Six appointments, one question about customers

Mandate

Grow visitor and commercial revenue within the capacity the fleet can deliver, without spending the confidence of residents and carriers.

Outcomes

• Agreed a written disruption protocol with an island council and business association
• Introduced an all-in fare on the commercial cross-bay route
• Built annual agreements with 37 commercial carriers and a reserved deck allocation
• Established a bilingual 6 a.m. capacity bulletin during service reductions

Decisions in context

The chief marketing role joined two things I had previously handled apart: what we say to customers and which customers get space. Commercial-carrier accounts moved into my remit in April 2021, which meant every allocation decision now had a marketing consequence and every promotion an operational one. I lead five managers, and I spend more time with the chief operating officer and chief financial officer than with advertising agencies. The 2023 vessel withdrawal tested that arrangement hardest; the protocol we wrote afterwards is the most useful document my team has produced. I present fare proposals and disruption reviews to the board's customer and community committee and answer directors' questions, but the decisions are theirs and the chief executive's. The three cases on this site all come from this appointment, and each involved a colleague whose objection improved the result.

Reason for the move

Current appointment, held while I look for a first independent directorship.

Mandate

Move booking and customer communication from terminals and telephones to a dependable online service in both languages.

Outcomes

• Raised the online share of reservations from 31 to 74 per cent
• Set a standard for simultaneous French and English notices
• Started the annual resident survey on the three contract routes

Decisions in context

I arrived at a company that sold most of its tickets at terminal windows and by telephone, as it had when I worked there as a student. Online booking was the visible project, but the harder change was in our notices. They were written by operations staff in English, translated later and posted wherever someone remembered to post them. I set a standard that important notices appear in both languages together, through every channel, with a named time for the next update. In 2020 provincial travel restrictions reduced our service to essential travel for months, and marketing became almost entirely a question of explaining who could travel and on what terms. That period taught the company that customer communication was an operating function. It also gave me the case for the resident survey, which now reaches the board each year.

Reason for the move

Promoted to chief marketing officer when commercial-carrier accounts joined the remit.

Mandate

Make the shared brand dependable across independently owned locations that set their own local prices.

Outcomes

• Replaced open-ended hourly quotes for standard household moves with written ceiling estimates
• Reduced billing disputes by about half over two years
• Introduced a response standard for online moving enquiries

Decisions in context

Haulvenne taught me how fragile a shared name is when its promise is delivered by dozens of separate owners. A customer did not distinguish between the franchisor and the franchisee who scratched a piano or added three hours to an invoice. I worked with the president and a franchisee advisory council of eight owners on the change to written ceiling estimates. Several franchisees opposed it, with reason: their local labour costs varied, and they feared absorbing the overruns. We adjusted the ceilings by region and kept hourly pricing for complex moves. I managed the shared advertising fund on the franchisees' behalf and reported its use to them twice a year, which made me accountable to people who were also, in effect, my customers. That arrangement prepared me well for the community meetings I would later hold on ferry routes.

Reason for the move

Recruited by Marelisse to lead marketing for a service I had first worked in as a student.

Mandate

Attract visitors to a coastline of small communities in a way that member operators and residents would support.

Outcomes

• Introduced pre-season meetings with community representatives
• Produced visitor guides written separately in French and English
• Coordinated shared campaigns with 120 operator members

Decisions in context

Destination marketing has an unusual customer: the visitor buys, but the community lives with the result. Our members were inns, campgrounds, outfitters and restaurants, and our funding came partly from provincial grants, so I answered to operators and to public officials at once. The campground incident in my second summer changed how I worked. From then on, each season began with meetings in the communities we promoted, and residents told us about festivals, road works and fishing openings that no visitor survey would have revealed. I also stopped producing visitor guides by translation and commissioned separate French and English texts from writers who knew each audience. The role gave me practice in balancing groups with legitimate competing claims, which became the central question of my later work on ferries, where the competing groups share one car deck.

Reason for the move

Moved to Haulvenne to take responsibility for a commercial brand with direct pricing decisions.

Mandate

Build a specialty cheese range in grocery chains without weakening the cooperative's standing with its own members.

Outcomes

• Relaunched a specialty range with clearer origin and weight information
• Disclosed a pack-size reduction on the front of the pack
• Ran the first separate francophone and anglophone consumer tests for the range

Decisions in context

A cooperative brand carries an obligation that a private label does not. The farmers who own it read its advertising, and so do their neighbours, and they will tell a director what they think of it. As brand manager I worked with the marketing director on the range's position in grocery chains and with plant managers on packaging and supply. The pack-size decision was my first real argument about honesty in pricing. The sales director worried that disclosure would hand buyers a reason to push back; I believed silence would cost us more if members noticed first. The chief executive supported disclosure. I also learnt to commission consumer testing separately in each language rather than translating one set of materials, a practice I have kept in every role since, including at Marelisse, where both language groups ride the same ferry.

Reason for the move

Joined Chaleurmont to market a place, where community consent mattered as much as consumer response.

Mandate

Design and analyse consumer research for clients in food, retail and travel.

Outcomes

• Drafted bilingual questionnaires for national consumer studies
• Moderated francophone focus groups for travel and food clients
• Introduced a review step comparing French and English question wording

Decisions in context

My first job was to ask customers questions and report the answers honestly, including the answers clients did not want. I drafted questionnaires, analysed results and, after two years, moderated francophone focus groups for travel and food companies. The work taught me how much the wording of a question shapes its answer, and how easily two languages can produce two different studies from what looks like one questionnaire. I proposed a review step in which a second analyst compared the French and English versions for meaning rather than vocabulary; the research director adopted it for national projects. I also learnt the discomfort of presenting findings to a client who had hoped for a different result. Delivering research to brands eventually made me want to be accountable for one, and to live with the decisions the findings informed, which led me to Bérandine.

Reason for the move

Moved to Bérandine to use research inside a brand rather than deliver it to one.