BRANDING CONSULTANT

I have built my career on building successful brands. For over 12 years, I worked agency-side with some of North America’s most recognized consumer packaged goods companies such as Cadbury-Adams, Reckitt-Benckiser, Shell (Consumer Division) and Scotts Canada. As a Branding Consultant I was responsible for strategic development. This encompassed climbing into the mind of consumers, understanding the competitive landscape as well as the culture, positioning and strengths and weaknesses of my client. Diving into my clients’ businesses and immersing myself in their worlds were the impetus to being able to carve out a strategic roadmap that helped them stand out from the crowd and a creative vision that would bring their strategy to life. From brand design to naming to package design and beyond, I, along with my creative team, ensured that at every consumer touchpoint the story would be told.

EVENT PROFESSIONAL

In 2005 I was presented with the opportunity to work for my family business, Regal Tent Productions. It was an extremely tough decision to leave the industry I had built my career in, but the opportunity to build a celebrated brand from a family business was too good to pass up. As a small tent rental company, located in Stoney Creek, Ontario, Canada my goal was to increase awareness and build topline sales. I immediately worked on defining our brand, interviewing existing and lapsed customers, competitor’s customers, employees and management to get a full picture of how we were perceived. I facilitated internal strategy sessions to understand where we excelled, what part of the business was most profitable, how we were different and who we did our best business with. It became clear that we were far more than simply a rental company. Our sweet spot was large, challenging, highly creative events, anywhere in North America or the Caribbean. It was with this information that I trained our employees and our clients to evolve their thinking of Regal from simply a ‘tent company’ to ‘creative problem solvers’. This mantra evolved the way we did business and was echoed in our recruitment strategies, employee training, sales communications, target market development, website, etc. Now having the roots of the business in tact, my next goal was to grow the business. This meant creating a sales group that would proactively seek out new business. In just a few years of part-time selling we brought in over $3MM in opportunities from proactive sales (of which 50% was closed). I also implemented tools to help us track our customers and prospects, identify the success of marketing activities and project incoming revenue. All in all, helping us attract and retain the customers we want.

SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERT

At the same time that I started with Regal, I created my blog, READY2SPARK. Being new to Special Events, I wanted to better understand what was happening in the industry and what was important and relevant to event planners (our clients). I also wanted to inspire event professionals and share my perspectives on creativity, branding and business. Over the past few years, READY2SPARK has blossomed into the special event industry’s highest ranked independent blog. In February 2009 I also founded a Twitter community called Event Profs. It’s a thriving group of event professionals who share ideas and thoughts on topics relevant to our industry (a group that was recently written about by Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media in ‘The Twitter Book’). These social initiatives within the industry have enabled me to be sought out to speak internationally, sit on numerous boards and committees as well as contribute a monthly Trend Report for the national event publication, Event Solutions.

Being involved in the world of social media also opened my eyes to new ways of building a brand. I quickly realized that traditional marketing and advertising are not as effective as they once were. It has become more and more expensive to talk to fewer and fewer people. Yet, many companies still have a “build it and they will come” mentality — build a great ad, Web site or promotional piece, and all of our sales and marketing woes will be solved. The problem is that consumers don’t want to be spoken at. They want authentic dialogue. They want to feel like companies are listening to them. They want to be engaged. I began challenging business professionals with this shift in thinking at speaking events and in guest articles. I soon realized that there was a big appetite for education on this topic as well as how to create the strategic foundation for success. And this is the story behind READY2SPARK, a company that helps smart businesses attract more customers through strategic branding, marketing and social media.

Other Highlights

• Advisory board member for EventsAsia, BizBash Toronto and Event Solutions Magazine
• Past-President of ISES Toronto and board member of ISES Canada
• Recipient of the 2007 ISES Toronto Leadership Award
• Recipient of the 2009 ISES Toronto Dedication Award
• Recipient of the Spirit of the Industry Award 2008 from the Canadian Event Industry Awards

Check out what other people have said

There’s nothing like a great testimonial from someone you’ve worked with…even if you did have to bribe them with a great lunch. To read a full list of testimonials for Lara, check out the Applause page.