabric of the college. I think that’s part of our job through marketing communications, to make them feel like they’re a part of the Roberts family and to continue that post-graduation. You want your alumni to be connected with you. If I also think about the professional community, I think it’s really important that you keep up with your connections over your career timeframe. I still know people from my days at Xerox and my days at Kodak. If you want to reach out to somebody, they know that they’re a part of your professional community and you have someone who would be willing to help you with whatever that is. One this about Roberts is that it always feels really good to be here. It feels fulfilling to be part of this faith-based community and having great leadership who are inspirational. President Porterfield is awesome. She’s very authentic and genuine, and she’s a great example of a female leader to me.
Jenna: That’s wonderful. It’s definitely important to have your own personal inspirations and aspirational figures that you can look up to within your professional life and even within your own team. I feel like you did a good job of explaining the sense of community that you try to instill.
Donna: Every year, my team does a Friendsgiving. We are actually getting ready for this years. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, we are going over to one of my team member’s houses and we are doing a taco lunch. We will bring all the yummy fixings and dessert too!
Jenna: That’s so important in relation to team-building and connecting on a different level that’s not just work.
Donna: We also did an activity that was a strengths finder. I am an achiever, arranger, communicator, competition, and maximizer. I made these little buckets for my team that say, “The strengths of our team is each person, and each person makes our team.” My student worker actually helped make this. This was a student I mentored last year. Everybody writes thank you notes to each other for how their strength helped them, and they drop it in their teammates bucket.
Jenna: That’s such a good element of positivity, to just support each other in a simple way. Not to mention creative.
Donna: Keeping them on our desks also keeps it visible, which is another way that we build community, to lean into the strengths of the people on your team. I might want to lean into somebody that has stronger strengths for a particular project. It helps us think of it in a different way than just okay, we have to get this done. It’s a fun thing that helps us utilize everyone’s abilities. That’s a fun aspect of working at Roberts, everyone always gets together for a Christmas lunch, there’s a day where everyone brings in a treat for their office so it’s like a mini food festival. Those are the little things that make a difference.
Jenna: Those are all wonderful efforts. Just creating that positive company culture where you want to be in a welcoming environment and have everything be open and friendly and supportive.
After my conversation with Donna, my main takeaways were that providing support within your internal team is crucial. Making sure everyone’s strengths are highlighted and utilized in the best way possible is a guaranteed way to make sure that your projects and campaigns are ultimately successful in the end.
At Brandmint, we take pride in the fact that we are a Rochester, NY based marketing agency that can lead your marketing efforts in that exact direction. Contact us today to transform your brand into all it can truly become.