The newly christened CBC & Radio-Canada Media Solutions has expanded its senior management team, naming former Telus marketing communications director Catherine Patry its director of marketing and business-to-business communications.
Patry arrives at the CBC from Publicis Groupe in Montreal, where she spent 10 months as group account director. Her resume also includes stints with Montreal agencies Bleublancrouge and Taxi.
Jean Mongeau, general manager and chief revenue officer for CBC & Radio-Canada Media Solutions, described Patry’s position – which consolidates several previously existing functions – as an “integral part” of the broadcaster’s monetization strategy.
Reporting directly to Mongeau, Patry is charged with developing marketing and commercialization strategies that CBC’s sales teams – as well as its marketing and media creativity teams – can take to clients and business partners, both on a local and national level. He described her role as that of “content specialist,” best determining how value can be extracted from the public broadcast’s diverse media portfolio.
Mongeau said the scope and diversity of the public broadcaster’s assets make Patry’s role crucial as it embarks on a new “single door” sales approach implemented earlier this year.
“The number of platforms and content and sheer information overload that can come from this amount of assets requires an organized and structured way to go about supporting the teams internally,” he said.
In her business-to-business role, Patry is also tasked with managing CBC/Radio-Canada’s external relations with trade publications, as well as its various PR and events components, such as a current revamp of its customer-facing websites.
Mongeau said Patry’s time with Telus – which included a significant business-to-business marketing communications role – was a key factor in her hire. He called it a “fairly narrow” search process, requiring about a month to complete.
