Latest news with #TracyDoyle
CBC
09-04-2025
- Health
- CBC
Halifax dentists hand out adaptive products for kids with disabilities
Items like 3-sided toothbrushes and flavourless toothpaste are effective but difficult to find The IWK Health Centre's dentistry department is trying to teach parents of kids with disabilities different approaches to caring for their teeth, but the team says families face hurdles simply accessing the most effective products on the market. Dr. Tracy Doyle said parents and dentists constantly ask her for advice on how to adapt dental care at home. She said patients can face a slew of challenges. Some have sensory issues, struggling with the texture and taste of toothpaste. "I've even had parents tell me that children don't like feeling the bristles on their gums," Doyle said. Other patients, she said, have physical disabilities that mean they rely entirely on their caregivers to look after their teeth. That's when things like flossing can be a struggle. The constant questions inspired Doyle to team up with Dr. Jenna McNutt, a dentist who was a student at Dalhousie University in Halifax when they started the project. They spent three years surveying dental care professionals across the country, asking for adaptive product recommendations and testing them out. They landed on a number of items, including a three-sided toothbrush that covers a tooth. "If you're time-limited in the amount of time that you have to help your child brush … this toothbrush allows more bang for your buck when it comes to cleaning surfaces for your teeth," Doyle said. The dentists also found a toothpaste that has no taste and doesn't foam up. For flossing, they found a product that looks like nunchucks that families find easier to handle. Mackenzie Cranidge, who is 12, tested out some of the products for the team. She has Down syndrome, and her mom, Jenna Shields, said her daughter is now eager to brush her teeth because she can be independent. "I have noticed that her teeth look a whole lot cleaner and she's taking extra time to make sure she's doing every movement correctly where she just has to go back and forth instead of side to side," said Shields. This is what Doyle wants to see — more kids finding fun in their dental care. But she's worried about all the barriers they face. The products they've found are expensive and aren't sold in stores. Doyle had to order the toothpaste from the United Kingdom. The team received funding from the IWK and the Thistledown charitable foundation to buy 200 of each of the products. They'll be handed out to patients and Autism Nova Scotia. Doyle said they'll now switch focus to getting the word out about the effectiveness of the products. She plans to do outreach with families and dentists across the country. Her hope is that one day, they'll be easy to get, and children with disabilities will have one less hurdle in accessing their health care. "That would be incredible if those were more easily accessible to our patients."
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Marketers are moving at the speed of culture — but can they define it?
This story was originally published on Marketing Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Marketing Dive newsletter. NEW YORK — Attend enough marketing conferences, and one is likely to hear a certain phrase: Brands need to move 'at the speed of culture.' Developing cultural strategies has become a top mandate for marketers, often equated with better engaging Gen Z. Part of the problem for those aspiring to tap into this form of brand cachet is that 'culture' can mean different things. Is culture featuring an in-demand actor in an ad campaign? Sponsoring a surprise concert for a pop star? Jumping on a viral TikTok meme? At an industry gathering this week, Brands & Culture NY, marketing decision-makers sounded more confident defining what culture isn't versus settling on a concise summation of what it is. Fuzziness around the term hasn't stopped some companies, including Diageo, from making culture a central part of brand strategy and planning as they look to modernize their products. 'I think culture is probably so ill-defined because even I feel like it's a bit generic. Culture is all-encompassing, which is not the best answer,' said Tracy Doyle, senior vice president of brands in culture at the spirits giant, during a Wednesday panel aptly titled, 'Four Hot Takes — What the **** is Culture?' 'Conversely, I think it's easier to say what is not culture: I would say something that's transactional,' Doyle added. Panelists alongside Doyle described culture in illustrative terms: as a kaleidoscope encompassing influencers and stories that shape societal trends, or a loom of fabric where a brand may fit into several threads or colorways. While metaphors varied, experts were in alignment that culture needs to be something fostered over time and implemented holistically rather than bolted on to quickly reverse a brand's fortunes. 'Culture is definitely not a panacea for poor product performance,' said Shibani Potnis, who joined Norseland as CMO in January after a long stint at Campbell's. 'At the heart of it, your brand, your product, has to perform. It has to be true to what it is set out to do.' The need to pin down a cultural strategy raises interesting questions about organizational alignment. Companies over time have employed chief brand officers and other roles, such as chief growth officers, to fill the leadership spot typically held by a CMO. While these job titles can be a distinction without a difference, some marketers see culture as operating outside of the bounds of conventional capital-M marketing. '[Culture] is, to me, almost [at the] heart of the big debate between brand versus marketing,' said Caroline Mayhew Gardner, head of integrated brand marketing and experience at the luxury consignment specialist The RealReal. The executive proposed that brand functions tend to identify a place in culture and drive narrative in those spaces while marketing is better suited to tactical areas like audience targeting. Pulling a 'psychographic cultural engagement layer' into customer acquisition ultimately makes for the most successful marketing funnel, Gardner argued. That said, culture was also painted on the panel as something that should serve as a guidepost for all aspects of marketing. Diageo has made culture a more upfront piece of its development process, sitting alongside other brand fundamentals like ironing out a purpose or values-based positioning. 'At Diageo, we've put culture into the center of our strategic framework,' said Doyle. 'It's really about our culture team and our planning team really working hand-in-hand as peanut butter and jelly and revising how we think about our brand through the lens of culture.' The rise of cultural marketing as an industry fixation has accompanied increased purchasing power and influence for Gen Z. Due to this, many perceive culture as a youth-centric topic, though panelists argued that's too narrow a view and that a robust cultural approach can translate across age groups. 'The throughline is more about the psychographics that unite us versus the demographics that separate us,' added Norseland's Potnis. Potnis at her prior job worked on Goldfish, a brand largely aimed at children but also consumed by adults, including parents who furtively eat the aquatic-themed crackers by the handful after their kids are put to bed. Goldfish eventually embraced a positioning of being 'a brand for the young and the young at heart,' according to Potnis, a concept that was threaded through communication channels and even product innovation. To reach older shoppers interested in experimental flavors, Goldfish leaned on partnerships, teaming with companies like Old Bay seasoning and Frank's Red Hot to develop adventurous snack variants catering to millennial tastes. 'We did this in the backdrop of knowing that adult consumers who wanted to buy Goldfish were probably not going to buy just the regular cheddar Goldfish, they were probably going to need a little bit more,' said Potnis. The approach to culture at Campbell's mirrors some of Doyle's recent work to revitalize Captain Morgan, which historically has a customer base of older men. The rum maker in March introduced a Sweet Chili Lime offering to appeal to people that more recently came of legal drinking age, though Diageo has been careful to not extend the brand in ways that put off its existing loyalists. '[The brand was] very befitting of a 40-50 year old, usually male. It just wasn't hitting what younger, 21-somethings are looking for. So we innovated,' said Doyle of Captain Morgan. 'It was just that unlock, really, [that] has done wonders for the brand.'
