Cristin McGrath has a “Vyzionary” solution. A marketing strategist with a decade of experience in social media, content strategy, experiential marketing and branded storytelling, McGrath recently launched Vyzionary, an engagement-first social agency. Vyzionary specializes in authentic, brand-personifed and audience-centric engagement across platforms. Vyzionary’s teams create evolving strategies that follow platform developments and generate results relevant to your bottom line.

In a recent conversation with CMO Tech News, McGrath talks about why brands need to have “social ears” that listen to and engage with customers—including the “skeptical audience.” She describes what an authentic social campaign looks like (e.g., the marriage or marketing and community relations).

She also explains why brand storytelling is such an integral part of campaign strategy. All together, McGrath’s insights and resources are sure to help any marketer work more efficiently and effectively.

CMO Tech News: How can marketers engage the "skeptical audience" and overcome the trust challenge? Second, what are the essential marketing elements for capturing a real time snapshot a brand’s consumers?

McGrath: Today’s consumers have literally been exposed to marketing from day one. Pink toys for girls and blue toys for boys, commercials instructing kids to “beg Mom,” and a favorite child actor telling them which shoes are the best. The game has changed since the days of ad men; advertisers need to concept smarter and more strategically for the same type of return. As a marketer, my first priority is always authenticity.

Social media is arguably the most dynamic and powerful marketing tool at the industry’s disposal, and one that makes the art of target identification efficient and accurate. We have the world’s largest focus group eager to share opinions, fears, aspirations and criticisms. By not only hearing your engaged audience but actually listening to them, a marketer can then begin to build out an audience persona based on genuine sentiment. Once a base audience is identified, supplemental tools like Affinio and Facebook Audience Insights help to further confirm and explore behaviors, passions and affinities.

CMO Tech News: What does an authentic social campaign look like for a given brand?

McGrath: An authentic social campaign needs relatability at its epicenter. A campaign won’t see success unless the content gives fans a reason to engage, whether it’s a shared sense of humor or a cause-related incentive. To expect a jaded audience to use a hashtag or share a ridiculously branded video is nothing short of wishful thinking. All social campaigns should be evaluated by answering the following questions:

• What value does this campaign provide to our audience?
• Why would anyone share/like/enter?
• How does this campaign link to brand affinity?

The second and arguably most important characteristic of any social campaign is engagement. If a fan spends his or her extremely valuable time sharing your content, watching a video, using a hashtag, the least you can do, as a marketer, is demonstrate gratitude. A simple (yet clever) response works wonders.

CMO Tech News: How has this made the job of a CMO or lead marketer more challenging?

McGrath: CMOs are now challenged to reevaluate cohesive marketing campaigns, ensuring that there’s authenticity, contingency and a staff dedicated 24/7 to field questions and concerns. Previously, criticism of campaigns would go unnoticed, but now, with so many different avenues for fans to share outrage or critiques, a marketing team must thoroughly evaluate every single angle of that campaign prior to launch, and even still, social media may see “trolling” from those who are able to see inauthentic corporate goals.

CMO Tech News: How can marketers effectively overcome such challenges?

McGrath: Brand marketing leadership needs to recognize the importance of social media within an overarching campaign. Too often, campaigns are created in a silo by the creatives with no interaction between agencies. This leads to a disjointed, inauthentic social campaign that is simply there to “support” the broadcast elements.

The importance of an interagency relationship is still something that, quite surprisingly, is not the norm. I’ve had the pleasure of working on brands where all of the brand’s agencies collaborate to bring only the smartest 360 campaigns to the clients with glowing success.

I’ve also experienced the opposite, where a campaign is simply handed to the social team and everyone crosses their fingers, hoping for a win.
Ensuring that a campaign is cohesive across social, broadcast, OOH and beyond is of the utmost importance. Not only will a consumer get the most of the experience but the brand will benefit from a united cross-channel message that builds brand affinity and supports ad retention.

CMO Tech News: What resources do you find most helpful in doing your job?

McGrath: Identifying a social listening platform is definitely one of the more important steps in building an arsenal of tools. It is no longer enough to simply be reactionary; there is absolutely value in engaging with those who have engaged you first, but the bigger value comes when you’re able to introduce your brand to someone who may have never heard of it otherwise.

Proactive conquesting is something I’ve implored my clients to tap since I started my career; identifying the right conversations to insert the brand into while also dedicating the manpower to consistent follow-up is a serious game changer, specifically for brands who are revisiting social strategy.

Conquesting is a tactic that cannot only improve a young company’s brand health, but it can also drastically improve an established brand’s perception. A product that used to be the bee’s knees in the 50’s may now reach a new audience, revitalizing it’s perception and strengthening ROI. And what’s more? This tactic is FREE outside of staffing needs.


 A strong analytics platform is a must-have. Agencies waste hours and hours reporting on social media performance natively. While some of the big social platforms have intuitive analysis dashboards, the newer guys still don’t. This means guesstimating reach and manually calculations. When a powerful analytics tool is entered into the mix, not only does it free up a team’s time but it also standardizes reporting and helps to limit mistakes.

CMO Tech News: How is brand storytelling different from, and the same as, other types of stories we might read or share?

McGrath: Once again, it all comes down to authenticity. We, as consumers, share something socially that resonates with us for any number of reasons:


• Humor
• Shock
• Affinity
• Pride
• Cause

Brand storytelling bumps up against the eternal struggle of “We want something authentic but we also need to sell stuff.” Does that mean to simply pay an influencer $50K to tweet once about your product with #Sponsored tacked on at the end? ABSOLUTELY NOT. But this DOES mean that authentic word of mouth now plays a pivotal role in a marketing campaign.

To ensure the right people are talking about your brand or product, we must marry marketing and community relations together; surprising and delighting fans with exclusive content or trials, creating gritty and real content, embracing the “real-time” nature of social media.

CMO Tech News: Can you provide an example of how authentic storytelling changed a brand’s strategy and achieved results?

McGrath: I’ll use Chevrolet, as an example. As an alumna of Chevrolet (through FleishmanHIllard), Chevy’s challenge was to reinvigorate a perception of down-home Americana. In their most recent campaigns, they’ve brilliantly harnessed the authenticity of customer testimonials in a series of creative campaigns that captures real-time reactions to impressive facts, new design, and tech improvements.

These cars are no longer the Impalas that our grandfathers used to drive, and Chevrolet wants everyone to know it. What’s even stronger about this campaign is that it is applicable to each of their vehicles; with so many different target audiences, this campaign is all-inclusive and clever enough to perform with even the most desensitized audiences.

CMO Tech News: Let’s hear more about Vyzionary as a “social shop.”

McGrath: Vyzionary is an engagement-first social agency. Our approach is grounded in what made social marketing the powerhouse it is today: actually putting in the time to talk to our clients' consumers.
I cannot emphasize enough the untapped power of true consumer advocacy. Previously acclaimed social agencies are now shifting away from consumer engagement and rebranding to become production houses. This means that the industry now has an influx of “creative shops” but a desperate need for an agency to get back to the basics--and that’s where Vyzionary steps in.