Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Megan Devine. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Megan thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.
Our viewpoint at cat&tonic is that marketing is broken. Yes, we’re a branding and marketing agency and we provide marketing services to our clients. Marketing can be rehabbed, but it will take changing the industry’s mindset, focus, and some time to get there. We’re seeing that many corporations and marketers have gotten away from the foundational elements that make all marketing initiatives more effective. Things like listening to customers and hearing what they need, understanding the value of your brand, values, and messaging, and communicating effectively with their own employees for customer experience continuity. People resonate with these things and choose brands because of it, not just because they see a random ad.
There’s a belief that the metrics are the only things that matter, but metrics without foundational elements end up as a commodity race to the bottom. They aren’t tied to business goals, or insightful messaging. They don’t improve with time, and often they aren’t looked at from a statistically valid perspective (too many elements changed too quickly) so there’s no real way to know what worked and what didn’t. What you get is a saturation of emails, DM’s, social media spam and are inundated with meaningless messages. And now so many marketers get AI to write the blandest, middle of the road copy ever created. And it all sounds the same. Yawn.
I know many companies are smart and steer away from the vanity metrics and lowest common denominator “best practices”, but it takes more effort and time to create the marketing plan and execute it with patience and validity. The pressure on CMOs and marketing managers to “show results” has everyone risk averse and therefore not breaking through the clutter with new ideas or innovations.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I’m the founder and owner of the branding and marketing agency, cat&tonic. I’ve had an eclectic career that has led to me owning my own business. I held many different jobs in retail, financial services, worked for marketing companies and helped run other agencies. My varied interests attracted me to a variety of opportunities which then allowed me to build an excellent foundation for owning a business. I’m also an artist, athlete and love music.
Owning a business is the best job I’ve ever had. I was frustrated with working for other people and believed that I could do better for clients than the previous companies I had worked for. I learned a lot of “how not to” and parleyed that into “how to”.
What do we do for our clients? I had a client who once said that we do the hard stuff, and he’s right. We don’t do lowest common denominator marketing. Why? Because marketing is broken and everyone is fighting for the scraps of digital marketing “leads” without taking the time to lay a foundation and understand their audiences. We start with the foundation and make sure that’s solid and then do the digital and other marketing that actually speaks to people in real ways. We also represent clients who provide products and services that people need: enrichment for their kids, better medical products for better outcomes or banking services/investments with a bank or investment company that is involved deeply with the success of the community and supports lifestyle goals and philanthropy.
By approaching marketing with curiosity, we also solve the right problem. Sometimes clients are too close to their situation and need someone to see things differently than they do. We dig in, ask questions and find important findings and insights. I think this is what I’m most proud of, that we really care. We strive to understand and make a difference for our clients and their businesses. Our clients tell us they feel heard and seen. That’s a gift.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Every business owner’s journey has its ups and downs, dealing with things out of our control. The one that tested me the most was when my sister was dying, just after the pandemic.
My employees gathered around me and we all prepared as best we could for me losing the pivotal relationship in my life: she was my sister, best friend, athletic partner, and more. I had no idea what would happen to me. During the last year of her life, I helped her live the highest quality life she could, while dealing with Lewy Body Dementia. While I was still in the business, I was gone a lot and even when I was there I wasn’t at my best because I knew what was coming. The business was in good shape, although down some in revenue from the pandemic, but we were in better shape than many businesses. We had long term clients who loved us and advocated for us in the large corporations they worked within.
My sister’s death was closing in and I found out that we were losing one of our largest clients. A significant part of our business was going away. We had been in a procurement process (that we had gone through many times in our 20 year relationship) and we were assured that the process would be “fair” to smaller agencies. Coincidentally, our second largest customer also was going though a procurement process at the same time. We had also been through these processes many times with that client within our 20+ year relationship. The first call telling us they were cutting us from the agency roster happened a month before she died and the second client call from the other client dropping us happened the week she was dying. We lost our two largest clients in a heartbeat and then my sister died.
You have two choices when you hit bottom – push up or stay there and give up. Either one is a choice. Along side my loyal employees, we chose to fight. I was deep in grief and fighting for my business. I had to honor the grief, truth be told, I didn’t have a choice. We did the best we could to keep the business going and it took me about a year to be able to think and plan with any clarity. At that point we went about rebranding and retooling our agency to cat&tonic. It was a healing process for all of us and gave us a fresh story to tell and a new beginning from the hard times.
Since then we are bringing on new clients and feeling more authentic in the business than ever. We’ve engaged a business coach to help us be our best and we are more cohesive and collaborative than ever for going through this hardship together. It took a lot of hard work and trying different things to move the needle. All worth it in the long run.
Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?
Our favorite stories are always where the client grows and does well because of our collaboration. We have always worked to have long term relationships with our clients and have had several that spanned more than 20 years. I’d love to share two very different stories that both show relationships matter.
We are a small agency and we mostly compete against larger agencies for business. This has put us in very competitive situations. Larger agencies often have pitch teams, but we rely on our team that does the work. This works well from a relationship standpoint because our potential client gets to know the owner and part of the team they will be working with.
We went into one situation as an underdog and we decided to fly to the client location for the pitch. We found out that we were the only agency that decided to do this. This was a company with an 80 year legacy that had been bought by a multi-billion dollar manufacturing aggregator. They had big plans for this manufacturer. The manufacturer was floundering in lack of structure from 6 mergers and their brand no longer served them. By going to the location, we got to know the company, the people, the struggles, what they do well and where they needed help and what they needed to see their future. This trip gave us important information to create messaging and creative that hit the mark. They loved our approach and we got the project re-configuring their brand architecture, renaming, rebranding and creating a new website, collateral, trade show booth and materials and more.
The second story is about a labor of love; helping a non-profit grow from an idea to a go-to event to being purchased by a large, national non-profit. This is the dream for purpose-driven entrepreneurs. They took an idea and parleyed it into a successful event doing fundraising for a great cause. They then pivoted and merged with a 501 c organization that had been established for a few years and created a new organization focused on teaching kids to be active outdoors, take responsibility for their own health and be a positive force in the community. They did this through several kid focused fun activities where everyone could participate at their own level. This caught the attention of the large national non-profit, where they continue to create outdoors experiences that benefit kids, families and adults. So proud to be a part of helping with their success.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.cat-tonic.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cattonic620/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/catandtonicagency
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/megandevinecatandtonic/
- Twitter: megand3
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@cattonic620
Image Credits
These are all owned by cat&tonic