Maria Pazos — Strategy Director, Colle McVoy
Maria talks to TheNextGag about advising startups, lessons to learn from DTC brands, and what she saw at SXSW.
Maria Pazos is a Strategy Director at Colle McVoy in the USA.
Originally from Colombia, Maria Pazos has more than a decade of experience in developing brand strategy for some of the world’s most well-known brands, including Nike, Coca-Cola, Mazda and Energizer.
Prior to joining Colle McVoy in 2015, Pazos was at GLUE, an independent agency in Colombia that was acquired by JWT Worldwide. She played a role in GLUE’s growth by tripling the size of its strategic planning department, which re-focused the core competencies of the agency. Pazos oversaw brand activation and digital strategies for Nike Futból in Colombia, helping the brand connect with soccer-loving teenagers in the country. She also designed the re-launch strategy of Mazda in Colombia and co-developed the strategy for Coca-Cola’s EFFIE Award-winning “Baila Fanta” campaign. And, her forward-thinking strategic work helped Energizer build regional strategies for eight countries in Latin America. Pazos’ global work has been consistently recognized at the EFFIE awards, and has lead to double-digit sales growth for her clients.
As a brand strategist with global advertising and marketing experience, she advises top marketers in strategy from brand positioning and creative to communications and business strategy. She’s also a Startup mentor and Lead for MDC Ventures, a collaborative venture capital fund that invests in early-stage digital media and marketing technology companies.
Maria Pazos was a speaker at the 2018 SXSW on the “Don’t Launch A Product, Build A Brand” panel.
THENEXTGAG: CAN YOU TELL US WHAT IS THE STARTUP SQUAD AT COLLE MCVOY ?
MARIA PAZOS: The Startup Squad is a program created by MDC Ventures, the venture capital fund of MDC Partners (Colle McVoy’s parent company whose subsidiaries include CP+B, 72 and Sunny, and Anomaly, among others). The Squad connects leaders across the MDC network to share thoughts and ideas about startups, technology and innovation. As a Startup Squad Leader, I’m responsible for helping evaluate the strategic fit of prospective investments, identifying collaboration opportunities with startups for Colle McVoy, mentoring founders, and educating the agency about emerging technology trends.
The era of big business, big culture and big brands is coming to an end.
TNG: DOES SIZE STILL MATTER ?
MP: I like to believe that the era of big business, big culture and, yes, big brands is coming to an end — or at least it will continue to be shaken up. We live in a world characterized by a rising small power spirit and I love it. Consumers are gaining greater control over the nature of the products and services they purchase to the point where the line between producer and consumer is disappearing. The erosion of consumer loyalty for big brands and the rise of consumer distrust in big corporations are changing the way we buy. There’s a growing belief that big is not necessarily better and lead brands are paying the toll. Long-established products and services are suspect compared to start-ups and innovators, and the opinions of online strangers are more persuasive than corporate endorsements. Social media has enabled this change in power, and new technologies, such as blockchain, will enable even greater strength of this small revolution.
There’s an inspiring generation of direct-to-consumer brands founded in the past two to five years that are giving us all lessons in how to do marketing right and improve the consumer experience.
TNG: WHAT’S THE ONLINE BRAND THAT EXCITES YOU THE MOST ?
MP: Currently, I’m really excited about what’s happening with small (maybe not so small anymore) digitally native brands. There’s an inspiring generation of direct-to-consumer brands founded in the past two to five years that are giving us all lessons in how to do marketing right and improve the consumer experience. From Glossier to Everlane to Away, these brands are reinventing digital marketing and consumer engagement, teaching us a thing or two about consumer acquisition and engagement.
Beyond these brands, I’ve recently become fascinated with what’s happening at Bumble. I saw their CEO, Whitney Wolfe, speak at SXSW this year and since then, Bumble is on my radar of companies that are doing everything right. Not only are they rewriting the rules of the internet from a women’s perspective, but they went beyond being a dating app. They created a business around empowering women. What’s not to love about that ?
TNG: CAN TRADITIONAL MARKETERS INNOVATE LIKE STARTUPS ?
MP: This is the million-dollar question I get asked at almost every client meeting. “How can we adopt a garage-band mentality? How can we be as fast and nimble as a small company?” It’s a matter of how you do it. Changing a large, siloed organization used to traditional marketing practices is not a small challenge. Yet my advice is always to start small. Create incubators inside your company and treat them as startups. It’s a great way to innovate in a big corporation. Form agile and lean teams with diverse skills, isolated from the layers of bureaucracy, policies or other imbedded beliefs of your organization.
At Colle McVoy, we knew this was the only way to truly become a digital agency. That’s why we created Hatch, our in-house technology and innovation studio. Made up of technologists, coders and smart non-advertising people, they are always experimenting and showing us what’s new. They help us solve problems in different ways and deliver future-forward thinking to our clients. They also build cool techy stuff and VR experiences that are out of this world.
The times when you could build products, brands and experiences with different teams and work streams are over.
TNG: HOW SHOULD MARKETERS PRIORITIZE BETWEEN PRODUCT, MARKETING AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE ?
MP: Rather than prioritizing one over another, the opportunity is in connecting them as tight as you can. The times when you could build products, brands and experiences with different teams and work streams are over. Why? Because smart technology and social media allow consumers to view everything your company does (the way you conduct yourself, the way you hire, the way you make your products, etc.). The distance between the companies consumers do business with and their wallets is shorter than ever. Today, your product is your brand, and your brand is your experience. When the products and services you make, the behaviors you live by, the experiences you create, and the messages you deliver to the world sync up, you’ll build a strong brand with a competitive advantage in the market.
TNG: WHAT IS BRAND ESSENTIALISM ?
MP: One of the fundamental problems that brands are facing today is a serious case of schizophrenia. They want to be everything to everyone. And by chasing shiny objects, they’re diluting their true essence. Brand essentialism means going back to basics. Putting your brand at the core of everything you do and doing less. It’s about defining your essence with precision and following it with clarity and simplicity. Being a brand for someone, not everyone. It’s focusing on what makes your brand and product unique and doing it better than anyone else. It’s about decluttering your brand — determining what’s vital and authentic and eliminating everything else. Even if sometimes than means ending up with nothing and having to start over.
TNG: HOW DO YOU USE THE “MAKE, DO, SAY” WORKBOOK WITH PARTNERS ?
MP: We usually do one- or two-day workshops where we gather in a room with a team of smart (and, ideally, fun) people from different disciplines to think about how brands can come to life in everything the company makes, does and says. It all starts by defining a solid territory for the brand. Based on this, we start questioning things such as: How would the company behave differently? What products or services would it offer? How would it communicate with consumers? What experiences would it deliver to the world? With the brand as a connective tissue for all the ideas, we end up with a robust plan that includes not only advertising executions but also product innovations, internal initiatives and even new business models.
Maria Pazos
Strategy Director
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