CMA Connect

What happens when the traditional marketing funnel collapses? In the next episode of CMA Connect, host Alison Simpson sits down with Wanda Fong, country manager for Meta's Global Business Group in Canada, to explore how artificial intelligence (AI) is fundamentally rewiring consumer discovery. Leveraging a rare background in computer engineering and interpersonal communications, Wanda explains why marketers must stop treating AI as a simple "productivity hack" and utilize it to reach entirely new audiences.

00:00:00.920 — 00:00:19.680 · Speaker 1 Welcome to CMA Connect Canada s marketing podcast, where industry experts discuss how marketers must manage the tectonic shifts that will change how brands and businesses are built for tomorrow, while also delivering on today's business needs. With your host, newly retired CMA CEO Allison Simpson.

00:00:24.760 — 00:01:48.670 · Speaker 2 Today's conversation focuses on a question worth sitting with. What happens when the framework that we've built marketing around starts to stop working? So for decades, we've really operated inside the funnel. Awareness leads to consideration. Consideration leads to purchase. Linear. Sequential.

Measurable. We built careers around that logic. But right now that funnel in many ways is collapsing, and it's happening faster than most marketers realise. Today's consumers aren't always searching for products with intent anymore. They're discovering them through AI powered feeds that surface things they didn't even know they wanted.

Discovery and purchase aren't just happening in the same moment. And if you're only planning campaigns around the old funnel, you're already behind. So to help us make sense of this shift, I'm very happy to welcome Wanda Fong, country manager for Metas Global Business Group in Canada. Juan, this career is a fascinating blend.

She started with a computer engineering degree from the University of Waterloo. Spent years at Microsoft and now leads Meta's business across Canada. That technical foundation gives her a really rare lens on what's actually happening under the hood of AI driven marketing. So today we're going to be unpacking how AI is rewiring consumer discovery, what it means for Canadian brands competing on a national and global stage, and how marketers can stop treating AI like a productivity hack and start seeing it as the fundamental shift that it actually is.

Wanda, welcome to CMA connect. I am really looking forward to our conversation today. Thanks so.

00:01:48.670 — 00:01:50.510 · Speaker 3 Much. I'm so excited to be here.

00:01:50.710 — 00:02:07.130 · Speaker 2 I want to you started as a computer engineer at Waterloo. So writing code, solving very technical problems. Now you're leading a business that's fundamentally about human behaviour and persuasion. What was the moment you realised that your engineering background was actually an advantage in understanding marketing, not a detour from it?

00:02:07.170 — 00:03:16.360 · Speaker 3 I wish I would have said that I had planned this all, but when I started and went into computer engineering, not to date myself, Facebook back then didn't even exist. So I can't say that it was a grand master plan, but when I think back to my time computer engineering, the focus really was on systems design, understanding what issues are, how to break them down, and how to find repeatable, scalable solutions.

But also, when I was starting to look at electives, I took an interpersonal communications class, and I just absolutely fell in love with it, to the point that I actually ended up with a double degree in both interpersonal communications and computer engineering. So I guess I've always really loved the intersection of art and science, and I've just been so grateful because meta is the perfect playground for me to really be able to unpack one of our most complex problems, which is human behaviour and motivation, but be able to do it in a very measured and systematic way.

So honestly, this is my dream job and I've just been so honoured to be able to be part of this profession.

00:03:16.400 — 00:03:34.440 · Speaker 2 I didn't realise you had a double major and that's such a perfect and rare combination. It makes you incredibly well-suited for the career that you have built. So I love that you're following where you see opportunity and potential and areas that interest you. And not being as regimented about law. Got this certain degree I should be going this certain path.

00:03:34.480 — 00:03:35.360 · Speaker 3 Exactly.

00:03:35.400 — 00:03:46.320 · Speaker 2 You're also one of the few women leading a major tech platform in Canada. So what's one specific barrier that you hit on your way up that you didn't see coming? And what did you do about it that actually worked?

00:03:46.360 — 00:06:02.950 · Speaker 3 I feel like it's not about a female barrier or any other barrier, but what's most difficult to address is some of the unconscious biases that we may be holding, because those are invisible and in a way harder to unpack and to solve for. And when I say that, what I mean by that is how are people perceiving you as a person that you are?

So myself, being a female, being Asian, often having been the youngest person in the room, I would also admit probably a little quieter. Does that come across as a tech leader, as people think about it? Or does that come across as a sales person or a person in advertising? And I think those are all fair questions, and they don't come from a bad place.

But people make assumptions every day. We all do. That's how our brains work. And it's important to recognise those and to be able to address them when they need to be corrected or course corrected. But also assuming good intent is really critical in these moments, because I think that often we can put up barriers that potentially don't exist.

I think what's worked for me throughout my career in multiple different roles, and what I really enjoy is this focusing on impact and making people successful. That could be my clients. It could be partners. It could also be my leader internally. One of the things that I feel really passionate about is both mentorship and sponsorship.

I think those are two critical things as we think about women and being able to lift others in our community. Mentorship is very clear, but sponsorship is really equally, if not more powerful. And to me, sponsorship means speaking about someone, advocating for them and championing them when they're not in the room.

I know that throughout my career, I've benefited from sponsors both challenging me to take on new challenges, but also really championing for me and giving me opportunities and rooms that I couldn't represent myself in. So I think identifying those mentors and sponsors and arming them to understand what you're trying to achieve is critically important.

00:06:03.110 — 00:06:18.830 · Speaker 2 That is such an important distinction. So when you have encountered a bias from someone sitting across the table where they might have assumed for whatever reason, that you might not be interested in a role or you weren't the best fit for a role, what have you done to help counter that?

00:06:18.870 — 00:07:11.740 · Speaker 3 I think the most important thing that I go back to is good intent, because it's so easy for us to go down a victimisation rathole, which I fundamentally think is counterproductive. I assume that the person is making these assumptions because haven't been clear enough about the objective I'm trying to reach.

And so I believe that if you approach it with good intent and curiosity and ask questions to understand why they feel that way, that is the best way to respond respectfully and also equally with kindness and grace, so that you're not making it feel like it's an adversarial conversation, but really a collaborative conversation to help that audience member understand how that could be beneficial for them and the business goals that they're trying to drive.

00:07:12.180 — 00:07:58.680 · Speaker 2 That's such great advice. It's so easy to get caught up in that I'm not being treated fairly and be more reactive, but actually having a graceful conversation, making it safe for the other person to admit where they might have made a mistake instead of leading to a tough, controversial conversation is absolutely outstanding advice for all of our listeners.

Now you're also at the forefront of the AI transformation, so I want to dig into that now, starting with the traditional funnel. So we are starting to see it collapse. And that means marketers can't plan campaigns the way they used to. So typically awareness in week one, month one conversion month to month three.

But what's the biggest mistake you're seeing Canadian marketers make as they're trying to adopt now? What should they be doing instead?

00:07:58.720 — 00:09:59.410 · Speaker 3 I mean, when we look at the behaviour, whether you look on Instagram or Facebook or any of the services on meta, it's very clear. First of all, the 3.5 billion consumers on meta all have a different customer journey. And so there is no one size fits all. Some may still follow the sequential journey of awareness, consideration and conversion, and others may transact in one fell swoop with a minute.

And so I think the challenge is really being able to adapt to all of the different types of user preferences. And as we both know, there is an expectation for all brands to be able to do that and adapt to their particular preference and style at the end of the day. For me, the biggest challenge for marketers is that I just think our organisational design at this point does not meet the modern day funnel as you talked about it.

So if we think of a typical marketing organisation, we're organised by brand potentially consideration and performance, then you overlay that with the different channels, be it social or others, and that just doesn't fit with customer behaviour. If I go on Instagram and I see a great jacket that a creator has worn and I'm just really inspired, I go in, I search for different options.

I might chat with the brand and interact with them and ultimately transact. I'm not thinking is that social search or agenda search? I'm not thinking right now, am I in an inspiration mode or am I in a buying mode? But that ultimately is how we're creating creatives, how we're building briefs, and most importantly, how we're incentivising teams and creating success KPIs around campaigns.

And I think that creates some systematic challenges around the actual end goal, which is to create customer centric experiences.

00:09:59.810 — 00:10:15.690 · Speaker 2 Now, AI can also be a terrific leveller of the playing field for smaller brands, so I'd love you to walk us through a specific Canadian SM that used AI Power Creative and share what they did, what changed in their results, and what surprised the most about the process?

00:10:16.210 — 00:13:02.810 · Speaker 3 Oh, this is my favourite topic when I think about SMEs and just the wow that they have that moment, that light bulb moment, it's just my favourite. I'll give you a pattern rather than a specific brand, because that we see this time and time again. I think that if we think about the past without AI, Canadian brands who are SMEs and don't have the same army of resources, we're always limited to maybe 1 or 2 creatives, three at best, maybe some video formats if they had available to them, but it was very limited and they would have the resources to maybe refresh their campaign once a year now with metas advantage.

Plus, with just those three variations, you can apply that to overnight, change text overlays, change static images to motion video, be able to put in backgrounds, be able to leverage filters, convert them to different formats like real stories feeds. I mean, I could go on and on and those three assets all of a sudden with a toggle becomes 15, 20, 30 assets that can be targeted to different users with different behavioural preferences, as we talked about.

And that power of a toggle that's available universally to any business on meta, no matter how large you are. To me, feels truly transformational. Layered on top of that, I think I would be really remiss not to talk about the creator economy as we all talk about, and we all recognise that audiences really trust creators and genuine, authentic message.

And so I've really been inspired by small business owners who've been able to stand up as a brand ambassador. And ultimately, I'm willingly I'm glad they become ambassadors of the brand that really drive results, because audiences are interested in why they built the business, how passionate they are about the product, how they thought about the fabric and the design and what their story is.

And that's all so compelling. And so, in terms of what surprised these businesses, I think it's twofold. One is a surprise that they were actually the bottleneck. And AI sounds scary a lot of times, but it really could be just the switch of a toggle. And the second is, I think, the power of their ambassadorship, them being able to hold up their phone and talk about their business and why they created it.

That story is just so incredibly powerful, and watching them being able to build businesses on the backbone of that story is just incredibly fulfilling.

00:13:03.050 — 00:13:52.490 · Speaker 2 I love that example, and I've seen firsthand when you have a founder of small business owner talking about their why, and the passion was so evident and it couldn't be more authentic. It really is an inspiring way to learn about a product and a business, and ultimately to convert me and many others to want to support the business and certainly purchase.

Now, AI is very broad, and that's probably going to be an understatement of the podcast. It's also constantly evolving, and that can really lead to surface level adoption. Whether brands just using it for simple copy iterations instead of really fully leveraging all that it can do. So how can you help marketers understand the difference between as a productivity tool, which is important, versus AI as a fundamental shift in how discovery and personalisation can work at scale, which can absolutely be transformative.

00:13:52.530 — 00:16:00.450 · Speaker 3 First of all, I want to recognise that adoption is the first step, and it's great that companies are leaning in and leveraging AI as a productivity tool, and we shouldn't dismiss that. More than 8 million advertisers right now are already dabbling, and at least using one of Meta's generative AI creative tools.

And when I think about productivity tools, it's about being able to create copy faster, multiple variants of creative, as we talked about. But where the limitation is, is it's still doing existing workflows just a little faster and potentially more efficiently. To me, AI is a discovery engine. A skill is a completely different ballgame.

It's really about finding customers that you didn't know existed and being able to connect them with brands in a way that you also didn't personally customise. So if I give an example, we talk about having 3.5 billion users on meta. And no matter how large your marketing team is or how unlimited your resources.

It's impossible for us to be able to create customer journey specific to each of those clients based on their interactions, but with meta and our AI engine. Over the last year, we've been able to improve our relevance engine, and that means that at scale, we're able to better predict and deliver experiences that match each unique user based on their behaviours and based on their engagements, and continue to learn based off of that.

And what we've been able to see is user time has gone up, video review time has gone up, but also efficiency has gone up for brands and advertisers. And that happens with every interaction across meta. So that's what I think of when I think about scaled AI impact. It's this repeated ability to deliver impact and improved impact over time.

00:16:00.770 — 00:16:07.450 · Speaker 2 I would like to take a moment out of this episode to thank the Ernst Cliff team for helping bring CMA connect to our listeners.

00:16:10.370 — 00:16:35.770 · Speaker 2 Ernst Cliff is one of Canada's leading independent communications firms, with teams across Canada and expertise spanning public relations, public affairs, digital marketing, data and design. Ernst Cliff brings together national reach, regional insight and coordinated expertise to help clients make sense of complex issues to build trust and deliver results.

To learn more about Ernst Cliff Team and Integrated services, visit Ernst Cliff.

00:16:40.410 — 00:16:57.830 · Speaker 2 Now, when we were chatting earlier, you mentioned that every advertiser on meta is actually already using AI and many of them don't realise that. So can you walk us through a Canadian business example? What were they doing manually? What's now AI powered and what actually changed in their results when they made that shift.

00:16:57.830 — 00:18:59.320 · Speaker 3 When I think about an advertiser even two years ago, when they weren't leveraging AI to its full extent, an advertiser would typically define a demographic and age, a set of interests, potentially for a if they're selling sports apparel, let's say, interests in certain sports. And they would provide some creative they think would resonate.

And the value proposition for meta was that we would then be able to connect a user with this experience that they've basically created in a linear fashion. Now with AI, when we think about the new experience, it's completely different. We're not only finding people that brands have identified that they think have interests, but also other audiences and other potential customers who show interests in many different ways.

This could be that they engage with certain communities or they have a certain buying behaviour, and we're able to connect dots that don't seem that evident initially. And it works. We typically see when people are leveraging these AI tools and releasing some of the control that they typically see, at least a 20% reduction in costs in their total Roas.

And that's real improvement at the end of the day. And so I think that what really surprises advertisers is this aha moment that they were actually the bottleneck. And the most fine conversations I have sometimes is when they see those best performing creatives, they readily admit that would not have been their first choice.

In fact, that would have been maybe one of their last choices, and they wouldn't have created that type of creative. But yet it's one of their highest performing creatives within their campaigns. So seeing that, I think gives people the realisation to question their assumptions and to question whether or not that applies universally to the clients that are available to them.

00:18:59.360 — 00:19:06.320 · Speaker 2 That's a great example. It's also a fun reminder of the earlier topic we opened with around. We all have biases and sometimes they work against us.

00:19:06.360 — 00:20:04.790 · Speaker 3 Yeah. And I want to reemphasize the point that it's not that people's intuition is wrong. In fact, I'm always so impressed. I think Canadian marketers has such a good, strong pulse of their business and what their existing audience base wants from the brand, but I think the bigger potential is to tap into some of these unknown markets where we don't know that could also love your brand too, but they just don't know about it and need the story to be told in a different way.

And the real challenge is to have the courage to dive into and explore some of these different narratives that feel a little further off from their initial brand identity, but I would just encourage brands to try it. You can test this out in smaller markets or different audiences and see what works and doesn't, and maybe consider incorporating some of that into your ultimate brand identity.

00:20:04.870 — 00:20:21.070 · Speaker 2 And the efficiency that is helping deliver means that now a marketing teams of every size have more capacity, have more scale, can do much more niche testing, and help uncover some of those on top markets that they simply didn't have the time to get to in previous years.

00:20:21.110 — 00:20:21.950 · Speaker 3 Exactly.

00:20:21.990 — 00:20:52.110 · Speaker 2 Now, our listeners love to hear about anything that makes Canada different, good and bad compared to certainly in North America, but globally as well. And you have a really unique global view of how marketers are adopting AI across different markets. And you also have deep expertise on how Canadians are doing that.

So can you share where Canadian marketers genuinely are ahead of the curve when it comes to AI adoption, and where are we falling behind in ways that should worry us?

00:20:52.150 — 00:24:08.610 · Speaker 3 It's a complex one to answer because there's so many different dimensions and ways to cut it. But if I look at AI adoption on meta in Canada, overall, I'm really proud of it. I think that it's quite strong. And when we look at adoption of AI tools, so those toggles that we're turning on, we are pretty much a par with most global economies and global marketers.

There's some variation in different functionality, but overall we're on par with the global ecosystem where I think that we are lagging and we have so much potential is in exposure number one, and speed is the second. When I talk about exposure, it's really what are Canadians experiencing on the platform.

And when we look at meta, I really always encourage brands to think about it beyond their typical Canadian advertisers. So typically when I speak to an advertiser, they will say, show me my share of voice compared to competitor A, B, and C within Canada, but we're not really looking at it as a global ecosystem.

And what often surprises advertisers is that within their category, they may be a leader amongst the Canadian brands, but there are global brands who have more exposure, more share of mind, more share of voice, and we're not even considering them in the competitive set as we think about the strategies as we go to market.

So that would be number one is just expanding our view beyond the Canadian competitors, because this really is a global marketplace. And then the second is speed. And I think that this is no surprise to any Canadian marketer. But we are proud fast followers. There's so many meetings that I am in where people get genuinely excited about a new innovation, a new product, and then they will ask, well, who else has done it?

And if there isn't someone else who has done it, who is a larger brand than them? Than they say? Well, that is great, but our brand is a fast follower. My question and challenge in Canada is if we are collectively all fast followers, then who's going to be a leader and how does that get us to being a leader on the global marketplace?

Because ultimately someone needs to take the lead. And so I would just love to see Canadians lean in more to this mindset of being a global leader and not settling to be a fast follower. And the most acute example I could think of is WhatsApp. So we have one of the highest penetrations in Canada. Because of our diverse environment and audience.

It has high penetration. It's highly engaged, tended to build the one on one conversations and relationships with clients. Every day I see global brands interacting with me as a consumer, reminding me to check out, sharing, promotions, etc. And I don't see a Canadian brand doing that yet. Granted, this is a newer functionality, but these are the types of innovative experiences that I'd really love to start seeing Canadians leaning into a little more quickly and embracing that test and learn mentality.

00:24:08.650 — 00:24:28.650 · Speaker 2 I love the challenge to all of our listeners in the Canadian marketing community to not only be fast followers, I'm also interested. Do you see that our SMEs are more entrepreneurial, smaller businesses, more open to experimentation, and less proud about being fast followers? Or do you see it pretty consistently across your client base?

00:24:28.970 — 00:24:58.560 · Speaker 3 There's definitely more openness from SMEs to tests because they have less hurdles to overcome, but I would say their limitation and constraint is also resourcing. So with limited resourcing, they have to be really careful about taking measured risks because they don't have that leeway that larger multinational brands have to test and lean into innovation, which is why I think it's such an opportunity for us to be able to lean into that space.

00:24:58.560 — 00:25:07.080 · Speaker 2 So what's the biggest difference you see in consumer behaviour between Canadian and US audiences when it comes to how they're discovering and engaging with brands?

00:25:07.080 — 00:26:25.180 · Speaker 3 It's really interesting because I think that Canadians ultimately behave differently than US audiences. One of the most obvious ones is we are much more thoughtful about our purchases, large or small. So Canadians typically like to save items more. They think about it. They want to share it with friends and ask for opinions.

They come back to the product multiple times before they end up doing a purchase. I would say that in other areas of the world, the purchase cycle is much quicker and perhaps even more impulsive, but the consideration cycle can often be smaller and the social validation isn't as strong as it is in Canada.

The second thing that I would say is a the difference is cultural relevance really matters and is really powerful in Canada. And that could be either the mosaic of cultures that we have representing Canada, but it could also just be the Canadian cultural identity in itself. And when brands are leading authentically and proactively with their story and showing audiences why they are locally relevant, that they care about the community in Canada that generally performs disproportionately well.

00:26:25.220 — 00:26:45.860 · Speaker 2 So we know that Canadians can be a bit more cautious around data and testing than certainly our US counterparts. And sometimes there are very important regulatory reasons for that. Sometimes it can just be out of habit. So can you share an example where that being a bit too conservative actually cost a brand a competitive advantage, and what should they have done differently?

00:26:45.900 — 00:29:09.900 · Speaker 3 I come from a financial services background, so I 100% understand, appreciate and respect responsible data practices. But I think that sometimes there is a difference between responsible practices and avoidant practices. And that's really where we get into an area of risk and concern. One of the key areas that I feel really passionate about, that's underutilised on the meta platform, for instance, is the use of app installs and purchases.

So leveraging Meta's platform to drive consumers to go and make purchases or discover a brand through their first party app, which is something that they invest a tremendous amount in and has ultimately a superior and more secure experience. I remember in one case, I asked a brand why they weren't doing that yet, because it seemed like a huge opportunity, and that brand just said that it was a decision from privacy.

I asked what the challenges were so we could reflect those back to our product team and try to have them address. And actually nobody remembered why. The answer was no and nobody remembered who said no. And I would actually say that this is very common with marketers. I often see that they turn away from any opportunity that requires legal or privacy reviews, no matter how big the business case is.

And I just think that that's such a loss and comes at such a cost to Canadian marketers. But I do have a lot of empathy for why that behaviour is happening, because the friction is just so high. The hoops that teams have to go through, the amount of documentation, the months, sometimes years they pursue these opportunities just doesn't feel worth the cost for the teams, and the incentives aren't there for them to do that, even if it makes sense from a business perspective.

So I really think that this is something from a regulatory perspective we need to address as an industry. It's about being more responsible about how we leverage our resources and how we can help teams overcome some of these decisions so that we come to the right ones.

00:29:09.940 — 00:29:42.820 · Speaker 2 The consequences for marketers and getting that wrong are significant, so I can absolutely appreciate why they're treading very carefully. And when we think about ultimately what should be our guiding principle, it really should be around making sure that everything we're doing from a marketing perspective has the best interests of Canadians at its heart.

So I think that can be a good guardrail to hopefully encourage Canadian marketers to take some measured risks, as long as they're ensuring that Canadians best interests is at the core of what they're doing.

00:29:42.900 — 00:30:04.480 · Speaker 3 Absolutely. There are so many instances where they aren't personally identifiable information or just use cases that we haven't fully explored, but we've just stopped that project because we haven't done the due diligence. Who understand, is this actually a risk, or is this a discomfort? And really leaning into that conversation.

00:30:04.640 — 00:30:59.190 · Speaker 2 And Canadian's views around privacy and what they expect from advertisers is also evolving. And it's certainly it's a bit of a roller coaster, but they do increasingly expect that there is a value exchange for when they're sharing data with brands of any kind, that they're getting value back from that.

And the brand is about using that in the best interest of the consumer. So it's such an important conversation and such a balancing act and making sure that we are always doing what is in the best interests of Canadian consumers. At the same time that we are building Canadian brands and businesses. I want to even super generous with your time, and I know you're incredibly busy.

So I'm going to end with my classic question and CMA connect podcast. I'm lucky to have really inspiring leaders like you as my guest. So I would love you to share one piece of career advice for our listeners and giving. You had a very unique path and experience. I'm very curious to hear your piece of advice.

00:30:59.630 — 00:32:13.930 · Speaker 3 Yeah. It's funny. Our number one piece of advice for advertisers, as you know, is to test and learn frequently. And I would say the same for career advice. Test into areas that you haven't explored, really push on your assumptions and build adjacent skills that are transferable beyond different disciplines.

I think we all live in an uncertain world, but it's also a world in my view of endless possibilities. As I mentioned, Facebook didn't exist when I went to school. There was no way for me to plan for this role, whether it be career, what to pull my got, what experiences I got. But it's really ultimately anchoring around, driving value and finding different ways to provide value to your stakeholders.

So I would say the same for careers is don't be so rigid about needing to have one ultimate destination, because it will most certainly change 3 or 5 times through your lifetime. But be flexible and see each part of the journey just as another phase and an opportunity to learn something different that will provide richness to your perspectives.

00:32:14.370 — 00:32:23.530 · Speaker 2 Under those absolutely great advice and a wonderful note to end this conversation on. So a huge thank you for sharing your experiences and your insights, and a really great conversation.

00:32:23.530 — 00:32:24.770 · Speaker 3 Thank you so much.

00:32:27.450 — 00:32:40.370 · Speaker 1 Thanks for joining us. Be sure to visit the CMA for and sign up for your free my CMA account. It's a great way to stay connected and benefit from the latest marketing, thought leadership, news, and industry trends.

Great marketing careers aren't built in a single lane. In this episode of CMA Connect, host Alison Simpson welcomes Air Canada's managing director of promotional marketing, Raymond Ludwin, to explore his journey from agency strategist to client-side leader. Discover the strategy behind Aeroplan's 2025 campaign, a triple-Gold CMA Award winner, and why stepping out of the boardroom is critical to understanding the Canadian consumer. Finally, Ludwin reflects on the leadership mistakes that shaped his career.

00:00:00.920 — 00:00:19.680 · Presenter Welcome to CMA Connect, Canada's marketing podcast, where industry experts discuss how marketers must manage the tectonic shifts that will change how brands and businesses are built for tomorrow, while also delivering on today's business needs. With your host, newly retired CMA CEO, Alison Simpson.

00:00:24.120 — 00:02:48.530 · Alison The best marketing careers aren't built in a single lane. They're built by applying strategic thinking across different contexts, learning what works in each industry and developing a breadth of expertise that can make you valuable anywhere. Today's guest is a terrific example. Raymond Ludwin has built his career by moving between agency and client side roles and working across very diverse sectors, including telecommunications, coalition loyalty and travel.

Throughout this journey, he's developed deep expertise spanning brand strategy and marketing, consumer research and loyalty marketing. And he's always been focussed on delivering marketing that drives real business results. I've had the distinct pleasure of working with Raymond twice, first at a branding agency where we tackled complex strategic challenges together, and later, as senior marketers at Rogers Communications. I have always valued his strategic thinking, his very collaborative approach, and his genuine curiosity about understanding what actually drives consumer behaviour in business outcomes.

Raymond's career trajectory offers important lessons for marketers today. After brand strategy roles at several agencies, he worked in brand and corporate affair roles at Rogers. Raymond then made the move to Loyalty One, where he led brand strategy and customer experience for Air Miles, at the time Canada's largest coalition loyalty program.

In 2018, Raymond joined Air Canada, where he now serves as Managing Director of Promotional Marketing, leading the team responsible for turning marketing strategy into bookings and revenue. Raymond also led the development of Aeroplan's "Stop Sitting on Your Points" campaign, which took a hat trick of golds in the CMA's 2025 awards in the Business Impact category.

They won for Brand Engagement, Shopper Marketing and Brand Impact. Beyond his corporate leadership, Raymond gives back to our profession. He serves on the CMA's Marketing Talent Committee and is a judge for industry awards. Today, Raymond will share how to pivot quickly and drive results, as well as how Canadian consumers are evolving, including demographic and regional differences that he's seeing in his business.

Raymond is also happy to talk openly about his mistakes, as well as successes. In an era where AI is evolving faster than anyone can master it, where political and economic volatility creates constant uncertainty, and where the pace of change demands agility over perfection, that kind of honest reflection is exactly what our listeners need to hear.

Raymond also has a very fun story involving butter tarts, so they may have to tempt out of him. Welcome, Raymond. I am thrilled to welcome you to CMA Vonnect podcast, and I'm really looking forward to a great conversation.

00:02:48.570 — 00:02:57.810 · Raymond Thank you so much for having me, Alison. I feel this is kind of like the Barbara Walters or Anderson Cooper's opportunities for marketers. So it's really an honour to be interviewed by you.

00:02:57.850 — 00:03:10.060 · Alison So, Raymond, let's start with your career journey from agency to client side and across very distinct industries. What lessons have you learned from that transition, and what guidance would you offer marketers that are thinking about the next step on their career path?

00:03:10.100 — 00:04:21.660 · Raymond Well, I'll say off the bat that my career journey has definitely not been linear. I think calling it peripatetic or serendipitous would be maybe the most accurate thing. But on reflection, one learns about one's career journey, perhaps more so than one plans for it at the outset. And I think for me, what the most important learning was truly understanding what motivates me and keeping that core to how I think about how my career evolves.

I realized early on that I'm highly motivated by complex industries that have challenging marketing problems and interesting customer dynamics. So mostly I've looked at my next opportunities as being places where I ask myself, could I just imagine being stimulated and not bored five years from now?

I think secondly, you know, I got really good career advice myself early on, which is whenever you're looking at a particular role, ask yourself what next doors would this role open up that I could leverage into the future? And then finally, you know, and I'm sure this would resonate with everybody, you know, we spend as much time in our work environments, sometimes more than we do at home.

So making sure that time is spent with people you respect and have fun with, grow to turn into friends is incredibly important and makes a career satisfying.

00:04:21.900 — 00:04:46.900 · Alison That is such great advice, and we're certainly an example of where meeting professionally, working together and turning into a friendship. So one of the wonderful outcomes of the profession. So you've developed expertise across brand strategy, marketing research, loyalty marketing. And that's just a few of the broad toolkit that you bring to any business that you join.

So how has having the breadth of skills shaped your effectiveness as a marketer and your ability to really deliver business results?

00:04:46.940 — 00:06:42.640 · Raymond Well, I think, sometimes I think it's I think expertise is being generous, that's for sure. And certainly as I've gotten more senior, I, I sometimes feel like I'm now becoming more and more surface level at all these skills as I carry on in my career. But that being said, you know, that breadth of experience that I've enjoyed and continue to gather by working with people who now have their own expertise in those various marketing skills, what I learned from them, what that does, it really allows me to fit all the pieces of marketing strategy together and determine, you know, from which areas we will drive the right impact.

And I think that is the thing that having that diverse background really facilitates. You know, I love to cook. And so the analogy I would make, it would be it's sort of a little bit like when you need to start working without a recipe, you have some sense of maybe the ingredients you can use. You don't know the proportion, you don't know how they'll all fit together, but you know, you use your previous cooking and eating experience to imagine something new that can be creative.

And that only comes with practice and time and having that breadth of expertise. So I really benefited from having that, you know, that diversity. All of this for me, really came to a head when we relaunched Aeroplan in 2020 because in many respects this was highly uncharted territory. We were doing this right at the outset of Covid.

So that was a seismic moment in travel, not just travel loyalty. We were repatriating a very well-known but somewhat tarnished brand, and there was a huge customer experience and value proposition lift that we were creating with the Aeroplan relaunch. So our ability to go off a standard playbook was very, very small.

So being able for me to lean on some of those activities in my background across different industries and marketing activities, gave me the confidence that the marketing relaunch that we were planning might just work. And so you don't really realize how much you've had those experiences until you're challenged with a project or an opportunity where you know there is no playbook and you have to just rely on what's now bred in the bone or what has become instinct.

00:06:42.880 — 00:07:03.160 · Alison Well, I love the energy of constantly learning and comfort with ambiguity, because with the pandemic being a prime example, especially in your industry, none of us knew what was coming, how long it was going to last. So being comfortable, not knowing and being comfortable, seizing the moment, figuring out, okay, how are we going to solve this together is mission critical for any leader, and certainly in the marketing profession.

00:07:03.360 — 00:08:07.610 · Raymond You use the term ambiguity. And for me, that's so resonant because I often talk to my team about this, that ambiguity is uncomfortable, but it is also where the most interesting opportunities lie. Many of us work in matrix organizations, where roles and responsibilities aren't always obvious, and those come to the forefront when something new and interesting happens or presents itself that touches everybody.

And one can either turn around and say, well, I don't know whose job that is and this is going to paralyze us. Or one you can turn around and say, well, because it touches everybody. It's an opportunity for collaboration in ways that we hadn't thought about before. And if we focus less on whose job it is or what the right process is, and more focus on, what are the outcomes that we need to drive together, magic happens.

And it brings the best of a matrix organization to life. And that is what I call these ideas of productive areas of grey. There are unproductive areas of grey where things are just badly-designed, but there are productive areas of grey where a project or a cool marketing opportunity comes to life, and the right kind of organization with the right kind of attitude can really seize on that.

00:08:07.650 — 00:08:29.930 · Alison Now, I've also heard you say, don't let perfection get in the way of progress, which is so smart. But many of us get caught on it's got to be perfect. It's got to be like 99%. But with our ever evolving marketplace, agility is increasingly important and can actually be a real competitive advantage. So can you unpack your philosophy for our listeners and share an example of where this approach has really paid off?

00:08:29.970 — 00:10:44.900 · Raymond What it means is we we have a goal in mind, but we don't let today's solution be an impediment, even if it's suboptimal to to actually driving towards an eventual outcome, we get the confidence to take the first step. You know, for me, one of my favourite examples of this is we do a celebratory end of year email that we send out to our Air Canada base of the kinds of activities that they've done within the Air Canada and Aeroplan ecosystem.

People really look at the end of the year. Their travel activities are part of the story they tell themselves, and so we wanted to contribute to that. It's a little bit like Spotify Wrapped, which is, you know, for was for us a very high bar to shoot for. I mean, Spotify Wrapped is like I'll say, near to perfect, right?

And so as we look at how do we do our version of that, you know, the point of comparison of Spotify Wrapped became a little bit challenging. And when we decided to do this for ourselves four years ago, we maybe had some technical challenges that were beyond something that Spotify would have had to worry about. We had so many data sources to pull from, and many of them aren't in real time.

And so for us, there was a real risk of overshooting what we tried to capture in terms of our customer's behaviours and then not fully capturing the right kind of content and data, which would actually create anxiety for people because many of them are tracking their flights, because they're looking to get more points, or they're looking to achieve status.

And so the risk of trying to be comprehensive and therefore more relevant was very much balanced against how do we make sure that we're accurate. So basically what we did is we just started with what is the minimum amount of data that we can be confident in? How do we make sure that all of that data can be properly piped into the CRM engine and basically work with our amazing internal creative partners to develop something really cool and then just watch it and see how it did.

And we actually had incredibly high engagement in that first year, and that meant that the team felt confident in delivering it the following year, adding more data sources, adding more data sources. And now we're at well over 100 data sources that feed into everybody's individualized, and personalized Wrapped experience, and we just see the engagement getting better and better. And much of the feedback we get, our base just talks about how much they look forward to it, and it's such a fun recollection of all the trips that they've taken. I still don't think we're all the way as good as Spotify Wrapped, but it just gives us motivation to just keep on progressing there.

00:10:45.220 — 00:11:00.990 · Alison Well, I love that you didn't walk away from the idea because it was going to be really hard and you ran the risk of, this works because it's ultra personalization and without the right data sources, not having done this before, if you shot too big the first year, you could have had the exact counter effect.

00:11:01.030 — 00:11:01.670 · Raymond That's right.

00:11:01.710 — 00:11:25.430 · Alison I absolutely love it. So kudos to you and your team for pulling it off. Now, you've always been very open and authentic, not just about your successes, but where you struggle as a marketer. And no one that's successful in our career gets there without mistakes and without struggles along the way.

So can you share a mistake or two that taught you a valuable lesson? And maybe by sharing it, we can spare a couple of our listeners from going down the same path.

00:11:25.630 — 00:11:28.510 · Raymond So just like 1 or 2, because I have a lot to choose from.

00:11:28.510 — 00:11:30.350 · Alison You can go with your top two. How's that?

00:11:30.390 — 00:14:41.680 · Raymond Okay, well, maybe I'll start on a serious note, which is to say, you know, in all honesty, the mistakes that have really given me the most amount of long term heartache, they're actually not the marketing ones. They're the HR ones where I haven't addressed problems in the team in a timely fashion, or I haven't helped people reach their full potential, or I've put people in roles or in situations where they haven't been successful or happy.

You know, those are mistakes that I've made that have, you know, affected people's lives in a meaningful way and not in a good one. And so those are the mistakes that haunt me still. And then I would also just say maybe, on an also serious note, marketing mistakes are relatively easy to rectify. By contrast, at Air Canada, our first and most very sacred value is safety first always.

And so there's a part of the business that is rightfully allergic to mistakes. By contrast, my team and what we do and the mistakes that I myself make, yes, they have very serious commercial implications. But unlike many of my colleagues, people's lives aren't in the marketer's hands. So that means if I mess up, I have to find other ways of making up the revenue that I forfeited.

But that's a maybe a less serious mistake than, you know, than the mistakes that we really worry about here at Air Canada. So I'm good with that kind of mistake where you can learn from it, you can fix it, you can find more revenue. It's liberating to know that there's a solution that can insulate or provide a bit of insurance against some of those risks.

So I'll give you a little bit of an example for my maybe from my Air Miles days, I led a rebranding effort at air miles, and one of the things we really wanted to focus on was pushing a common Air Miles design system that we would effectively impose on our retail partners to use in store. The thinking being that if customers could recognize Air Miles everywhere, it would make them more and more engaged in the program.

That looked great from our perspective, sitting in the boardroom or on a PowerPoint slide, but out in the wild in busy and cluttered retail aisles, that effort got really lost. We weren't sensitive to individual retail design systems of many of our different partners.

And I can be quite persuasive, and so I persuasively convinced everyone, don't worry about this. You know, collectors will eventually get used to seeing all of these in-store, all of the POP en masse, and eventually start to seek them out. Nope. It just didn't work. People ignored it. People missed it. We used research. We found out, you know, that this, in fact, was not working.

People were not buying things on bonus as much as they were before. It truly failed. And so we quite inconveniently, inexpensively had to rip out all of that signage, eat a little crow, and then build our own Air Miles signage that was less about our brand and more about the brand partnership with the retailers in whose store we were putting up the signs.

And so I learned a lot from that. You know, two things. One is I'm actually not particularly good at brand design, so I now leave that more to some of my very talented colleagues. And two, marketers really can't be too precious. You can start with the best of theoretical intentions, and then you really have to figure out, how is this actually going to work and accept a well-aligned solution that maybe 90% of the way there, 80% of the way there, but at least is, you know, everybody's bought in and is working versus something that looks amazing, is 100% on brand and then, you know, fails.

00:14:41.680 — 00:15:07.170 · Alison Thank you for your candour and sharing those examples. And you're absolutely right. And I love the learning you shared around the Air Miles brand example. And that also speaks to the importance of getting out of the boardroom, walking through your different coalition partners, physical spaces, whether they're gas stations, retailers, and really understanding how it's going to come to life and what you're competing against.

And that's a lesson that I've learned a few times in my career, and such a powerful one for sure.

00:15:07.370 — 00:15:45.570 · Raymond Well, 100%. I mean, if I think back to your career and having clients like Tim Hortons and understanding their, you know, the actual Tim Hortons environment, it's one of those things that's so easy to say and so hard to do, because there are so many meeting demands on our time, and it feels like you can never get out of the office, but that's just never lost.

I get this now with getting to participate in activities around our operations at Air Canada. It's so fascinating. And I come back filled with so many ideas from our incredibly engaged frontline co-workers. And it's irreplaceable. There's nothing like that. And it's a lesson to continually remind oneself about.

00:15:45.610 — 00:15:53.380 · Alison Because you're right, like, we're so busy getting little work done that it feels can indulgent to take that time out, but you never regret having done it for sure.

00:15:53.420 — 00:15:54.540 · Raymond Yeah, absolutely.

00:15:54.580 — 00:16:01.020 · Alison I would like to take a moment out of this episode to thank the Earnscliffe team for helping bring CMA Connect to our listeners.

00:16:03.980 — 00:16:29.380 · Alison Earnscliffe is one of Canada's leading independent communications firms, with teams across Canada and expertise spanning public relations, public affairs, digital marketing, data and design. Earnscliffe brings together national reach, regional insight and coordinated expertise to help clients make sense of complex issues to build trust and deliver results.

To learn more about Earnscliffe team and integrated services, visit earnscliffe.ca.

00:16:33.580 — 00:16:52.500 · Alison Now, often leaders put the pressure on themselves or feel the pressure from others to only share their successes, to pretend they have all the answers. Which is just such a ridiculous thought to think that any of us have all the answers. But why do you think it's important for marketer leaders to be much more open about the challenges and the mistakes they've made along the way?

00:16:52.940 — 00:16:54.420 · Raymond I think there's sort of two reasons.

00:16:54.420 — 00:19:09.710 · Raymond One is I have a great mistrust of hubris, either in myself or in the people I work with. And over time, I've learned to, you know, when I'm feeling really adamant about something, I have to very much self-interrogate. Why am I feeling adamant? Have I thought about this enough? Have I, you know, have I analyzed it enough?

Have I, am I really sure why I can be adamant? And I think that having a degree of uncertainty is important because then you also are open to, if this isn't going to work, you could recognize the signs of it. That extends to the people I work with. You know, when my team comes and presents to me, if they are able to tell me where they think it might go wrong, they'll have my full-throated support.

And when they seem like they're infallible, they don't. Because I worry that they haven't thought things all the way through. I had a wonderful compliment once from a woman on my team at Air Miles, and she was just an incredible co-worker. So smart, so dedicated, was just awesome. Anyways, I sent them down a particular path where I had an idea on how we were going to drive collector engagement, and it involved a particular kind of earning challenge that the collector would do.

It was way too complicated. It was like not going to work. Anyways, the team went off and did a bunch of analysis on this, and they came back and they presented to me the data that basically said my idea was stupid, and I could tell they were pretty nervous about it and they were like, presented this, this deck.

And at the end of it, I listened to them like, well, that was a dumb idea of mine. I'm glad we're not doing it. Please don't waste any more time. And they stopped and they were like, they were so surprised because they thought there would be pushback. And I said, well, if you can't push back on me on a bad idea, then what kind of confidence would you have in my leadership, in your own ideas? And it just created such an incredible bond as I worked with this person. On reflection, when more, she and I worked together, it had built that sense of trust that we could rely on one another, whether I was her boss or she was my employee, or vice versa.

We could rely on one another to challenge ideas, to make them better, to keep on honing and honing and improving. And I think this is the important part about being a leader, is you have to recognize when your ideas are bad, and the more you own up to it, the more your team will have the confidence that when you're supportive of them, it's because you know that they're on the right track on something.

00:19:09.950 — 00:19:22.710 · Alison You also will make them more comfortable realizing when they have an idea that also isn't great, after they've done and spend a little time with it, you've made it safe for them. Say, you know what? I don't think we should spend any more time on this. So that's a great example of leading by example.

00:19:22.950 — 00:19:29.110 · Raymond But typically I have a greater proportion of dumb ideas than they do, so it's constantly renewing resources, this particular example.

00:19:29.150 — 00:19:45.600 · Alison Now your role gives you a really unique lens on how Canadians are evolving. So we've got renewed patriotism. We've certainly got uncertainty around tariff. We've got economic challenges. So how are Canadian's travel plans and buying behaviours changing and what shifts are you seeing in their marketplace behaviours?

00:19:45.720 — 00:21:26.690 · Raymond You know, you're so right, and I have a privilege of working in a category that has very high aspirational meaning to people. You know, the purchases they make in travel are highly symbolic of themselves. So really, travel's such a unique lens on Canadian's state of mind, and it's such an interesting barometer by which to look at the dynamics of consumers in Canada.

A couple of really interesting things are going on. This may be a structural effect post-Covid, but people are very willing to prioritize the travel experience as part of their overall travel plans. Along with hotels, we're really seeing high, high interest in premiumization. So pre-pandemic, the front of the plane was especially sold to corporate travellers.

But now we're much more likely to see leisure customers willing to spend a bit more on comfort because they weren't able to travel for many years during the pandemic. And now they know come hell or high water that trip, it matters to them. And that trip is super important. And so they're willing to spend a bit more on on comfort, that could be at the front of the plane, but it also works all the way to the back of the plane. A bit more room, nicer food, etc. and our product team is really leaning into that premiumization, and that is a great opportunity as a marketer to try to ensure that we are not seen as a commodity element of the travel experience and something that is worth marketing the value of.

Another interesting sort of dynamic going on right now is just how, in times of economic uncertainty, people are still prioritizing travel, but they're booking way closer in. We're seeing, you know, the booking window, which is what we refer to as a difference between when they actually make the purchase for a trip and when they travel, shorten quite significantly.

You can understand why, as people are wondering, like, where are the places that are going to be best to travel? What's the money that's going to be in my wallet when I when it comes time to travel and so on and so forth, you can understand and empathize with why people are making those decisions. But it certainly makes for a wild ride for us, both for my revenue management colleagues as well as, you know, for us, because it means that our traditional marketing calendar for routes is really kind of out the window now.

We have to be a lot more adaptable to where the gaps and opportunities are as our load factors change and how, you know, the difference between, you know, a flight that's filling profitably and one that isn't, it becomes more acute in the timing of it. We are also you know, you spoke about tariffs, we are definitely seeing the effects of Canadians evolving relationship with the U.S.

While it's true that Canadian leisure travel going trans-border is certainly softer than in 2024, what's really bounced back is corporate travel. Companies realize the U.S. relationships that they have need to be nurtured and booking activity on Air Canada is reflective of that. They are spending the time to be close with their with their American customers, with their American colleagues.

That's not going away. Furthermore, actually, one thing I'm really proud of, both as a marketer, but also just as a Canadian, is seeing how our booking patterns reflect the broader trade diversification patterns that our current federal government is pushing for, as the government looks to ensure that Canada is set up for the future and is present more globally.

We're actually seeing a parallel amount of activity for some of those places happening in our own network. And so, you know, it gives me a lot of pride that we're helping to contribute to how Canada makes inroads around the globe. One maybe further thing is, as the world seems more unsettled for people, it also means that their traditional destinations that they rely on are perhaps less of a sure bet.

And, you know, we're actually, in an exciting way, extremely well-positioned to take advantage of that. You know, as two examples, we'll be flying to Sapporo and Tenerife this winter, places where, you know, many Canadians haven't thought about going on vacation before. And so now my team and our and my job is to start to drive interest in places that people hadn't considered, you know, which is super fun.

And that's possible because Canadians are looking for diversified options that they may not have thought about before 2025.

00:23:41.060 — 00:23:50.820 · Alison I'd love to build on that and hear from you, are you seeing differences in how Canadians are buying and making travel decisions compared to Americans or travellers from other countries?

00:23:52.460 — 00:25:47.560 · Raymond So a key sort of difference in the Canadian travel industry is how focused Canadians are on package holidays, much more so than Americans. And actually, in that vein, we're more in keeping with Europeans. What's interesting about that dynamic is Canadians are looking for more and more things to be packageable.

And if you think about how generative AI is changing the shopping experience, this is one area where we are really looking to evolve our product offering to help build travel options and travel packages in a more dynamic way to match that changing demand. We're an industry that is extraordinarily intertwined with the way people change and use technology in general, and that's been the case since the adoption of online travel way back in the early 2000.

And it continues to be the case now. In many respects, though, particularly from a regional perspective, we actually have more in common than than different. You know, Canadians have certain typical trips they do. You know, be it sun trip a year, be it a trip to visit family, be it maybe every once in a while, a big foreign destination adventure.

But what varies less is those archetypes and what varies more is where, is the where they go. So, for example, customers in Vancouver are much more likely to find those sun options in Pacific Mexico and less so East coast, which is where a lot of the Ontarians go. Things like, you know, there's some really wonderful Caribbean gems that are very popular among the Quebecois, particularly because they're francophone islands.

And where we're having a lot of fun as a marketing team is actually introducing some of those never considered sun destinations by non-francophone markets to Anglophone markets. You know, getting people to, in Ontario to think about why or why are the Quebecois was so excited about Guadeloupe and Martinique as examples.

So in many respects there's a lot of variation in terms of place and timing for Canadian travel, but some of those core needs are almost innate. They're common across the country.

00:25:47.560 — 00:25:55.120 · Speaker 2 Now beyond regional differences are there demographic patterns that are emerging? Are Gen Z purchasing very differently than Gen X, for example?

00:25:55.320 — 00:27:23.560 · Raymond For sure. And there's sort of two really big, let's call it structural changes that we're seeing. One is almost the decline of what we might have considered shoulder season. In fact, September, October in some areas are as big for us as July and August for some of those traditional transatlantic trips.

Massive traffic, even going into November. And so that has really changed the nature of seasonality for us. And what's driving that, it's older consumers with more flexibility, still very keen to have travel options, maybe looking to avoid the heat, maybe looking to avoid some of the crowds and changing their travel environment into some of these shoulder seasons.

It's actually great because it means that it flattens out our demand curve quite significantly and allows us to run our network a lot more efficiently. So that's one way that we, you know, again, have had to adapt both in terms of the segment as well as the marketing calendar, to try to take advantage of that.

The second thing, and you know, this may sound like a platitude, but our younger travellers are much, much more likely to be seeking out unique and memorable travel experiences as part of their trips. Lessons, excursions, experiences with locals. And that's a big opportunity as we evolve to be more of the travel retailer I was talking about earlier and sell travel more dynamically as part of these larger experiential ecosystems.

I wouldn't say we've cracked the code on that. There's a lot of work to do, but it's definitely something that we're going to need to be spending an increasing amount of time thinking about as a travel company.

00:27:23.760 — 00:27:30.320 · Alison You know, are the younger travellers also finding packages as appealing? It's just the type of packages that they're gravitating towards are different?

00:27:30.360 — 00:28:09.730 · Raymond That's right. They're looking for much more individualistic packaging, perhaps less of that kind of traditional old packaging that, you know, the industry is used to. I would also say, you know, a bit back to the point around premiumization. You know, it used to be that you would look at the front of the cabin and see, you know, a lot of grey hair like mine.

And increasingly we are finding that younger travellers are really prioritizing travel over and above many of their other discretionary or non-discretionary household expenditures. And so a real interest in sort of the premium travel experience, premium travel credit cards and so on, that is reflective of the meaning that travel has for that younger generation.

00:28:09.730 — 00:28:19.050 · Alison Now given your brand expertise, and we're all in a very volatile environment. What can marketers do to protect and strengthen their brands while they're also remaining agile?

00:28:19.410 — 00:29:35.700 · Raymond That's a huge question, and I'm going to maybe take it in a slightly, I don't know if it's going to be controversial way, which is to say, you know, I think there was a period where brands thought a lot about some higher order questions around their role in society and so on. Honestly, I've become convinced that brands shouldn't be so self-engrossed and should be less engaged in abstractions about purpose, etc.

I think if we're honest with ourselves, the average customer does not need a brand to be their spiritual life partner. I think for me, you know, remembering how we make money, which to my mind is the ultimate sign of a customer's respect for you, they're willing to give you their hard-earned cash. Think about why they're willing to do that and the meaning it has for them to do that, and then do an amazing job on delivering that emotional and rational value that satisfies them.

Do that enough times and consistently enough, and that's how you build long-term brand health. I think that, you know, the era of us being part of the conversation in that way, I don't know if that was ever going to be as sustainable as we might have hoped it will be. And I think this idea of going back to basics and remembering why we add value and how we can be useful in people's lives, is an incredibly important thing.

00:29:35.740 — 00:29:55.100 · Alison Well, and by being useful in people's lives, by adding value and doing it in a distinctive way, that is all about building the brand. It's also keeping the business interest, and not just the desire, the need to continue driving growth and tangible business results in marketers, regardless of what sector we're in at the centre of everything that we're doing.

00:29:55.140 — 00:30:09.340 · Raymond One hundred percent. I'm proud as a marketer that I sell stuff, because when I sell stuff, not only am I bringing value to a customer's life, I'm bringing value to the business. And I think that it's a noble pursuit and we don't need to self-aggrandize beyond that.

00:30:09.620 — 00:30:17.540 · Alison It's why marketing exists, absolutely. To motivate consumers to actions that will benefit the business and also benefit the consumers.

00:30:17.580 — 00:30:18.580 · Raymond Couldn't agree more.

00:30:18.980 — 00:30:39.190 · Alison Loyalty has been a big part of your career, certainly a big part of your current mandate as well. And like everything around us, consumer loyalty in Canada is changing a lot right now as well. So what are some of the shifts that you're seeing in loyalty behaviours, and how do you think marketers should be thinking about evolving their loyalty strategies in order to make sure they're really keeping those strong customer relationships.

00:30:39.230 — 00:32:34.400 · Raymond It's a great question you're asking, and one that certainly I think a lot about, and I give a ton of credit to my Aeroplan product design colleagues who thought very, very seriously about this when we relaunched the program. And the phrase that they used as they thought about how to future-proof Aeroplan was this idea that, you know, remembering that loyalty is a two-way street.

And once upon a time, you know, loyalty behaviour was exactly that. We used points primarily as a transactional carrot to get people to turn left into one gas station instead of doing the easier thing of turning right into the other gas station. And it worked. I mean, there's no doubt about it, but and it still works to a degree.

You know, loyalty is still a behaviour driving marketing exercise. But more than ever, what I see is that, you know, customers want to point to their trackable behaviour, which we have now given them the tools to do, right, to see exactly what their loyalty is adding up to. They point to that trackable behaviour and they see that both as an achievement for themselves, but also as the right for them to have higher expectations of the company to whom they have given their loyalty.

They actually want to be engaged in product event. They feel that they have a right to a higher level of service because of the loyalty that they've provided. And they're very, very vocal about that. And good for them, and I think rightfully so. So anyone who runs any kind of loyalty program or even just loyalty exercise, whether it's formal or not, really needs to be thinking about and asking themselves not only what business outcomes they want to see from their customers, but rather what loyalty are we demonstrating to them, and how do we ensure that they see that?

Because that is in fact the two way street element, right? It's the yes, you've given me some points, but I have shown you loyalty as your customer. What is the reciprocity? And that can look very different, you know, across different industries. But certainly for us figuring out how to make that experience even better for the people who have shown us the most amount of commitment is top of mind all the time.

00:32:34.400 — 00:32:43.360 · Alison Well said. Now you serve on the CMA's Marketing Talent Committee. So what skills do you think marketers need today that are most different from when you started your career?

00:32:43.400 — 00:35:21.610 · Raymond I think there's some things that are truly timeless about marketing skill sets that never, frankly, never change. I think marketers have always needed to be and will always need to be insight-gatherers, pattern-recognizers, problem-solvers, opportunity-makers, all of that. In fact, I think the evolution of AI is just going to shine a light on those marketers who can use AI tools to do that better versus the ones who aren't.

So I think those skill sets, you know, that will will continue to exist, and layering on top of all the technological advances that we've been able to make. But for me, what's changed the most is just the sheer number of levers to pull now and all of the different channels or marketable opportunities, whatever you want to call them.

And frankly, sometimes I think my head is just exploding about all the various tactical balls that we have in the air at any one point in the campaign. But that said, it's also kind of liberating in the same way that, you know, no single ad is ever going to be now a silver bullet. We don't have, like, the real value of sixty-second anthemic TV spots.

And maybe good riddance to that, because while that maybe once was an easy sell, the flip side is no one tactic is going to break you and it's not going to make you, but it's not going to break you, so you can afford and you have to afford to be trying a whole bunch of things all the time that are, you know, new. It's exhausting.

There's no question about it. But it's also kind of fun because, you know, back a little bit to the conversation we were having about trying new things and taking risks. Like, you know, Rome wasn't built in a day. Rome wasn't going to crumble in a day. And the same thing with the brand, right? We can have a tactic that doesn't work.

We can see the results very quickly. We can pivot. They can throw the money at something else, re-evaluate. You know, it's all fine. It'll all work out. As I think about sort of all of those levers. We talk a lot about test and learn. I think the one thing that marketers really need to think about in that context, and this comes back to some of those enviable skills that you know that need to be maintained.

You know, there's a real risk today and not pausing to do the learning part. In fact, the right way to think about it in my mind is actually learn and test, because you have to know before you do a test, what do you think you might want to learn from it and to actually, like, carry it? What is the hypothesis, depending on the answer. What might we do differently if we learn that the hypothesis was true or not true?

Then if you know what you want to learn, then do the test. Because what often happens is we move so quickly that in this idea of test and learn, we just test. Don't have time to learn, okay, test something new, test something new. And it's like Groundhog Day all over and over again. So you have more and more levers going on all the time, but you haven't actually figured out, well, when we do a test, why are we doing this test?

And so this is something I have to catch in myself. Something I certainly push in my team is it's actually learn and test and then learn and test, not test and learn.

00:35:21.850 — 00:35:38.780 · Alison That's such a great observation because we all are agile, need to be even more agile. But that does not excuse us from spending a bit of time up front to figure out, why are we doing this? What do we hope to learn? We can't shortchange the strategic piece at all, or we'll just end up wasting time and energy and redoing a lot of work for sure.

00:35:38.820 — 00:35:39.620 · Raymond So well said.

00:35:39.660 — 00:35:53.180 · Alison I definitely cannot let you go without asking about the butter tarts, so please share with our listeners how you used your wonderful marketing skills to get a judging spot at the Royal Winter Fair's Butter Tart contest. One of my favourite Raymond stories.

00:35:53.540 — 00:36:49.900 · Raymond Well, I would say we talked a little bit about my career journey. There has been no single thing in my career that has caused as much activity on my LinkedIn profile as my butter tart experience. And it's actually maybe less about a marketing activity, and it's more about just entrepreneurial gumption.

I basically was a regular attendee of the of the Royal Agricultural Fair, and I was on an email list and they were talking about the butter tart, um, judging festival. So I just wrote to them and said, "Listen, I am a very committed eater of butter tarts. I come to the fair all the time. I believe I have a, you know, very well-defined version of the perfect butter tart that I can use as a as a way to come and adjudicate all the butter tarts that are offered."

And shockingly, they called me. They questioned my perfect butter tart model, and they said, "Well, as a matter of fact, you can come and try over 50 butter tarts in three hours," which I will say probably brought me as close to going into sugar shock as I've ever come. But it was totally worth it.

00:36:49.900 — 00:36:54.060 · Alison And coming out of that, you now have a favourite butter tart place that we have both benefited from.

00:36:54.100 — 00:36:57.700 · Raymond Yeah. Shameless plug for Doo Doo's outside of Peterborough.

00:36:57.940 — 00:37:14.020 · Alison Now, as you know, I end each episode by asking my guests to share one piece of career advice for our listeners who aspire to follow in your footsteps. Throughout this episode, you've shared a lot of really great advice. So what's one parting piece of advice that you offer to marketers who want to be the next Raymond?

00:37:14.060 — 00:38:22.710 · Raymond I will share one small amount of advice, which is to say I've met many great marketers over the years. So the through line that runs through all of them is something that can't be trained, but rather has to be nurtured. And that kind of natural marketing capacity, really comes down for me to three characteristics curiosity, empathy, and imagination.

And it's, you know, I think marketers who display those are able to adapt to all sorts of different consumer, you know, situations. Imagine different kinds of campaigns, think about how to work with technology differently. It's sort of those emotional, those are the foundational characteristics.

It's really easy if you have those to let that wither though, because without enough oxygen, those characteristics are hard to maintain. And so my own personal advice is find the things for you that help keep those characteristics alive. And for me, I'm a firm believer in reading fiction because I think all the great literature, older or modern through the ages, has asked readers to engage with that, you know, curiosity, empathy and imagination. And I really do believe that stuff, that's a wellspring of natural marketing capability that we need to make sure we keep alive.

00:38:22.830 — 00:38:30.750 · Alison That was great advice to end on, Raymond, thank you so much. I knew this would be a very fun and insightful conversation, and you absolutely have delivered. So a huge thank you.

00:38:30.790 — 00:38:45.230 · Raymond It has been a pleasure to be on your show, Alison. And maybe I'll also just say, you know, I know you're retiring shortly and, you know, you've had an incredibly impressive career to watch. And I congratulate you on your retirement and wish you all the best as you go into the next chapter.

00:38:45.270 — 00:38:50.070 · Alison I will definitely be taking benefit of some of those shoulder season travel plans that you mentioned earlier.

00:38:50.110 — 00:38:51.190 · Raymond We look forward to your booking.

00:38:51.230 — 00:38:52.350 · Alison Absolutely.

00:38:55.350 — 00:38:57.549 · Presenter Thanks for joining us. Be sure to visit the CMA.ca and sign up for your free my CMA account. It's a great way to stay connected and benefit from the latest marketing thought leadership, news, and industry trends.

How does a global beauty brand earn genuine Canadian relevance when "Buy Canadian" isn't an option? Sephora Canada Senior Vice-President and Chief Marketing Officer Allison Litzinger joins Alison Simpson, newly retired CMA CEO, to reveal the strategy. Discover what drove Sephora's 18-place jump in the Ipsos Canada's Most Influential Brands study, the thinking behind the WNBA Toronto Tempo founding partnership and why the boldest move in your career is usually the right one.

00:00:00.920 — 00:00:19.680 · Speaker 1 Welcome to CMA Connect, Canada's marketing podcast, where industry experts discuss how marketers must manage the tectonic shifts that will change how brands and businesses are built for tomorrow, while also delivering on today's business needs. With your host, newly retired CMA CEO, Alison Simpson.

00:00:23.840 — 00:02:39.090 · Alison In a market demanding Canadian authenticity, how does a European-owned retailer become one of Canada's most influential brands? The answer lies in creative problem solving and strategic marketing leadership. For today's episode, I'm very happy to welcome Alison Litzinger, SVP, Chief Marketing Officer at Sephora Canada.

Alison and I share more than a first name. We also took a very similar approach to our careers, starting with agencies where we rose through the ranks before taking on leadership roles client side, where we led creative and business transformations. Alison spent over 18 years building brands and businesses on the agency side, including 14 years at Leo Burnett, where she rose to Group Account Director. Her agency work has been internationally recognized, including at Cannes Lions, The One Show, Clios, CMAS and the Marketing Awards. This extensive creative pedigree really established her as a senior strategist and creative marketer before transitioning to retail marketing.

Allison's impact at Hudson's Bay Company, where she served as Vice President of Marketing for nearly four years, earned her recognition in the rebranding, marketing, and digital transformation of the Bay. Since joining Sephora Canada in 2022, Allison has driven absolutely remarkable results.

Sephora Canada was named "Strategy Brand of the Year" in 2024, and was recognized as one of the "Movers and Shakers" in this year's Most Influential Brands in Canada study, gaining a surprising 18 places and overall ranking, which is significant growth. Under Alison's leadership, she launched Beauty at the Bentway, building community space to connect Clean at Sephora beauty products and lifestyle.

She also led the "Sephora Illumination Powered by Colour IQ" experiential campaign, which has been recognized for creative innovation and effectiveness at the Epicas, Effies, Drum and Media Innovation Awards. Allison has also pioneered community first marketing initiatives, including launching the Sephora Squad Canada, a paid Creator program, and orchestrating Sephora Canada's founding partnership with WNBA's Toronto Tempo last year, demonstrating her strategic vision in women's sports marketing.

Beyond her corporate achievements, Allison contributes to the CMA and the broader marketing community. She served as Co-Chair for the CMAS Brand Council and as Co-Chair for the 2022 CMA Awards. Welcome, Allison, it is my absolute pleasure to have you here today and I'm looking forward to a great conversation.

00:02:39.090 — 00:02:41.130 · Allison Thank you so much for having me, Alison.

00:02:41.250 — 00:02:55.490 · Alison Now you've spent over 18 years with agencies and earned international recognition from amazing awards including Cannes Lions. So what drew you to make the shift from agency to client leadership at Hudson's Bay? And what surprised you most about the transition?

00:02:55.530 — 00:04:10.540 · Allison I'm asked this a lot, Alison, actually, and I think there are a couple of things that shaped my decision. But but probably the, the primary one was the evolving agency and client relationship. You know, we were at a time about eight years ago where budgets were being squeezed on the client side and the agency client relationship was becoming much more transactional.

And I really wanted to have a role where I had more impact over the brand versus only the communications. And then also there's, you know, the growth opportunity. I've been on the agency side for, you know, a number of years on a variety of businesses, and that gave me great challenges. But probably for my last, you know, 4 or 5 years, I felt like I needed more of a growth opportunity and to stretch myself.

What drew me to the Bay was obviously it was an iconic brand, and they were looking to really transform the brand. It was a role to be the VP of Brand Direction and that was quite exciting as an opportunity. What surprised me about this side of the business is probably how many parts of the business that I'd never truly been exposed to on the agency side, working with senior clients and also the complexity of operations behind the business and how much marketing actually happens beyond the work that clients and agencies are doing together.

00:04:10.580 — 00:04:59.430 · Alison I had similar motivation for moving to the client side and absolutely similar learning as far as the breadth of what you're exposed to, the business knowledge that you gain, the operational side of it, and just the wonderful opportunity to expand your marketing toolkit, but also your business toolkit and open up new opportunities for yourself.

So I can absolutely see the appeal on what's kept you on the client side. So let's talk about a fascinating brand and business challenge. During renewed Canadian patriotism, many retailers are leaning heavily into by Canadian messaging. But Sephora is European, owned by LVMH, and Canadians often mistake your brand as American, yet you've obviously been great at countering that, because Sephora has been recognized as one of the "Movers and Shakers", gaining 18 places in this year's Most Influential Brands study. So walk us through what drove that significant increase?

00:04:59.470 — 00:07:17.080 · Allison Yeah, I mean, Allison, what a year we had last year. And it really, truly was a challenge for every marketer with such a huge shift in consumer behaviour and mindset. And, you know, we really had to evaluate what was right for our brand in this kind of new environment where consumers were really thinking Canadian first.

But given that we are a global brand and we do curate the best in beauty from around the world Buy Canadian was certainly not, you know, our angle or our way in. And so, you know, we had to look at what, what was our way in. And we really looked at what that deeper motivation was behind the Buy Canadian sentiment.

And, you know, if you truly looked at what was driving that behaviour, it was Canadians were, you know, fearful. They were fearful for their economy, for their lifestyle, for their nationality and their identity and sovereignty of Canada was really threatened at that time. For Sephora, the task and the marketing pivot became about supporting Canadians, really elevating Canadians and what was important to them and making sure that we were meeting them where they were by continuing to be truly culturally relevant in the moments that mattered to them, by building Canadian community, and also by bringing a sense of joy to their world in a time of uncertainty and as a beauty brand, we have this very joyful and exciting category that we can continue to convey and to communicate, to provide that joy.

So there were a few big things that we leaned into, and I do believe those had a big influence on how we were perceived as a brand in Canada and led to some of these increases. And the first was truly leaning into Canadians, as I mentioned. And that meant leaning into Canadian creators, Canadian partnerships, and the right partnerships that really mattered to Canadians at that time, and leaning into truly Canadian insights to connect with communities across the country.

The second was refocusing on the value we drive as a retailer beyond just the sale. Knowing that economic uncertainty was so prevalent in Canadians' mindset, so we really focused on that from a marketing perspective and thinking about the value that we drove. And last, as I mentioned, bringing kind of the joy of beauty to life through our tone, so we were a brand that people gravitated to and wanted to involve themselves with.

00:07:17.240 — 00:08:01.650 · Alison Those are great insights, and especially the bringing moments of joy and realizing the role that your brand has and bringing that, especially in uncertain times. It's powerful even when times are great, but in uncertain times when we're questioning a lot, to be able to go into a brand retail experience or online and have that sense of joy is a wonderful compliment to your brand as well.

Now, you've also been a bit of a pioneer when it comes to sponsorships, with Sephora Canada becoming the first founding partner of the WNBA's Toronto Tempo. So you're clearly early to women's sport partnerships more broadly. As women's professional sports, we're starting to get some long overdue recognition.

So how do you identify which cultural moments to invest in, and what was the strategic thinking behind the WNBA partnership specifically?

00:08:01.690 — 00:11:06.980 · Allison Sure. Well, I think as a marketer, it's always a challenge. There are so many moments out there. How do you really think about what makes sense for your brand? But I guess when when we talk about which cultural moments we invest in for Sephora, it's really about us harnessing what Canadians are excited about and where there's a relevant and authentic connection to the category, and making sure our brand is really at the centre of the conversation and where the buzz is going to be.

And of course, we have to tie that to where the relevant opportunities are from an audience perspective and the growth of our brand. And so this was the thinking behind several of the cultural opportunities we've leveraged. For example, like the the Taylor Swift tour that was here, there's such a tight intersection with beauty and getting ready for the concert and music and and there was so much buzz around that in Canada.

We really wanted to make sure we were a big part of that. And the same goes for Toronto Tempo. I think this, you know, WNBA team, the first expansion team coming to Canada, had this level of excitement that we wanted to be a part of and an a relevance to our brand. And also, you know, the growth of the league in the U.S. was kind of monumental at the time.

It was new for us here, but there was so much buzz around the league and the athletes were all almost turning into these kind of cultural icon status athletes. They had this iconic cultural relevance in the U.S. and we were hopeful that that would translate to Canada. You know, when we talk about a partnership being authentic to your brand, we definitely saw the authentic intersection between the WNBA athletes and the teams and beauty.

We had been thinking about women's sport for at least a year prior to this and thinking about, you know, the different leagues that had come into Canada. And it was really, truly the WNBA specifically that, you know, was embracing this other side of the athletes, the self-expression and the individuality of the athletes that they encouraged through the game, on and off the court, that we felt had kind of this real relevance to what we do as a brand and to beauty.

And you see it, you know, the athletes in the WNBA are very outspoken and the causes they believe in. And you also see them, you know, walking into the games with their fits and their fashion and what feels like them.

And they come onto the court, you know, in the same uniform to play the game, their hair, their makeup, how they choose to express themselves plays a key role in the game on and off the court in a way that other women's sport didn't do quite as strongly. So the intersection of self-expression in the game made this really an authentic way for us to harness the excitement.

And I'd say the kind of last piece to this decision was that it was truly a fresh, new way to live our purpose. You know, We Belong to Something Beautiful is our brand platform. Our mission is to keep expanding the way Canadians see beauty and celebrate beauty. And this partnership would allow us to communicate our brand point of view, really challenging conventions around who belongs in beauty and where beauty belongs, and that belonging in beauty is truly about being your authentic self.

00:11:07.100 — 00:11:40.780 · Alison It is such a strong fit for the brand. When you explain the rationale behind it and the level of individualization that you're helping celebrate in the league and for Sephora Canada and the strong fit obviously to your brand's vision. I also want to personally thank you for being one of the first brands to really support professional women's sports in our country. It's such a long overdue opportunity, and such a powerful new opportunity both for Canadians to engage and see women accomplishing at that level as well and for your brand.

So a huge thank you for rising to the occasion and being one of the first sponsors.

00:11:41.020 — 00:12:04.230 · Allison Absolutely. Like we could not have been more excited to do it. It's a matter of finding the right fit. We want to elevate women. We want to elevate the power of women's sport. But, you know, what is the right intersection for us, and the WNBA felt like exactly that. And that's why we reached out one week after the expansion team got announced to make that call, because it felt like the perfect way in for us, and we didn't want to lose that opportunity.

00:12:04.350 — 00:12:21.350 · Alison That's great. I love that Canada was the leader that way as well. So a huge congrats on that too.

Allison: Thank you.

Alison: Now I know the customer for beauty and how they're learning about engaging with beauty products is certainly evolving. So I'd love you to share a bit about Sephora's key customer groups, and the degree to which men are also engaging with your brand.

00:12:21.430 — 00:14:27.360 · Allison Sure, I would say, you know, we often talk about customer groups in terms of demographics, but at Sephora, we like to talk about them in terms of mindset. From a brand perspective, I mean, we really want to look at the total beauty audience. We are a mass beauty retailer and we want to capture the full beauty haul.

That means really going out with a key mindset. And you know, for us, that's about the beauty curious, the beauty explorer and those who are kind of looking for the best in beauty and want to know the latest, the hottest, and really love playing and touching and feeling beauty and are immersed in that world.

But we also, of course need to look at older, younger, men, women, as all marketers do and beyond mindset. And so we do curate kind of our category and our product marketing by segment. Of course, we have a wide breadth of curated best in beauty, and we make sure that we are addressing kind of different generations through different innovation, through different product categories, through different needs of clients.

And also, of course, we have very personalized digital marketing that's based on consumer behaviour and really taps into those needs of clients and customers looking for certain beauty products to fulfil those needs. You know, I don't like to say we're talking to everyone, but I also think we do need to broaden out of specific segments and making sure that we appeal to a mass beauty audience, because most are using beauty.

Men are also beauty-involved. A few years ago, you know, people looked at me and said, men? Why would we target men? Um, but, you know, even from a prestige beauty perspective, about 27% of the market is men's product. Um, younger men are definitely engaging in beauty more than ever, and feel self-care is just a part of their routine and a part of their daily life.

So we absolutely are speaking to men from a broad perspective and welcoming them into the brand, as well as from more of a personalized product perspective. And they are very into fragrance. We see them in our store, but they're also using skincare and hair care as well.

00:14:27.400 — 00:14:34.840 · Alison That's great to hear. I would like to take a moment out of this episode to thank the Earnscliffe team for helping bring CMA Connect to our listeners.

00:14:37.800 — 00:15:03.210 · Alison Earnscliffe is one of Canada's leading independent communications firms, with teams across Canada and expertise spanning public relations, public affairs, digital marketing, data and design, Earnscliffe brings together national reach, regional insight and coordinated expertise to help clients make sense of complex issues to build trust and deliver results.

To learn more about Earnscliffe Team and Integrated services, visit earnscliffe.ca

00:15:07.770 — 00:15:20.770 · Alison Now our listeners always love hearing about any differences that brands are experiencing in Canada compared to other countries. So are you seeing differences in how Canadians engage with beauty compared to the U.S. or other countries?

00:15:20.850 — 00:16:00.530 · Allison I'd say I mean, there are more similarities than there are differences. There are a lot of similarities globally with beauty and for between Canada and the U.S. especially. But we do have some differences in mindset. You know, the Canadian beauty shopper definitely prefers a simpler beauty routine. They don't necessarily wear as much makeup or reapply as much beauty during the day as some other markets.

Our consumers here also over-index on interest in clean beauty products. That's part of why we've really dialled that up from a marketing perspective. And then the clients and consumers in Canada are also more value-oriented, in general, but that also applies to beauty specifically.

00:16:00.570 — 00:16:05.570 · Alison Can you share an example where understanding these differences changed your approach in Canada?

00:16:05.890 — 00:17:01.340 · Allison Yeah, I'd say we do demonstrate the differences through our creative approach, which is a little more nuanced than just, you know, a campaign. We think it's very important to have not only the representation of our communities in Canada, but also that, you know, the talent we portray show a simpler approach to beauty and how we portray them, how they look, how we do their beauty in our creative and how that's represented.

And then, you know, certain things are different. We've gone much bigger in driving awareness of our clean and planet-aware category, such as Beauty at the Bentway and connecting clean beauty products with clean lifestyle. And we've also been the first country globally to develop loyalty marketing that acts as a brand builder.

So big awareness, brand building, loyalty marketing, knowing how important value is to the Canadian consumer and how much loyalty plays a role in their beauty journey. So those are just a couple of the initiatives we've leaned into locally here that differ from other parts of the world.

00:17:01.380 — 00:17:15.939 · Alison Now, when you arrived at Sephora, the brand wasn't very mass from a media perspective and was quite digitally-focused, so growing the business required a more balanced approach. How did you make the shift while maintaining the social and influencer investment that's key in beauty?

00:17:16.260 — 00:18:27.740 · Allison I'd say that thinking really came from, you know what every marketer comes in to do, which is grow the business. And, you know, we had this incredibly loyal community of beauty-involved clients, but we needed to go beyond speaking to our own clients and audiences that were living for beauty and that we're super beauty-involved, and we needed to attract the rest of the beauty community that just lived with beauty.

Beauty was a part of their lives, and they're likely not following all the beauty influencers on social. They might not wear a lot of makeup versus engaging with other categories, and so we needed to broaden who we appeal to to keep growing. And that meant ensuring we were top of mind for really anyone who shops beauty in any subcategory.

And that meant broadening our media channels. You know, social and influencer are still highly important, digital marketing is crucially important, but we had a real lack of familiarity around Sephora for a mass beauty audience, and that's what needed to change to help us continue to grow. And to get to know the brand, you need storytelling channels with attention, drive and creative, and so that meant going into more mass media channels and balancing that with the digital world and complementing our digital strength.

00:18:27.780 — 00:18:50.230 · Alison So building on that, I know the reality is influencer and social media have always been where beauty happens in your category, so there's still a significant investment in social influencer across channels. Now, that sounds as much like a cultural insight as it does a media buying decision. So how do you maintain the creative instinct about where conversations happen while managing retail budgets and improving ROI?

00:18:50.430 — 00:20:35.520 · Allison That's a good question. I mean, I think this is the art and science of being a marketer and making sure that you still have gut instincts and are relying on those in addition to looking at the data. But I would say, you know, there's obviously an element of instinct just from living on the channels. And that's key, I'd say, to any marketer.

You know, a lot of marketers sit in a room and sit and sit in a boardroom discussing plans, but don't immerse themselves in the media and know what's going on. And I think that's crucial to keep strong instincts about where to be and how to show up. And then on the flip side, there's also a ton of data around this and the success of social.

I know there there's so many marketing discussions about how do we measure social, how do we see the ROI on social? And it's, everyone is right, it's not as transparent as other media channels, but there are a lot of other signals that can prove the value. You know, we see that social and influencer drives incredible amount of earned media value.

That is a great measurement tool of its success. And then in terms of pointing to social and influencer being important to the conversation in a category, you can explore search trends, engagement metrics versus other categories, content that focuses on your category versus others. And also you can see the kind of explosion of influencers and user-generated content that's talking about and shaping beauty trends.

And last, we also know from consumer research that social and influencer ranked quite high on what influences beauty discovery. So there's definitely a gut instinct and making sure that you understand how the channels are being used and seeing what's happening on those channels. There's also a ton of data that's showing how important that channel might be in your category that might be under-utilized right now to help guide that decision making.

00:20:35.800 — 00:20:51.320 · Alison In a market where many Canadian brands lagged the U.S. in leveraging and investing in creators, your Sephora Squad Canada Pay Creator program has been a long term brand building play. So what was the strategic rationale and how does this differ from traditional influencer marketing?

00:20:51.360 — 00:23:04.530 · Allison Well, the Sephora Squad program actually exists in other markets. So there's been success stories for us in both the Middle East and the U.S. market for Sephora Squad. And the strategic rationale for bringing it here was for a few different reasons. The first was we were in this particular Canadian first mindset and supporting Canadian creators, showing that we were supporting the Canadian community was very important to connect with Canadians.

And also, we know that Canadians engage more when there are Canadian specific programs. So, for example, the the U.S. program used to be open to Canadian creators to apply, and we saw more than six times the application number for our own Canadian program versus being a part of the U.S. program, even though the U.S. program is, you know, gold standard.

And so this is just kind of another proof point that investing in Canadian programs, investing in Canadian creators, investing in Canadian initiatives drives more engagement with Canadians. This shouldn't be surprising to us, but sometimes it is because not everyone is investing in the country and what we have here, and we believe it's so important and and really is helping to drive our success.

So some of the other rationale around it, of course, is creating more authentic brand and influencer partnerships and truly bringing them into the Sephora universe. This program immerses them into our world, with our brands, with our founders. We share best practices on content creation with them, so we really elevate them in their own creator careers.

You know, the influencer world can be quite saturated. I mean, we see influencers one day doing something with one brand, the next day they're doing something with their competitor. And having this kind of creator ambassador program creates a more authentic partnership with us because we establish a relationship with them over time.

And that's really what we wanted to do with this program is make sure that we establish more credibility with with our creators and the influence they have on the consumer and the viewer, as well as elevating our specific communities in Canada. It truly allows us to make sure that we are representing our unique Canadian communities across the board.

00:23:04.690 — 00:23:31.130 · Alison When you were talking earlier about some of the unique things you've seen in Canada versus other markets, you highlighted that Canada from a loyalty perspective is a very strong market, and it's also the only market where your Beauty Insider loyalty program is also a brand builder. So that's such a spectacular program, it's widely recognized as a loyalty leader in Canada and globally, and I'd love to hear what you attribute that success to.

00:23:31.250 — 00:24:58.110 · Speaker 3 I think the Beauty Insider program has been extremely successful across North America, and I do think that we can attribute that to both the functional and emotional value that our program provides to the consumer. We know loyalty is often thought of as very functional, points-driven, a points value exchange, and it drives strong transactional value.

But emotional connection and loyalty is so deeply important to the consumer in making them feel valued. And we know, I mean, loyalty with a brand is like any relationship. You want to feel valued. Feeling valued in your relationship drives engagement, and you know, from a brand perspective, it also drives loyalty to the program and the brand more broadly.

That's the goal, and not just loyalty to the program, but that you're loyal to the brand because of the loyalty program. And that's truly what we want. We want brand connection and the, you know, the emotional drivers for the Beauty Insider program are really created with the beauty customer in mind. The mechanics are based on a deep understanding that discovery of beauty products is what drives consumer behaviour in the category.

Yes, you can exchange your points for, you know, dollars off, but there's also the value of points exchange, exclusive access and discovery of product that we provide through the program that keeps people feeling valued and excited to be with our brand.

00:24:58.430 — 00:25:07.870 · Alison As one of your Beauty Insider loyalists. I want to compliment you, you do a really good job on the personalization and you make it fun, which this is a category that absolutely should be fun.

00:25:07.870 — 00:25:10.790 · Allison We believe it should be fun. We agree.

00:25:11.190 — 00:25:25.470 · Alison Now, I'm always impressed by the knowledge level and longevity of your store teams, and I know firsthand how incredibly hard that is to achieve in retail. So without giving away your secret sauce, can you share how Sephora creates such a compelling in-store experience?

00:25:25.750 — 00:26:36.070 · Allison Well, I, I have to agree. I mean, the store experience from the very beginning has been just a core part of the DNA of the brand. This was part of breaking the mould of beauty, the experience that was created where you didn't have to kind of shop for beauty behind a glass wall or see someone behind a counter by brand.

But really, it's a place where you can come and touch and feel and play with beauty. It is this immersive beauty playground and that I think is key to Sephora's success. And then second is, the philosophy of working here at Sephora is truly one of kind of store first. And so even in the corporate office, you know, we are in service of our field teams.

They are the ones who are meeting the customer, and the client, are on the front lines, and they really are the core of the brand and they embody the brand daily. And so our philosophy at Sephora is that we make sure all of our programs and our communication and our education, which is so important to delivering the expertise, are at the centre of what we provide to our beauty advisors.

And I truly believe that's what makes the brand so strong.

00:26:36.110 — 00:26:44.440 · Alison You were recognized as one of the "Movers and Shakers" in this year's Most Influential Brands study, gaining 18 places. So what led to that recognition?

00:26:44.480 — 00:27:43.600 · Allison Well, I want to start by saying that we have incredible brand strength in Canada. I am coming in in the last four years and I definitely can't take all the credit for this. But I will say it was exciting to see that we made this kind of big jump last year and we really reflected on, you know, how that happened and what we did differently to get there.

And I do really attribute that to the pivot we made based on consumer behaviour. And in a market where the mindset had shifted so rapidly to buy Canadian and to having this groundswell of Canadian pride and honestly, some worry about the state of our nation, we set out to bring joy to Canadians and focus on elevating Canadian voices, creators, media and partnerships.

And these initiatives were always to tap into Canadian love and support the country. We didn't have to be Canadian in order to do that. They were big and visible ways that we put our brand in new spaces and places that we hadn't shown up before. And this strategy paid off for us in a big way.

00:27:43.720 — 00:27:54.320 · Alison Now, many of us, certainly, in my experience, find our biggest mistakes can provide painful but often the most powerful learning. So I would love you to share a valuable lesson that you learned the hard way.

00:27:54.400 — 00:28:21.400 · Allison I am going to say, I think one of my biggest lessons probably came from staying in my comfort zone a little bit too long. You know, I think I stayed on the agency side maybe a few too many years. You know, comfort zones can feel really good, but nothing really meaningful happens there. And, you know, growth comes from learning new things, being in new rooms, challenging yourself with new ambitions.

And so that's probably been my biggest learning along my career journey.

00:28:21.880 — 00:28:46.530 · Alison That is great advice for everyone listening, whether their agency side, client side, like getting comfortable can, you're absolutely right, can be dangerous. Now, I'm honoured to have very senior leaders on the podcast, so I always end by asking you to share one piece of career advice for listeners who aspire to follow in your footsteps.

So, given you've got a unique path bridging creative excellence with business results, what wisdom would you share?

00:28:47.050 — 00:29:48.290 · Allison I think I'd have kind of two pieces of advice, probably from my own journey. And the first thing I'd say is to dream big. If you believe in something and you're willing to work for it, there's really no limit in what you can do. Don't act small because you're afraid. Make sure you think about what your ambitions really are and make them happen.

If you're really passionate about something, you will find a way to make it happen. I can't tell you how many people told me moving from the agency to the client side was never going to happen. I had head-hunters telling me that getting into lifestyle or or those categories was a pipe dream. Everyone wanted to be in them.

And I would just say, you know, that probably leads into my second piece of advice, which is bet on yourself, you know, don't let others define what you are going to do. Trust your gut and follow your passion, and make sure you truly believe in yourself and your own abilities. And that's usually going to take you to the right place.

Stop waiting for others to get you to where you want to go.

00:29:48.930 — 00:30:08.210 · Alison I love both pieces of that advice, and for anyone listening, it's incredibly powerful. I'm going to add that for any women that are listening, it's even more powerful because we can still be guilty of not dreaming big enough and betting on ourselves. So, Allison, thank you for ending the podcast on such a inspiring note.

It's been a great conversation.

00:30:08.250 — 00:30:10.730 · Allison Thank you so much. I really enjoyed being here.

00:30:13.810 — 00:30:26.770 · Presenter Thanks for joining us. Be sure to visit the CMA.ca and sign up for your free My CMA account. It's a great way to stay connected and benefit from the latest marketing,thought leadership, news, and industry trends.

The campaign that delivered a 20 per cent sales boost didn't start with a creative brief, it started with a casual comment. In Episode 74 of CMA Connect, Alison Simpson joins Pizza Pizza CMO Adrian Fuoco and Zulu Alpha Kilo President and CEO Mike Sutton to unpack the half-decade partnership behind "Bipartisan Wings." The collaboration drove a 40 per cent jump in wing sales, a 2025 CMA Best of the Best award and a CEO crediting marketing for brand growth on BNN Bloomberg.

00:00:00.920 — 00:00:19.680 · Presenter Welcome to CMA Connect, Canada's marketing podcast, where industry experts discuss how marketers must manage the tectonic shifts that will change how brands and businesses are built for tomorrow, while also delivering on today's business needs. With your host, newly retired CMA CEO, Alison Simpson.

00:00:23.840 — 00:02:32.250 · Alison Great marketing doesn't happen in boardrooms filled with endless PowerPoints and bloated processes. It happens when brilliant clients and creative partners trust each other enough to move fast, take risks and chase cultural moments that others often miss. My guests today are a perfect example. Adrian Fuoco, Chief Marketing Officer at Pizza Pizza Limited, and Mike Sutton, President and CEO of Zulu Alpha Kilo, helped build one of Canada's most successful client agency partnerships over the last five years.

They've created campaigns like "Bipartisan Wings" and "Reverse Tariffs" that don't just win awards, they drive significant business results. Since joining as VP of Marketing in January 2020 and being promoted to CMO in June 2024, Pizza Pizza has really transformed under Adrian's leadership, from a traditional, value-focused QSR into one of Canada's most culturally relevant brands.

The results really speak for themselves. Pizza Pizza was named Strategies magazine's Brand of the Year in 2023, won two gold CMA Awards in 2023 and 2025, and their "Bipartisan Wings" campaign closed the show, winning top honours as best of the best for 2025. Most impressively, Pizza Pizza's CEO cited on BNN Bloomberg that marketing initiatives drove growth.

Words that every marketer and CMO aspires to hear. Mike Sutton has led Zulu Alpha Kilo as CEO since April 2021, steering the agency to become one of the world's most awarded independent shops. Under his leadership, the agency has expanded to Vancouver and New York, was named AD Age's A-list agency standout in March and achieved platinum status in Canada's Best Managed Companies in 2024.

Together, they've proven that when you combine strategic agility, mutual trust and a willingness to say, hey, I'm not above going to jail for this idea, you can create marketing that cuts through in one of Canada's most competitive categories. Their "Bipartisan Wings" campaign drove a 40% jump in wing sales overall and a 47% spike on election night, while the "Reverse Tariffs" campaign delivered a 20% sales boost. Welcome, Adrian and Mike, I am thrilled to have you both here to pull back the curtain on how this partnership really works.

00:02:32.290 — 00:02:33.450 · Adrian Thanks for having us, Alison.

00:02:33.490 — 00:02:34.530 · Mike Thanks, Alison.

00:02:34.570 — 00:02:58.610 · Alison Adrian and Mike, I'm excited to have you here for a bunch of reasons. Getting into the significant business results you're driving is certainly high on the list. But the other part is, despite having hosted this podcast for a few years now, you're the first time that I've had a CMO and their agency CEO join me together.

We're going to start with the basics. How did this partnership begin, and what made you both believe this could be something special> Adrian, why don't you kick things off?

00:02:58.650 — 00:04:38.700 · Adrian It was a really fun experience kicking off the partnership, and I think it was a long coming. So, you know, I'd say first, Alison, just in terms of what I thought could be special was I was excited to work on the Pizza Pizza brand. And that brand, you know, Mike and I both grew up in Ontario.

And if you grow up here, Pizza Pizza was around your entire life, basically in one way or another. And I always got a kick out of some of the marketing that Pizza Pizza had done over the years and some of the wild sports promotions. And I remember one time where you could, you know, they would send you a VHS tape along with your pizza at Christmas time or movies and all kinds of fun stuff.

And so I was just generally excited to be able to take a look at that brand and sort of understand how had they achieved all of that. And when I got to Pizza Pizza, I realized that a lot of that had just been achieved, you know, in house with a small, scrappy group of people who had done really amazing stuff. But what intrigued me was, you know, wow, what would happen if you were able to hand, you know, partner with one of the top creative shops and strategic agencies in Canada?

Where could you take it beyond where it had already gone? So that was that was the part for me that was exciting. And then in terms of how the partnership began, it was really just a phone call. I knew Mike and Zach over the years working in the industry, but we hadn't done too much together. And so I just thought, wow, this would be really fun.

This is a top tier crew, and if they'd be at all interested in partnering with us, we could probably really do some amazing work. And also that we would probably see some great results, which of course was important as well. And we were able to achieve all of that, I must say. And here we are.

00:04:38.740 — 00:04:41.020 · Alison So, Mike, what would you add from an agency perspective?

00:04:41.060 — 00:05:36.460 · Mike From an agency perspective, one of the things I'd say, as I sort of reflect back on those early conversations with Adrian, was thinking about like, great partnerships are grounded in a shared ambition. And so the thing that was immediately clear is that the ambition that Adrian had, what he wanted to do with marketing, really lined up well with the type of work that we like to do.

So that was certainly business impact, but also about sort of mutual belief in the type of work that we can do together. So there was just this shared ambition from the very beginning. It isn't about one side presenting and one side approving to real shared ambition in terms of the type of work that we wanted to do together.

And I like to think of it as us being co-conspirators. Yes, it's a client agency relationship, but really we're co-conspirators in trying to do amazing work for this really iconic Canadian brand.

00:05:36.500 — 00:05:56.020 · Alison One of the things that really struck me about your partnership is that the core team on both sides has remained intact for five years. And maybe part of that is because you are co-conspirators. But in an industry known for turnover, that really is remarkable, so I'd love to share what's contributed to that stability, and why do you think it matters for the work that you produce?

00:05:56.060 — 00:06:58.670 · Mike Yeah. I mean, for those listening who may not know, you talk about turnover, the last stat I saw was around 25%. Like, just think about that for a minute. Where imagine a world where you have 25% of your staff turning over year over year. The last few years we've hovered around 10% ,kind of thing. So we're not up there.

But you're right, the industry has a significant amount of turnover. So what do I attribute to, like, I think clarity and candour is a big part of what works in the partnership. And then yes to consistency on the team. So we absolutely have that over the duration of the five years we've been working together.

But the other important piece is like adding fresh energy throughout the partnership as well. So to me, that's always the perfect balance, is that you want that consistent core team, but then you always want to have fresh energy coming in and bringing fresh ideas to interpret the brand platform as we have it.

And I think that's how we keep things fresh. And that's a big part of my job in making sure that the right people are coming onto the business at the right time.

00:06:59.030 — 00:07:28.910 · Alison That's such an important balance. And if our listeners weren't enticed earlier, they're certainly going to be enticed by how to get from 25% turnover down to 10% turnover. Now, Adrian, you mentioned when you joined Pizza Pizza that there was a very well-established internal creative department handling 99% of the work, and then you brought in Zulu as an agency partner.

Now, let's be honest, that could have been a disaster. Egos clashing, turf wars, a real mess. Instead, it's become a real model of collaboration. So how did you navigate that potentially explosive situation?

00:07:28.950 — 00:09:11.880 · Adrian Yes. Um, well, I think personally, I believe in the model where you could have both an internal group and an agency partner and that that could actually create a system versus sort of competition. And so there'd be some things that one group could do and some things the other group could do. And what I found was, you know, the internal team, yeah, someone new comes in, and you could be concerned. What are they going to do? What about my job security and all the things that we've built? And so first thing I found was just to give them confidence that, no, I think that, you know, the leadership believes in you, and the leadership thinks that what you're doing is of great value.

But let's take a look at the entire needs of the brand and let's have an honest conversation about, you know, if we were to do more brand equity building marketing, do we truly have the skill set to do that kind of stuff in-house? And the truth is that somewhat. But the team's really focused on the day to day sales, keeping the restaurants looking good, you know, getting all of the materials versioned.

And with all of that work, that's a full time job right there. There really was no need to bring in a third party to do that. So then it's like, okay, if we want to add complementary marketing into that system, let's work together, be a part of that process. I think that's another really important part, right?

If you are going to bring in a third party, an agency partner from out, and you have an internal team already in place, make sure they're part of the process. Don't kind of go off in isolation, and here you go. The third part, I would say, is just when it comes down to individuals, the people that were here were very confident and skilled and very collaborative people.

So personality-wise, I just I just could tell that was never going to be an issue for us. And then the same thing at Zulu's end, we definitely had the conversations right up front to sort of say, look, we have people here that do certain things and we think they do them really well. So I don't think there was any true territoriality.

It was understood what everybody would be doing together.

00:09:11.880 — 00:09:22.480 · Alison And Mike, from an agency, obviously it was, you've got two creative teams, one in-house, and the Zulu team. So it's important for you to be sensitive to that as well. So how did that change your approach?

00:09:22.640 — 00:10:51.320 · Mike The truth is, now, and even five years ago, most if not all of our clients have an in-house team. So this is the reality of business now and an important way of working. I mean, the pitfalls happen in those scenarios when you have really blurry roles, right? And, you know, Adrian mentioned competition, but I found that sometimes there can be an unspoken competition.

Again, what Adrian did a great job of right off the bat was again confidence to his team. Confidence in our team. Everything was on the table. So there wasn't any unspoken competition. The other thing that Adrian, I like, you talked about designing system versus it's like just dividing the work. Okay, you do this, you do this.

We sat down at the beginning of this year again, the team looked at the calendar designed for the year in terms of, okay, Zulu, we're pulling you in here, here, here and here at these key moments. There's a real mutual respect amongst our teams. Our creative people can talk directly. So it's not like, you know, me or one of our account directors is always in the middle.

The creative people can speak directly, which I think is really important and a signal of a great working relationship. And you know what? We share wins and we share credit. So when there is a win, we're all winning together. It's not like, oh, so-and-so did this. It's just like, it's a it's a real team win.

And actually at the CMAs. It was, that was a really special moment. You know, winning the the top prize of the night. And the full team was there to celebrate together, including Adrian's in-house team. So it does really work.

00:10:51.360 — 00:11:14.040 · Alison It really was amazing to see everyone come up on stage. Thank you both for sharing me some really important guidelines on how to have such a successful partnership. Now, Adrian, in an earlier conversation, you made a really important point about understanding what the agency needs to succeed and not just what you need from them.

So can you talk about how thinking about their business and not just drone has shaped this partnership?

00:11:14.120 — 00:13:29.210 · Adrian That was something that, for myself and for the team here was a priority from the beginning. I think a lot of it is that way of thinking is borne out of just experience. And you think of the great agency partnership that I've had over the years, and it was really an understanding that there's an opportunity here for mutual benefit for both organizations.

You know, just like any relationship should be that way. And then that means you have to have a little bit of empathy and understanding and sort of ask yourself, okay, well, yes, they are providing a service, but they also need to, you know, build their own brand and they need to build their own personal profiles and all of those things.

And so have some empathy and say, what are the things that are important to the agency and, and how can I help provide those things? And then in turn, if I do that, what potentially are going to be the incremental benefits for Pizza Pizza? And so obviously the agency, other than they need to make money and they need to be able to invoice and bill and do all those things, they need to raise their profile in the industry.

They need to be able to showcase to other clients that they do great work, and they need to do that great work in order to recruit the best people. And so if we can help provide them opportunities to do the kind of work that's going to achieve those goals, while at the same time building our brand and driving our sales, and that's going to be great.

And then, of course, if we're able to do that, and then you're giving the agency work that's important to them. You know, not every project is going to be super exciting. Definitely, there's projects that we're we're up on the stage and there's lots of other ones where they just drive a specific goal or, you know, there's something that we need to say.

And Zulu does a great job helping us with those too. But those sort of marquee projects, if we're able to do a few of those, I find usually the work is great and gives the brand great recognition, but also the better the work you give to the agency, the better people they put on your business. So many times when we're meeting with Mike's team, they'll say, oh, you know, we've got a new team that came on board and they're just, you know, they really want to work on Pizza Pizza.

They're excited to come work on Pizza Pizza. And so we want that, right? We want to make sure that we're getting the best people supporting our business. So yeah just a little bit of understanding of what's what's important to everybody. And trying our best to be able to provide that.

00:13:29.250 — 00:14:03.620 · Alison For your brand, to be the brand that everyone at the agency really wants to work on, is such a powerful position to be in, and absolutely is a great way to ensure that you're going to continue to deliver great work. Now, Mike, when we were talking, you shared a pretty legendary quote from one of the creative presentations where Adrian said, "I love this idea and I'm actually not above going to jail for this."

That's a pretty high bar for creative bravery. What creates the environment where a CMO feels empowered to say yes to such old, potentially risky ideas?

00:14:03.740 — 00:15:05.420 · Mike When you're in a leadership role and in this case, you're in a room with your agency partner and you say something like, I mean, and let's not romanticize risk here, right? Like, I mean, obviously Pizza Pizza is a it's a big business. There, there there are risks that, you know, you want to look at. But what it says to the team of people that have the ownership and accountability for this brief that we have is it's conviction.

You've got a client that's saying you have permission to be bold, when you hear something like that and you've got a client who is going to have your back and champion ideas and get just as excited about them as you are. And so you want people knocking on the door at the agency to say, when's the next Pizza Pizza brief coming?

Can I get on that? And so I think saying, hey, look, I'm not above going to jail for this is a pretty strong signal that you've got a client who believes in the power of creativity and who has a very high bar for ideas and has the conviction to go to jail, potentially for it.

00:15:05.460 — 00:15:07.140 · Adrian I don't. I'm terrified of jail.

00:15:07.180 — 00:15:19.820 · Mike He's terrified of jail. So, um, anyway, that was, that is a memorable, and if there's ever a book written about the Pizza Pizza - Zulu Alpha Kilo relationship, there is going to be a chapter, I'm sure, called I'm Not Above Going to Jail.

00:15:19.940 — 00:15:22.420 · Alison And, Adrian, we promise we're not gonna take you literally.

00:15:22.420 — 00:15:30.460 · Adrian I'm looking out my office window here on, uh, on Kipling Avenue as we have our discussion. And I actually look straight into the jail, which is across the street.

00:15:31.260 — 00:15:33.500 · Mike Well, the commute, the commute won't be too far then.

00:15:33.500 — 00:15:35.620 · Adrian It's too real.

00:15:37.260 — 00:15:37.980 · Alison Now Adrian, your brand has become known for jumping on cultural moments, "Bipartisan Wings" during the U.S. election to "Reverse Tariffs" and responding to trade tensions. You mentioned you're basically 80% planned and leave 20% flex for moments that come along. So how do you build that agility into your marketing operation?

00:15:55.940 — 00:17:30.110 · Adrian Well, that's a real challenge for us and our partners. One thing that allowed us to get to that place was just, I guess, best laid plans or however people describe it. Even if you have the great desire to have your year 100% planned out and you're gonna stick to that strategy and stick to that plan, I mean, I can't really think of of a time where we've pulled that off.

So, you know, maybe if that's the reality, then just say, well, let's just build that into our system to say, you know what? Let's, if we could if we could achieve 80% in September of 2025, if we have a plan and come the end of the next year or the end of 2026, that we've achieved 80% of our plan, that will be a win and the other 20% will be sort of flex.

So we just said, well, if there's going to be flex, let's just, let's just plan for it. That allows you to set a little bit of money aside, set a little bit of bandwidth aside, set a little bit of hours with Zulu aside so that when those moments come up, you're not scrambling to find the resources in order to make it happen.

And, you know, I don't know if it's always been like this, but certainly the last few years, you don't have a lot of advance notice. And usually the best cultural moments just sort of land in your lap, you know, unexpectedly. So if you're going to try to react to those things authentically in a way where it almost feels planned, I think a few of the ones that we pulled off do feel planned, as opposed to pulled off over a weekend.

But again, if you kind of pre-planned not to be planned then, then it gives you a little bit of a better chance of success of actually pulling it off.

00:17:30.270 — 00:17:46.750 · Alison And to assure there's capacity so that you can be agile when the moment arises. And then I'm sure there's an excitement of teams can really gel over what a cool opportunity and if we move quickly, we can be the first and only to seize this. I would think that that would help inspire both the brand team and the agency.

00:17:46.830 — 00:18:28.440 · Adrian It really does. And I don't know if there's any science to this or not, but I find when you have those moments and you know, brands, we all try and jump on them. But sometimes if you're not ready to go, you know, you just it's like a post. It's like a static image that you put up on Facebook saying, hey, you know, X thing we're talking about it.

You can kind of get a sense that it's sort of a knee jerk thing. That's the last minute we're going to tape a slice of pizza to a wall to react to the banana to the wall artwork or whatever. Whereas if you are able to do some of these things the way we've done them, and you actually have enough time and resources to build what looks like a proper series of advertisement.

So it gives you an opportunity to maybe to add a little bit more polish to these moments, and that could be an edge as well.

00:18:28.720 — 00:18:46.240 · Adrian Now, Mike, you mentioned that the reverse tariffs idea actually came from Adrian. He threw it out in one of your meetings and basically said "if Trump's doing tariffs, what if we did a reverse tariff?" So that challenges the traditional view of where ideas come from. So talk about why does it matter who has the idea and how that mindset can really shape your collaboration.

00:18:46.240 — 00:19:47.160 · Mike So much of the work that we do, there's this constant cycle of ideas that are happening, whether they be responding to cultural moments or whatever. And so it really doesn't matter where the idea comes from. And I mean, part of the founding philosophy of our agency is that, again, we're all creative, right?

We are all creative, and the sort of universal belief in the power of creativity and what it can do, whether it's client, strategist, account person, creative team, it doesn't really matter. And so I love that story that Adrian just throws out this thought in a meeting. And then the team rallies around it.

And immediately instead of shutting things down, and, what if? Okay, let's roll with that and see where it goes. And then again, like I mentioned earlier, again being generous with credit. So I don't know, maybe some agencies would have an issue saying, well, actually the seed of that idea came from the client.

Who cares? I think that's fantastic. So I love it. Talking about speed. This was a fast one, not days. It was like an hours kind of situation, basically.

00:19:47.480 — 00:19:53.920 · Alison I would like to take a moment out of this episode to thank the Earnscliffe team for helping bring CMA Connect to our listeners.

00:19:56.880 — 00:20:23.120 · Alison Earnscliffe is one of Canada's leading independent communications firms, with teams across Canada and expertise spanning public relations, public affairs, digital marketing, data and design, Earnscliffe brings together national reach, regional insight and coordinated expertise to help clients make sense of complex issues to build trust and deliver results.

To learn more about Earnscliffe team and Integrated services, visit earnscliffe.ca.

00:20:26.320 — 00:20:46.040 · Alison Now it's clear that the creative at Pizza Pizza is really, really high and that if something isn't hitting the mark, it doesn't happen, that there's no sort of, well, we've got to get to market quickly, so 70%, it's good enough, let's go. Adrian, how do you maintain that standard when you're also getting hourly sales reports and pressure is on to drive results right now?

00:20:46.480 — 00:22:20.570 · Adrian A big part of that is for us, there's always a baseline of activity that isn't necessarily podcast-worthy, you know, or award stage worthy that we have running constantly to support the business and those areas of marketing, whether it's through Search or whether it's other, more P Max type channels, we can flex those up and down as needed to support the day to day sales needs of the business, and we do that all the time.

So when we're talking about most of the work that we're doing with Zulu Alpha Kilo, a lot of that is brand equity building tied to a product launch, where maybe there's a little bit of flexibility if we need to move a few days here or there. It's not it's not going to be the end of the world. So in those situations, I think there's a buffer of activity that that will keep the brand moving forward.

And that gives us the opportunity to make sure that sort of the higher profile brand work is executed just the way that we want, right? And so another part of that is sometimes with something we're feeling, it's a little bit further on the edge or maybe a little bit riskier in terms of will this work and will we get it just right, the marketing department will kind of keep that project close to our hip for as long as we possibly can.

Maybe a select group of people are aware, and that way you're just not in one of these terrible situations where you've promised this great thing to your franchisees and to the entire company, and then you have to embarrassingly go back and delay install.

So we'll, on some of those projects, we'll try to hold on to it as long as humanly possible, so that when we do tell everybody that it's coming, the timing and the execution plan is a sure thing.

00:22:20.730 — 00:22:40.050 · Alison You get hourly sales reports delivered to your phone, so that's real-time accountability that QSR and retail have in common, but many marketers don't deal with. And in that is both a blessing and a curse. So how do you balance the gift of real time data with the danger of making reactive decisions based on one bad afternoon of sales?

00:22:40.370 — 00:22:43.090 · Adrian Yeah, that's very difficult. One thing is you need to have the confidence of your executive peer group and the CEO and the people that are going to be making the decisions as to whether or not some sort of reaction needs to happen. So I think we're fortunate here that we have that confidence and our partners have that confidence. And so I have the aperture to sort of say, okay, well, you know, we need to be looking for patterns here as opposed to, you know, like a moment.

We're more interested in what's the trend that's happening that we can react to as opposed to what happened this afternoon. It can be really difficult. And the other thing is you have to be careful not to fluff those things off, right? So if you are having a really bad couple days or a bad week, you know, I wouldn't recommend sort of saying, ah, it's no big deal.

We'll figure it out. People don't enjoy hearing that. And so I think some of the words that you use in terms of saying, yes, we're well aware, we've had a bit of a challenging period. We do feel confident in the strategy. We are taking a look at the longer term. Do we have a potentially sustained issue or is there some sort of blip going on?

You know, take a look at the calendar, what's happening in sports, what's happening in the weather? Maybe this is something that we need to wait a little while and weather. So, some of it just is just, you know, a little bit of confidence and having the right support and just making your way through it. Of course, it does get to a point where, yeah, you may have to make a change, but I'd rather be a little bit planned out than sort of in the moment, because that can be really demoralizing for the team and our partners if you're constantly changing direction.

00:24:13.620 — 00:24:40.140 · Alison And you make such a good point, as marketers are always aware of what customers are thinking and how they're reacting. But you have another really important audience in your franchisees who are running their own business across the province, have staves and mortgages that they're responsible for, and that's a lot of pressure.

So understanding where they're coming from and not being dismissive about what a slow day of sales actually can mean for them, is really important to building that customer relationship.

00:24:40.180 — 00:24:40.940 · Adrian Absolutely.

00:24:40.980 — 00:24:59.420 · Alison Now, Mike, you shared that the "Fixed Rate Pizza" actually started as a low investment social post. You saw it gaining great traction and then you invested in broadcast and above the line media. And that's often the inverse of how campaigns work. So what did that teach you about sort of testing before going big?

00:24:59.780 — 00:26:09.940 · Mike Yeah, I mean that's going back to 2022 and consumer prices were skyrocketing. I think it was like an 8% increase year over year. And so much of that campaign was about timing. We presented this idea that was all about parodying bank advertising a bit and seeing pizza as a financial asset, which is kind of a head-turner a bit, right?

And so, again, rather than launch like a fully fleshed out integrated campaign, we launched with a social post. And again, you talked about real time data and seeing response. So obviously looking at that in sales to say, okay, we're going to have an extra large pizza with four toppings, and we're going to hold the price at $16.99.

Is that going to get traction? Is that going to break through? And what we saw through social listening, we saw it get some heat, right? People started talking about it. And then it was only months after that where Adrian said, okay, we're going to brief in a more integrated campaign here, and we're going to free up the budget to make this much bigger than the way it started.

And so starting from a position of real confidence, because we already knew that this was getting some positive reactions, positive sentiment from consumers.

00:26:10.020 — 00:26:49.470 · Mike Just to add to that, the other part is just you talk about an understanding and a respect for the skills of your partner. And so Zulu had given us this great idea. And just like Mike said, it kind of was taking off. And then it was like, wow, like, imagine if we gave them the opportunity to fully flush out a campaign and fully flush out a 30 second brand sell for this.

And Pizza Pizza at that time hadn't done something like that in years. And so I felt very confident and obviously played out that way. We already know that people respond to the idea, and now we've got this top creative shop here who could just take it to the next level. And so that gave us confidence that, wow, there's still a lot of legs left in this thing with the right creative.

00:26:49.750 — 00:27:08.230 · Alison Adrian, in a recent quarterly reporting call, your CEO cited marketing as a key reason you were outperforming on sales. It's quite rare when most CEOs don't publicly credit marketing in that way. So how did you build that relationship where he sees marketing as a revenue driver and not a cost centre?

00:27:08.310 — 00:27:33.070 · Adrian Well, I think part of it is just fortunate that, you know, Paul Goddard, our CEO, is great and he loves marketing. And he, you know, he doesn't just value marketing, he gets a real kick out of it. And so that's just fun, right? Where your area is of personal interest to him. So that, coming over to Pizza Pizza I was aware of that.

And that was another thing that attracted me to coming here was just the attitude of the leadership team towards, you know, our craft.

00:27:33.230 — 00:28:10.600 · Alison It can make such a difference just in how effective you can be and how you can build a stronger partnership knowing that if it's embedded in both culture of the brand and the business, then it's one less fight that you need to take on. Now, Adrian, you mentioned the weight of accountability, and with 700 franchise owners depending on you to drive sales, the CEO publicly crediting marketing for growth, that's wonderful in many ways and also a ton of pressure.

So how do you manage through the inevitable tough weeks when all eyes are on you? We talked a bit about that like half day sales thing, but I want to drill down a little bit more on when there really is some softness in sales. How do you react?

00:28:10.640 — 00:29:33.160 · Adrian Go to the bathroom and cry alone. No, you know what I mean, there is a nugget there which is part of handling the pressure is how are you handling it internally, and how are you projecting out to the team and to your partners? I think that's really critical, right? You don't want the whole group living in a fool's paradise if things aren't going well.

But at the same time, you do have a responsibility to sort of, you know, steady the ship and give everybody confidence that we have a great plan and we have great initiatives underway, and we'll find our way through it. And the truth is, in QSR for an established brand, everybody, it's ups and downs, that's the nature of the business, right?

I mean, it's just, you're not going to grow every single day. So that's another part of it is just understanding that expectation, right? And sort of pushing towards the good days and staying positive in the tough ones. But it's good for the job security of the people that can handle it, because it is a really difficult task and it's not something that can be taught.

It just has to do with your attitude and of course, confidence in your strategy, right? If you feel really good, that look, we put a lot of thought into this strategy. We're well aware of what the competition is doing. We feel not just with our creative partner, a strategic partner, but of course our media partner and others that we've got people supporting the business who know what they're doing.

We're confident that we know what we're doing. So you don't want to be overconfident, but a little bit of confidence can go a long way and say, no, no, we're good. Like if after a while it's not working, then yeah, we can make some adjustments.

00:29:33.200 — 00:29:38.560 · Adrian And Mike, from an agency partner perspective, how do you and the team step up to support in those moments?

00:29:38.760 — 00:30:24.200 · Mike Well, I think first of all, the team understands the responsibility that, you know, Adrian and his team have. And yes, although the work we're doing is building brand equity, there's also an expectation that we're going to see the cash register respond as well. So I think that awareness within the team of what we're trying to do is important.

And then I think just responsiveness right? Adrian and the team know, like, pick up the phone, call us. Transparency. Be really communicative. Because the more we understand about what's happening, the more we're going to be able to help. And sometimes that might mean we need to move really, really quickly.

And sometimes that might mean we need to pivot and go in another direction because something's changed that we didn't know when we briefed on a project.

00:30:24.320 — 00:30:47.440 · Adrian So, Adrian , you made a fascinating comment that many marketers say, I wish I had more influence. And I hear that every day. There is a downside to it when you have as much influence as you do. You're often in a meeting with five executive colleagues and AI comes up, changing the business comes up and all eyes focus on you to solve the problem.

So talk about how you navigate that double-edged sword.

00:30:47.640 — 00:32:12.050 · Adrian Well yeah, it can be challenging, particularly if it's an organization where people are relying on marketing for a lot of those answers, and sometimes you don't have them ready in the moment. So I think the first thing is, if you have a really solid leadership team, you know, where you've got each other's backs.

And so where, yeah, something's coming my way, whether it's, hey, this is, what's your point of view on AI or what's your point of view on the fact that sales in this province stink? And so I think you need to be prepared for those discussions in advance. But then also you need to have people that you're with who you can say, well, you know, you know what?

I don't have all the answers right now. Let me go back and we're going to get a solid point of view. We'll come back to the team with a plan. And I think, you know, the other part of it is everybody knows that we all have a weight of responsibility to move the business forward. It's not just marketing, right? So I don't think anybody deep down truly believes that.

And so it's just making sure that, you know, you also have a culture where, yeah, it's understood that there's a shared responsibility here and everybody contributes in different ways. And so I'm not saying you want to push back and deflect and that kind of thing, but I think that just comes back again to empathy of all the different accountabilities that people have.

And maybe it could be a different conversation earlier where a different group is having a struggle, and if you are able to be supportive of them in that moment and be empathetic to the pressure that they're feeling in that moment, probably you're going to fare better when the pressures and the spotlight is on you.

00:32:12.370 — 00:32:30.890 · Alison Well, said. And Mike, having led an agency, I also know that from your perspective, there are times like AI and others where you have a number of your clients reach out and really looking to the agency for support, which is absolutely what you want as an agency, but it puts a lot of pressure on you as well.

So I'd love to hear how you answer the question.

00:32:30.930 — 00:33:41.180 · Mike Yeah, you know what? I, like, it kind of speaks to the importance of, again, just the marketing leadership as a profession, really. Think about the responsibility, the weight, has certainly gotten bigger and broader. Like Adrian, I think about the responsibilities on product innovation side of things, the responsibility purely on the marketing side of things.

There's the customer service piece of it. Alison, you mentioned technology, consumer trends and marketing innovation and the list goes on and on and on. And heads do turn to the marketing leader. And what an amazing privilege that is, right, for marketers to be the ones to have the responsibility to solve that.

So I love that. And I think in my role too, I have the, like the real pleasure of actually taking action against those things. And I mean, what I loved is I get to decide what I do. I don't have to call anybody and ask for permission to solve one of these things, or hey, we need to pivot and put a whole bunch more resources on a client issue because it's really, really important.

And I don't have to ask anybody for permission. We can just go ahead and do that. But all of that responsibility and the weight of it is what you do about it. You know, having a bias for action is key.

00:33:41.460 — 00:34:21.620 · Alison That's great. And Adrian, I know you joked about going and crying in the bathroom, but it's such an important acknowledgement to say, like, as leaders, we have to put on a brave face. We have to be transparent with our teams and partners. But we also have to acknowledge there's a huge weight on our shoulders and find a time, whether it's crying in the bathroom, going for a run, however you deal with it, to acknowledge that and give yourself some grace before you then charge ahead.

So I think it's a great important lesson that we can all take away for sure. Now, I have definitely learned some of the most powerful lessons the hard way, whether it's a mistake or just an outright failure. So before we celebrate all of your wins, I would love you each to share a misstep and what you learned from it.

00:34:21.659 — 00:36:07.630 · Adrian I mean, fortunately, I can say this is when I was more junior, so not as big of an issue now, but sort of client side, the brand side. The biggest mistake that I ever made, or that I have very often seen others make, is not trying your best to fully understand the complete business that you're operating in. So, you know, in this case, I'm here in the restaurant business and I'm a marketer.

That's what I love to do. I love to build strategies and campaigns and ads and all that fun stuff. But the reality is, is that this this is a pizza making business. And this is a franchising business. And you know, you might be surprised. This is a construction business, this is a real estate business, this is a supply chain business.

And so all of those other things are connected to what we're doing. You know, where we choose to put a location, that's going to have an impact on marketing and how the food arrives and the products are built and shipped and all that stuff has an implication on marketing. And so if you just sort of made a decision like, no, I'm just going to I'm just going to do the ads and buy the media.

And that's my role. I just, I really feel that you're going to you're going to struggle if you don't understand the bigger picture of the business. And also you're going to not have a lot of credibility outside of the four walls of marketing, which is also a challenge. Right? You've all been in this position where you feel like you're constantly doing a pitch job internally to convince people of what you're doing.

And, you know, if you take the time to understand what other people are doing and how the how the system operates and of course, how the company makes money financially and all those critical things, you just have better credibility. First of all, you're going to have better plans. And also it's going to be easier for you to merchandise those around the company and get people on board because you're speaking from a place of authenticity and knowledge of the business.

00:36:07.910 — 00:36:32.670 · Alison That is such important advice, and I hope everyone that's listening, regardless of what level, really takes the time to absorb that, because it can make such an incredible difference in building relationships, your credibility and your enjoyment of the job, like having that depth and understanding of the business, what your colleagues are also responsible for.

It can also lead to some really great ideas when you dig into the business and understand it.

00:36:32.710 — 00:37:38.430 · Mike You know what, when I think about mistakes and I made this one more than once. So much of my role now is about like setting the conditions internally here at the agency, setting the conditions in our client relationships for us to do the best work that we can do. And one of the lessons I've learned more than once is waiting too long to address something that feels slightly off in a partnership.

And it's not even a scenario where like, okay, something's like really broken. It's more, again, maybe there's a little misalignment. And I've convinced myself that maybe I can manage around something, but I think those small misalignments don't stay small. They get big. I guess what I've learned is to address those things much earlier on.

Not confrontationally, but address them with a lot of clarity, a lot of empathy, just to create a better foundation for partnership. And so I think I've gotten much better at that. You know, we all have instincts, right? And I have learned to really trust my instincts. I think as my career has gone on and act on those things versus push them away and deal with them head on.

00:37:38.470 — 00:38:04.240 · Alison That was a great follow on. And when you think about, the more you let it fester, the bigger it becomes, the harder that conversation also becomes when you need to address it. So yeah, it's super valuable learning from both of you. So now let's move to most proud moments. And I know you both have a ton of those, so this might be the hardest question I ask, but if you have to pick one of your favourite successes together and you each get to pick one, what are you most proud of and why.

00:38:04.840 — 00:39:28.080 · Adrian It's so recent. Obviously Mike and I jumping up on stage with the team to the Best of the Best last year. We were all gushing with pride at the CMAs. I mean, that was super cool. And you know, I think a big part of that is we're a medium-sized brand, Zulu is an independent agency. And so for that, that level of recognition, especially when we talk about, you know, just sort of this conversation and where it started from small scrappy team on a great brand, kind of doing DIY, you know, full circle to you're up there on the biggest stage accepting the show closer. That to me was a great moment of pride.

And the other thing related to that is just I'm extremely proud to have personally a thumbprint on a brand. Like I feel that, you know, people, they'll say, oh, Pizza Pizza, you guys have done some great stuff and you've seen a lot of changes and this and that, and I, I feel like we're getting close to building sort of a legacy that, you know, at some point I will move on and the team will move on.

But if you're able to create like a little bit of an era for a brand, just like on a sports franchise or whatever else, that, to be a part of something like that, I'm super proud of it. I don't think I'll always have that opportunity. And we, you know, we all know marketers over the years who kind of have that moment where they're associated with a particular brand, and you get to carry that with you.

If we could have achieved that at Pizza Pizza, between my team here and the team at Zulu for this period, I think that would be really neat.

00:39:28.120 — 00:39:30.080 · Alison Absolutely. Mike, over to you.

00:39:30.080 — 00:40:44.490 · Mike It's tough to top this that CMA moment on stage together. And I still, I get chills just just thinking about it. I'm going to cheat, Alison, I'm going to I'm going to pick two. Um, the first proud moment I'd say, because everything that's followed started with the foundation, started with the brand platform, "Everyone Deserves Pizza."

Before we had some incredible breakthrough creative idea, we had this amazing, solid, authentic, truthful platform called "Everyone Deserves Pizza" for the brand. And so that's a proud moment because the very first hit was "fixed rate pizza". It allowed that, and it's allowed every single thing that's happened after that.

So a lot of pride in again creating the structure and the foundation that's enabled the work. And then the other moment where I get pride is where I hear from people outside of the Zulu and Pizza Pizza teams who know about the work. Could be another client who's calling to say, hey, I've been following the the Pizza Pizza work, I've seen the business results, and I want to learn more about how you did that.

And so a lot of pride in that when there's compliments, you know, from our peer group in the work that we're doing in the success that we're having.

00:40:44.650 — 00:40:57.730 · Alison It's amazing. The ultimate compliment, for sure. I'm really lucky to host senior leaders like you on the podcast, so I always end each episode by asking you to share one piece of career advice for our listeners who aspire to follow in your footsteps.

00:40:57.770 — 00:41:48.730 · Adrian We talked earlier about taking risks, but no, I mean, at the end of the day to be definitely on on the brand side, like to be a great marketer, you have to do things that are memorable and really going to get people's attention, and maybe they'll laugh, or maybe they'll just sort of have a wow moment. And if you don't have any of those, I don't know how you're going to be successful.

You have to sort of be associated with interest and excitement. And so you're not going to get that playing it safe. So you are going to have to take some risks and do a few things that are a little bit outside of your comfort zone. But at the end of the day, the alternative is scarier, right? Like, if you're just invisible and you're not really known for anything and you're just kind of playing it safe, I feel that's how you kind of just float off into obscurity.

So unfortunately, the risks is the only, the true path to to success. Just got to find a way to do it that's, you know, measured and strategic.

00:41:48.770 — 00:41:59.170 · Alison And it does get easier. As you take risks and see them paying off when they don't pay off when you pivot quickly and get the learning from it over time, you build that muscle for sure. Mike, over to you.

00:41:59.210 — 00:42:37.650 · Mike Love that. This is going to build off of, you know, what Adrian just talked about? I'd say enthusiasm and presence early on in your career. Put your hand up. Get involved. Ask to be involved in things that are out, maybe outside of your core assignment. Attach yourself to those opportunities that are happening within your organization, whether you're a client side or whether you're in an agency.

And in order to do that, you have to be present. So really be present. Be involved. Get to know all of your colleagues and the leadership. And you do those two things, have a lot of enthusiasm and be present in your role, good things are going to follow.

00:42:38.020 — 00:43:02.980 · Alison Terrific advice. So, Mike and Adrian, I have really enjoyed our conversation. You've both provided such rich learning for our listeners, and it's great to have both sides of the partnership represented. And I want to end by congratulating you on you're doing such terrific work together. You're driving and delivering inspiring business results, which is ultimately why we're all in the marketing profession.

And I really appreciate you taking time from very busy days to join us for CMA Connect.

00:43:03.020 — 00:43:04.300 · Adrian Thanks so much, Alison.

00:43:04.340 — 00:43:07.020 · Mike Absolute pleasure. Thanks, Alison. Thanks, Adrian.

00:43:07.060 — 00:43:09.180 · Adrian Cheers. Thanks, Mike. Great seeing you both.

00:43:11.020 — 00:43:23.980 · Presenter Thanks for joining us. Be sure to visit the CMA.ca and sign up for your free My CMA account. It's a great way to stay connected and benefit from the latest marketing thought leadership, news and industry trends.

One in four Canadians lives in a food-insecure household -- and many have jobs, degrees and never imagined needing help. In the latest episode of CMA Connect, Alison Simpson sits down with Kirstin Beardsley, CEO of Food Banks Canada and Neil Hetherington, CEO of Daily Bread Food Bank, to unpack the scale of this crisis and why brands that go beyond writing a check make a meaningful difference for communities -- and their business.

CMAConnect-Ep. 73-Kirstin & Neil w promo.txt English (UK)

00:00:00.920 — 00:00:19.680 · Presenter Welcome to CMA Connect, Canada's marketing podcast, where industry experts discuss how marketers must manage the tectonic shifts that will change how brands and businesses are built for tomorrow, while also delivering on today's business needs. With your host, newly retired CMA CEO Alison Simpson.

00:00:24.360 — 00:02:40.450 · Alison Food insecurity in Canada has reached levels we haven't seen in modern history. Let that sink in. Right now, 1 in 4 Canadians lives in a food insecure household. That's 10 million people and includes 2.5 million children. The demand on food banks keeps climbing. March last year alone, there were nearly 2.2 million visits to food banks across the country, the highest number in our history.

Behind those statistics are real people, working Canadians who can't afford both rent and groceries. Families with university degrees who never imagined needing help. Newcomers trying to build a life here, and increasingly, people who are employed but still can't make ends meet. Today's conversation matters for all of us, but especially for marketers and brand leaders.

While this is fundamentally a crisis that demands policy solutions, brands also have a critical role to play right now, and many are stepping up in innovative and important ways. I'm joined by two leaders on the frontlines of this crisis. Kirstin Beardsley is the CEO of Food Banks Canada, the national organization representing over 5500 food banks and community agencies across Canada.

Kirstin has been with the organization since 2015, working her way from Director of Policy to Chief Network Services Officer, before taking on the CEO mantle in 2022. She holds a degree in Women's Studies from New York University, and has built her career at the intersection of policy, logistics and community impact.

Neil Hetherington is the CEO of Daily Bread Food Bank in Toronto, where 1 in 10 residents now rely on food bank support. Before joining Daily Bread, Neil led Dixon Hall and was the youngest ever CEO for Habitat for Humanity Toronto at just 25 years old. He brings a systems thinking approach to addressing food insecurity, balancing immediate relief with advocacy for long-term change.

Both organizations, I'm proud to say are CMA members, and Neil and Kirstin understand that addressing this crisis requires collaboration between government, community organizations and the private sector. Today, we're going to explore what's really happening across Canada, how our landscape is changing and how brands can make meaningful contributions writing checks and beyond.

Kirstin and Neil, thank you both so much for joining me. I know you're incredibly busy and I really appreciate you being here.

00:02:40.450 — 00:02:42.690 · Neil Really glad to be here.

Kirstin: Thanks for having us.

00:02:42.730 — 00:03:10.960 · Alison So let's start by grounding our listeners in what's actually happening right now. Some of those numbers are absolutely staggering, but I think it's important that we don't let people become numb to them. So, Neil, let's start with you. In Toronto specifically, you're seeing over 4.1 million food bank visits annually, a 340% increase since 2019.

Can you help us understand what that actually looks like on the ground? And who are the people that are walking through your doors today compared to five years ago?

00:03:11.080 — 00:04:11.100 · Neil Yeah. You know, it took 38 years for Daily Bread to to get to 1 million client visits in a single year, and then only two years to get to 2 million. One year to get to 3 million, and then another year to get to 4 million. And so we have seen this rapid growth of individuals who have to rely on food charity. So there have been those who have always been with the food bank.

Those would be people who are on income supports that are wholly inadequate. So you take somebody, for example, on disability. They receive about $1,400 per month. Nobody can survive on $1,400 a month. They have to rely on friends, family and charity. But the growth that we're seeing is primarily composed right now of individuals who have done everything right.

It's individuals between 19 and 44. 60% of them have a university or college education, and 50% of them have full time employment. So you think about that. They've gone to school, they've got a job, they're working hard, yet they have to come to a food bank. And that's primarily because of a lack of affordable housing in our city.

00:04:11.180 — 00:04:55.860 · Kirstin Yeah. I mean, what we're seeing is, is really what Daily Bread and Neil are seeing in Toronto magnified and multiplied right across the country. We're seeing nationally the trend of working folks, folks with employment as their main source of income, as more reliant on food banks. That's not just a Toronto-based trend.

We're seeing that right across the country. But there are some places that have growth, as has Quebec, in the number of folks relying on food banks. And we're also seeing in the north. So where food insecurity has always been at crisis levels in Canada, that that is right now with the high costs, extreme costs, as well as incomes that aren't keeping pace, that more and more folks in the North are also relying on organizations like food banks to get by.

00:04:56.020 — 00:05:18.930 · Alison So Kirstin, building on what you were saying, it's really surprising to me that 20% of your clients at food banks are employed. 57% of clients at the Daily Bread Food Bank have a university or post-secondary degree, yet they clearly still have a need. So, Neil, what is this telling us about structural economic challenges that are facing Canadians right now?

And how does your profile of clients continue to shift?

00:05:18.970 — 00:06:15.150 · Neil It's telling us that the social contract is broken. It used to be that that you would be able to get by when all of those parameters were, were fulfilled. And that isn't the case. And here's the thing. We decided in the 90s as a country, to get out of building affordable housing. We stopped building cooperative housing.

We stopped building social housing. Yet our population was increasing and we are paying for that two generations later. And I would argue it's going to take us two generations more. Despite Build Canada homes coming about, despite $13 billion coming to affordable housing through that that excellent program, it's going to take us a while to build out of that.

So in the interim, we need to make sure that there are income supports that are appropriate for Canadians. Income supports like the Canada Disability Benefit, which came into force just this last July, where $6.1 billion is going to go to those that are the most vulnerable in our society, those that are relying on food banks all across the country.

00:06:15.310 — 00:06:26.270 · Alison And, Kirstin, on a national level, you're seeing 34% of food bank users are newcomers to Canada who have been here for ten years or less. So what's driving that and what does it mean for how we're thinking about supporting new Canadians?

00:06:26.310 — 00:07:22.540 · Kirstin Yeah, I think it's important to note that there isn't one single group that's driving the growth in food bank use that, as we've said, we've seen growth across the country in a number of demographics. But that said, we know that newcomers come to Canada and meet precarious situations. So those who are employed are often more likely to be in a precarious gig employment that doesn't give consistent hours. They're more likely to earn lower wages. And if they do lose their jobs, they're less likely to be eligible for the programs that we do have in place to support folks through those tough times, things like employment insurance or provincial social assistance, but because of immigration status, are less likely to be eligible for those programs.

So, as Neil was saying, what this demonstrates is just a massive gap in our social safety net. The social safety net we have is broken. And it's not ensuring that folks who are the most in need are able to get by no matter what, no matter who they are across the country.

00:07:22.660 — 00:07:44.700 · Alison And with that being the reality today, you're both operating in environments where demand is exploding and resources simply aren't keeping pace. So over half of Canadian food banks have had to reduce services and give out less food because of the pressure, yet the demand increases. So, Neil, what does the operational reality look like when you can't meet the demand?

What impossible choices are you having to make?

00:07:45.220 — 00:08:39.440 · Neil Well, that reality across the country is a tough one for anybody. Every single time there is a change, it means that there is one last meal provided by a food bank to that parent, to that child. And so as frustrating as that is, we're using that as our fuel to inspire us to advocate even louder.

We are discontent with the status quo, where we say enough is enough, and we need to use the stats and the numbers and the stories that we have here of family after family, tens of thousands of them on a daily basis, and use those statistics to be able to say, here are the policy alternatives that all three levels of government have failed on, and give them the alternatives to be able to start to build a more hopeful society, to build a place where everybody can thrive in community. And that flows from making sure that people have the right to housing fulfilled and their right to food fulfilled.

00:08:39.599 — 00:09:13.070 · Alison In any CEO role, you have to make tough decisions. And that's certainly true in my role. But they pale in comparison to the decisions that the two of you are facing. Those are truly heartbreaking decisions. The fact that you're using it as fuel to get governments to engage and address the root issues, and also to get businesses and individuals to engage and help meet the need, is so important and highly commendable.

Now, Kirstin, how are you supporting local food banks that are buckling under this pressure? And what systematic changes does the network really need to support the growing demand?

00:09:13.470 — 00:11:08.640 · Kirstin This is one of the most heartbreaking things for me in my job is, is encountering food bankers who are having to make those decisions or are having to say, you know, we don't have as much food as we'd like to give out, or we're going to limit the number of visits that someone can make to the food bank, because we simply need to stretch the amount of food that we've got further, because more people are coming through the doors. It's incredibly hard work, and it's a much harder job than I have. I agree with you. Those are those are the toughest types of decisions. But I also agree with Neil that what we don't want to do is have to sustain this level of growth in need of food banks across Canada.

What we want to do is see fewer people rely on food banks in the future, and that's going to come with solid policy decisions at all levels of government. So at Food Banks Canada, we focus at the federal level. So we work with food banks right across Canada to share what we're hearing. I think it's really important for governments to get a sense of what's happening in the reality of food banks and the folks that we serve, and we advocate for policies like EI reform that will help a future where fewer folks will need food banks.

We also want to make sure that we're supporting the food bank system to remain strong. So we'll be here as long as people need food. The food bank system will strive to show up, as we have done for the last decades. But really it is about that government advocacy and that policy change. We're also, as I mentioned, around the North, we're continuing to ensure that we're a huge support to community led solutions in the North.

It's a difficult place to get food when you're talking about fly-in communities, and the infrastructure difficulties of building in the North are a challenge. And so how can Food Banks Canada and this network we've got across the country support our colleagues who are doing this work in even more challenging conditions. While we make sure the system is strong today, we need to look towards a future where fewer people are coming to the doors of food banks every single month.

00:11:08.880 — 00:11:51.870 · Alison You're the first guests I've had the pleasure of hosting on the podcast, where the ultimate goal is for your organizations and your jobs to no longer be needed. So I definitely support trying to get us there as a country. So let's shift to the role of private sector and brand specifically. There are some really powerful examples of how corporate Canada is stepping up.

So Kirstin, one example is Walmart's Fight Hunger, Spark Change campaign that I believe has generated over 100 million meals since 2017 and contributed another million dollars in February 2026. Purolator delivered a record 2.8 million meals in 2025. So what makes these partnerships work, and what do you do to set them apart from companies that just write a one time cheque?

Not that there's anything against writing cheques. Money's needed too.

00:11:51.870 — 00:13:41.970 · Kirstin Absolutely. But, we're so grateful for partners that walk a journey with us and want to invest not only at a corporate level, but engage their employees and engage their customers to support this incredible work and critical work that food banks are doing right across the country. So with Walmart Canada, proud to say it's the 10th anniversary of the Fight Hunger Spark Change campaign in support of food banks right across the country.

And as you said, they've raised a record funds, 55 million raised and donated to support food banks across Canada. And every dollar stays local. So where the customer lives, where they want to support those funds, go to a food bank that is matched with their local Walmart. And I think that's really important for those customers to know that their impact is local.

And so the campaign invites those customers to donate in store, and that's matched. Walmart Canada is also engaged in a corporate match to make sure that they're contributing as well. And so it's a really 360 partnership because of their commitment to supporting communities across the country. Purolator is also a long standing partner to food banks right across the country.

This is their 23rd year of the Purolator Tackle Hunger campaign, which rallies, again, their employees, their partners and communities across the country to raise critical funds and foods for local food banks. And so, while we are so grateful for those partnerships, we also know the partnerships help both companies meet their ESG goals and targets as a company.

And it is, you know, it's not just the support, I always say, this work is tough on a good day. These are not good days for food banking and to know that we're not alone, to know that we have support from every sector of society, is critical in our ability to continue to do the work and meet the challenges.

00:13:42.010 — 00:14:11.360 · Alison I know they're doing it first and foremost because they see a need and they're looking to support it. The fact that they've both been doing it for decades is wonderful to hear. It's also good business. You think about how their customers are going to perceive their businesses and brands, and how they're actively giving back where in one of the areas our country most needs it. That's very impressive. Now Neil, I know you also had the pleasure of working with great brands like Rogers, Sun Life, Shell and CIBC, and I'm sure there's a host of others. So when you think about the most effective brand partnerships, what are the characteristics that make them truly impactful?

00:14:11.360 — 00:15:13.660 · Neil So one of the things that we have here at the Daily Bread Food Bank is the opportunity for that company to express their inward values in an outward fashion. They can come and they can sort that food, they can work alongside one another. And so, yes, their customers are going to value that organization more when they're donating to a local charity or across the country to individual food banks.

They're going to value that, but they're going to see great benefit from an HR perspective. Think about the time that you had, you know, when you maybe you started off in your first marketing role and you got to work alongside a VP and you were a coordinator, and suddenly you had this conversation and this relationship.

It's good for them as a company. And so we take that benefit and then we give them the opportunity to divest of their wealth by giving us a donation to be able to, to sort the food, put incredible music on. And, and so you're dancing alongside that VP that you otherwise wouldn't meet. And each of those companies knows that they can, uh, can dance positively into a future where everybody can thrive in the community.

00:15:13.700 — 00:15:51.570 · Alison And when you also think about younger employees are actively choosing to work at companies that they believe in and that support values that are important to the individual. So what a wonderful way to bring that to life and attract the top talent, but also retain them too. I've been really interested in some of the innovative approaches that brands are taking to this problem.

So, for example, I know Loblaws plans to send zero food to landfills by 2030, which is quickly approaching. So, Neil, what are the biggest operational gaps where brand innovation could make a real difference? Is it cold storage capacity, transportation, specific food categories like protein? How can we help?

00:15:51.730 — 00:17:02.790 · Neil Well, so the answer is yes. It's, you know, each of those. And that's the thing. Martin Luther King Jr had this quote that he wrote in a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama, where he said, we can all be brave because we can all serve. And I believe that to be true. Every single corporation has the opportunity to be able to take what differentiates them as a company and be able to take a portion of that and provide that to a local food bank.

So, you know, I'm standing in front of a bin of Kind Bar granola. That company has given us sort of the leftovers from, from each of the days on a regular basis, and we repackage it and it goes out as granola to, to a family. But then you think about a company like Leo Burnett, they partnered with Daily Bread.

They provided us with our new logo. And it shows, you know, forks coming together, community eating together. But if you look at it the other way, they've taken their skills and they've said it actually is for pencils marking an election ballot. So they're taking that dual mission of the food bank, which is feed the need now and let's advocate for change.

And they put it into one logo. And they're winning international awards because of that one change. So again, going back to that quote, we can all be great because we can all serve.

00:17:02.950 — 00:17:17.750 · Alison Those are such great examples. I'm also proud that of all the examples that both of you have talked about, they're all CMA members. So that makes me very proud of the incredible community that we have.

Alison - I would like to take a moment out of this episode to thank the Earnscliffe team for helping bring CMA connect to our listeners.

00:17:20.670 — 00:17:46.740 · Alison Earnscliffe is one of Canada's leading independent communications firms, with teams across Canada and expertise spanning public relations, public affairs, digital marketing, data and design, Earnscliffe brings together national reach, regional insight and coordinated expertise to help clients make sense of complex issues to build trust and deliver results.

To learn more about Earnscliffe team and integrated services visit Earnscliffe.ca.

00:17:50.540 — 00:17:54.860 · Alison So, Kirstin, when brands come to you asking how they can help, what do you tell them?

00:17:54.900 — 00:19:02.120 · Kirstin I think this is what Neil was saying, is that food banks across the country and at Food Banks Canada, the answer is yes. There's a number of ways that those brands can help support us. And that includes things that Neil mentioned, like the donation of food, which is critical. We rely so heavily on transportation and logistics support to make sure that food gets from coast to coast to coast.

Or offering professional services. And you mentioned Loblaw and their initiative, ESG initiative, to send zero food to landfill by 2030. That's an incredible partnership. One of the key ways that they do that is that they are matched with food banks across the country. And so when that food is edible and safe for human consumption, that is going to a food bank.

And folks like Neil's team is making sure that that food gets to the folks who are most in need right across the country. What we say when a company comes to us and wants to partner is, what are your priorities? What are you looking to achieve? Because I know that there's going to be opportunities for us as organizations to each achieve our targets, to make sure more communities are fed, to make sure less food is going to landfill by working together.

00:19:02.520 — 00:19:33.960 · Alison So building on that cause marketing campaigns can be incredibly powerful for both raising awareness and ultimately funds. Tim Hortons' Smile Cookie campaign is a great example. I know they raised just under 20,000,000 in 2024. Local food banks are benefiting from across the country. Subway's Never Miss Lunch campaign distributed 215,000 food packs in 235 communities, so those are just two great examples.

So, Kirstin, when done well, what can these consumer facing campaigns achieve beyond fundraising, and how can they help shift public understanding of food insecurity?

00:19:34.280 — 00:20:42.330 · Kirstin One of the great privileges of my job is that I get to witness folks who care about each other every single day. I mean, that's what the food banks do. They bring together people who care about their neighbours. And so cause marketing campaigns are another way for folks to do that. They can give back. They can learn often a nuance about food or food insecurity or hunger or food bank use across Canada.

And they can use their dollars in a way to support the causes that they care about. We are so blessed with the partnership with Subway Canada. It's now in its eighth year of their Never Miss Lunch campaign, and as you said, that supports fresh food going to food banks right across Canada. This year we're doing 220,000 packs in every province and territory.

Those funds allow food banks to buy fresh food to deliver to kids across the country during the summer months, at a time when other meal programs might not be available, and their deep partnership and deep commitment to the cause is what allows it to be successful across the country. And people feel good about that when they go to Subway and are able to contribute.

So it's another way of making sure that people have an opportunity to give back.

00:20:42.370 — 00:20:54.650 · Alison I know we've got a lot of marketers listening, and I'm sure there are a number of them that are thinking, I really want to pitch a cause marketing partnership to the leadership team. So what would make that pitch compelling from Food Bank's perspective?

00:20:54.810 — 00:21:30.570 · Neil I can tell you that on a consistent basis, probably at least 100 times a year, I am speaking at different companies to let them know about the systemic causes of food insecurity and how they can be part of the solution. And then if I was that marketer, I'd walk into that leadership meeting proudly and say, listen, your money is going to something fundamentally good.

Our employees can benefit from this. The brand can be elevated by co-branding. And it is, you know, radical common sense. And then I would say to that leadership team in that boardroom, just raise your hand if we're not going to do this. And suddenly you've got a partnership happening.

00:21:30.610 — 00:21:54.120 · Alison So beyond consumer campaigns, the employee engagement piece is a really compelling piece as well. You're seeing companies moving beyond traditional volunteering towards what you might call more competency-based partnerships. So, Neil, I know you offer formalized employee volunteer programs.

So what value does that hands-on engagement create, both for your operations, but also all of the employees that get to participate? And you've touched on this a little bit, but I know there's a lot more.

00:21:54.600 — 00:23:05.220 · Neil Yeah, there sure is. I mean, when you think about it, they're paying us for the opportunity for us to do the work. It's like a Tom Sawyer model, and so we're incredibly grateful for that. But again, it goes to, individually, they're learning more about food insecurity. Individually, they're learning more about their team.

And then they are collectively going out for lunch or dinner following. And we make that beer taste better. You know, they will have had a great day sweating over sorting food. And then they can have a conversation about, you know, fundamentally, why is it that we are doing it? And they're doing it, I would say, because every company benefits when every Canadian can thrive in community.

You know, the head of TD Bank used to to be heavily engaged with Habitat for Humanity. And the reason he was, was because he knew his employees had to live and work in the community. It was good for business to make sure that there was decent social housing, that there was decent affordable housing. And so, uh, so this is just a vehicle for people to, to get all engaged and then hopefully make the change so that our line ups at food banks decrease.

And then Kirstin and I can go get a job in marketing somewhere.

00:23:05.580 — 00:23:14.420 · Alison Now, Kirstin, through Food Banks Canada, you obviously can deliver this on a national level. So I'd love you to share how you're engaging partners in competency-based volunteering as well.

00:23:14.420 — 00:24:24.410 · Kirstin We work through the network of organizations across the country, and partners provide services that benefit communities right across Canada. One of the examples I have is KPMG. Our partnership with them supports tax clinics across the country. So a lot of folks who use food banks don't necessarily file their taxes.

And so through this partnership, we're making it easier. And with a trusted relationship with the food bank, a bit less daunting for folks to file their taxes. And obviously we rely on those volunteers with some skills to be able to support this initiative right across the country. And it's really impactful for those employees to see.

In the last year, there were over 21,000 tax returns filed through that partnership with KPMG, and $113 million returned to the pockets of those most in need across the country. And so for some, that's the difference between needing a food bank and not needing a food bank. And so it's just partnerships like that, as Neil and I have been saying, there are real opportunities. Anyone who's considering a partnership, food banks have a place for you to help your organization join the cause, which is impacting millions of folks right across the country right now.

00:24:24.610 — 00:24:45.720 · Alison So I want to get tactical for our listeners and give them as much ammunition as possible to then raise their hand and get their brands and businesses supporting your organizations. So, Kirstin, what are the best practices that you'd recommend. Are you looking for multi-year commitments versus one off donations?

Should it be aligning with core competencies? What actually can help move the needle?

00:24:45.840 — 00:26:06.180 · Kirstin Yeah, and the answer really isn't that there's one size fits all solution. What we do and what I know food banks like Daily Bread do, is really sit down with the companies that want to support the work that we do, and we work together to identify their priorities, what they're hoping to achieve. Is it employee engagement opportunities?

Is it the ability to tell a story? Is it engaging those customers at the local setting and demonstrating their commitment to helping communities across Canada? So the first step, the real best practice is building the partnership together. Having a conversation, learning about the priorities of each organization and making sure that as we invest in that partnership together, that we both have our needs met as we go on that journey.

And that's where you see partnerships that are decades in the making, because we've invested in each other's success and each other's priorities. So unfortunately, right now food insecurity is, as you said off the top, at the highest level, food banks are struggling to meet the demand. And so we don't expect these challenges to decline anytime soon.

And so if you are thinking about it, we do as a system, whether that's at a local, provincial or a national level, need as much support as possible to join us in this cause, not only to support the folks who need food today, but to join us in advocating for future change so that fewer people need us tomorrow.

00:26:06.340 — 00:26:20.060 · Alison So before we wrap up, I really want to make sure that we don't lose sight of the people behind all the statistics we've shared. So, Neil, can you share a story, maybe a recent interaction with a client that captures what this crisis actually means for Canadian families?

00:26:20.180 — 00:28:31.030 · Neil A lot of those. I was here Christmas Eve, and there was a single mom who had missed the opportunity to be able to get the food for her two children, and they were in a wagon on Christmas Eve at 5:00 at night, at of food bank, and I felt a sense of hopelessness at a season of light and hope, and I was really rather discouraged.

And she had missed the time. But we were able to get the food to her and to see the elation in her eyes that she would be able to provide food for her kids that night. You know, that that was one that really resonated with me. Just like why in a country as great as ours is that mom having to spend Christmas Eve in the cold in a parking lot at Daily Bread.

And so there's that. And then I'll never forget walking in line at one of our food banks and seeing a familiar face and, uh, and, and walking over to that person, and you go through that moment where you see somebody and you're like, oh, did they see me? Should I go over? This is a really challenging time for that person to be in line at a food bank.

Should I go up and say hello? And of course, I always say hello, because they're going through that difficult time. Why would I make it more difficult by by not being friendly and saying hello to them? And I asked about their circumstances, and in their case, they were making $50,000 or so working at our national broadcaster and had two children.

And you think, why are you in a line with that? And, um, the answer, in her case, was $14,000 comes off with tax and now you're down to 36,000 a year. She was paying roughly 26,000 for rent for her one bedroom apartment. And then, you know, you have about $500 a month to feed three people. And we mentioned already that, you know, Canadians need about 300, $350 a month worth of food.

So she's underwater for her and the two children, she needs the Daily Bread food bank. We were there for her. So my point is that there are stories after stories. Behind every statistic is a face and is an individual whose right to food is not being realized. And that, again, I've said it earlier, should fuel us to be angry and then make the change we need at all three levels of government.

00:28:31.070 — 00:28:37.940 · Alison Absolutely agree. Now Kirstin, what do you want Canadians who aren't food insecure to understand what their neighbours are going through?

00:28:38.020 — 00:30:18.080 · Kirstin Yeah, and I think it's what Neil shared. We hear the numbers and are shocked by them, but those are real folks. Folks like the story Neil shared that we know who are relying on the essential services of food banks because they simply can't make ends meet. It's impossible choices when your salary just doesn't cover your rent and winter boots for your kids and food on the table, you have to turn to the food bank for help.

But I also want to share that for me, despite the numbers and despite the stories, I remain incredibly hopeful about the future that we're building, because I also get to see the tens of thousands of folks who show up every day. And I get emotional because, you know, these are challenging issues, but a lot of people don't roll up their sleeves and say, you know what?

Not on my watch. My neighbours are not going hungry today. And what's incredible about food bankers, what's incredible about the donors and the corporations and the communities that come to support us is that we roll up our sleeves where others don't. And make sure that support goes where it's needed.

So I get to see that and feel that every single day, which fuels my hope for the future. And I also want to frame the issue, and Neil said this as well, it's really important. This is about the future we're all building. You know, when people have the food that they need to thrive, whether that's through a food bank, hopefully through policy change, they don't need to access a food bank anymore.

But when they have the food they need to thrive, we all benefit as a country. So this is a cause that should matter to everyone, because we have a lot of challenges as a country that we need to solve. So we need everyone at their best. And making sure people have access to food is critical to that future.

00:30:18.240 — 00:30:26.680 · Alison So building on that, for the marketers, brand leaders and business executives who are listening today and want to help, what's the one thing you'd ask them to do?

00:30:26.720 — 00:31:11.110 · Neil I don't know if you remember, about ten years ago, we as Canadians got together and through CBC, we had a, who was the most monumental Canadian, the greatest Canadian. And the winner of that was Tommy Douglas, the man who brought in socialized medicine across the country. And one of his very simple quotes was, "Today is the day to build a better Canada."

And so I would say to each marketer that you have the power within you to build a better Canada, not only at the company that you are working with, not only with the customer, but with your employees. And you have the opportunity to make sure that through each of those coming together, that the people that we just talked about, the people that Kirstin supports all across the country, from coast to coast to coast, have the opportunity to have their right to food.

00:31:11.150 — 00:31:35.770 · Kirstin I mean, there it is. I mean, I would follow up with saying the same thing, to join us. That this is a critical issue, not just for individuals, but this is a critical issue for our society, for our communities, for our country. And so we're ready to help support organizations, companies, to meet their goals as companies, and we invite you to join us on this journey towards a Canada where no one goes hungry.

00:31:36.010 — 00:31:51.050 · Alison Now, I'm very fortunate to host senior executives like you on the podcast, so I always end each episode by asking my guest to share one piece of career advice for listeners who aspire to follow in your footsteps. So what advice do you have for future CEOs who really want to make a difference?

00:31:51.290 — 00:32:18.530 · Kirstin Sure. I mean, my advice is simple. It is the thing that sustains me, is to listen deeply, to pay attention to the folks, like a woman at Neil's food bank who was quiet and in the corner, folks whose stories don't often get heard. Pay attention to the stories that don't get told. Listen deeply and remain curious about why the world is the way it is, and you'll always find a path forward in solutions to solving wicked problems.

00:32:18.690 — 00:32:21.970 · Alison That's great advice. Thank you. And Neil, you get the final word.

00:32:22.010 — 00:33:14.560 · Neil I've been very fortunate to have a number of mentors in my life, and one of them was the CEO of TD Bank, Ed Clark, and he would regularly say that leaders need to always be rowing in the opposite direction of their team. That when their team is chaotic, they need to be competent. You're always kind of in that different cycle, but it's needed if you really want to move an organization forward.

Think about, you know, the chaos that we had here during the pandemic. We as a leadership team needed to be calm and when things settled out, we needed to move people along and create a little bit of chaos. And that's always resonated with me. It's resonated because it means that when you are in leadership positions that you're often in a lonely position.

And so I would encourage any of the leaders to make sure that they take care of themselves, that they make sure that they are reinvigorated to do the jobs that they need to do, which is primarily to serve their teams.

00:33:14.680 — 00:34:00.140 · Alison That is outstanding advice from both of you. Thank you very much. I also want to thank you both for this really important conversation and the extraordinary and mission critical, important work that you and your teams are doing. It is making a difference for Canadians and your commitment to continuing to do that was evident throughout this conversation.

The scale of food insecurity in Canada right now really demands that all of us step up. Clearly governments, communities, and yes indeed, brands and marketers. So as marketers, we have the platforms, we've got the resources. We pride ourselves on creativity that can make a real difference. The question is, will we use them to benefit your organizations?

And coming out of this conversation, I strongly suspect there will be a lot of people raising their hands to do exactly that. So a huge thank you to both of you.

00:34:00.180 — 00:34:01.060 · Neil Thanks so much.

00:34:01.060 — 00:34:01.780 · Kirstin Thank you.

00:34:04.500 — 00:34:17.419 · Pesenter Thanks for joining us. Be sure to visit the CMA,ca and sign up for your free my CMA account. It's a great way to stay connected and benefit from the latest marketing thought leadership, news and industry trends.

Is your CMO-CFO relationship building growth or breaking it? Host Alison Simpson is joined by Deloitte Digital's Jeff Sutton and Amanda McCusker to unpack insights from a landmark Canadian study co-authored with the Canadian Marketing Association and Financial Executives International Canada. They reveal why trust is a business outcome you can engineer rather than a personality trait, how healthy tension introduced early accelerates decisions and which of the four collaboration principles separating high-growth organizations from the rest most marketers are getting wrong.

00:00:00.920 — 00:00:19.680 · Presenter Welcome to CMA Connect, Canada's marketing podcast, where industry experts discuss how marketers must manage the tectonic shifts that will change how brands and businesses are built for tomorrow, while also delivering on today's business needs. With your host, newly retired CMA CEO, Alison Simpson.

00:00:24.600 — 00:03:27.040 · Alison The CMO and CFO relationship can be a challenging one. Marketing drives growth and takes a long term perspective. Finance protects costs and focuses more on quarterly performance. And when those two forces collide without the right process in place, tension shows up late as gatekeeping, rechecks and slower decisions.

But here's what new research revealed. The best CMO and CFO partnerships don't avoid tension. They're actually designed for it. They surface challenge early when it sharpens assumptions and accelerates decision, rather than letting it fester until it stalls execution. This matters more than ever because the structural condition shaping these relationships have fundamentally shifted.

CFOs now playing a leading role in enterprise strategy for 57% of organizations. 79% of CEOs say the CFO is the executive they listen to most. Meanwhile, 61% of marketing budgets are still set top down or based on prior spend, limiting flexibility even as expectations for proof intensify. Cost is immediate and visible.

Yet value can be delayed and challenging to quantify. And in that gap, collaboration either compounds trust or creates avoidable drag. For today's episode, I'm excited to welcome the Deloitte Canada team who led important research on this critical relationship. It's work conducted in partnership with the Canadian Marketing Association and Financial Executives International Canada.

The learning we're sharing today is Canadian focused with a global lens. So what we discussed will help our listeners understand what makes the relationship different in Canada. Jeff Sutton is Deloitte Digital's national leader for brand and growth strategy. He advises senior executives on how to unlock growth by aligning market differentiation, customer strategy and marketing execution, with a particular focus on marketing transformation and operating model effectiveness.

This work brings a global perspective on how CMOs and CFOs can better align growth ambition, investment decisions, and measurable business outcomes. Amanda McCusker is a Manager in Customer Strategy at Deloitte Digital. She comes from a strategic design background and works with senior leaders across organizations to make sense of complex, cross-functional challenges.

Amanda was the Research Lead on Deloitte's CMO and CFO collaboration and study with the CMA and FBI. She shaped the insights through a qualitative, design-led lens to surface how marketing and finance leaders align, where friction emerges, and what enables stronger partnerships in practice. Together, Jeff and Amanda led in-depth interviews in quantitative research with Canadian CMOs and CFOs to really understand not just where collaboration breaks down, but how leading actually build it into their operating rhythms.

They found that trust isn't a personality trait, it's an operating outcome. So welcome Jeff and Amanda. I am really excited to have you here today. This is such an important topic, and I'm looking forward to diving into the insights about how we can make the CMO and CFO partnership stronger.

00:03:27.240 — 00:03:37.040 · Jeff Well, thank you so much, Allison. We're thrilled to be here. We love the podcast. And of course, thank you for the relationship and the partnership leading up to this. So we're thrilled to share.

Amanda: So glad to be here today.

00:03:37.080 — 00:03:44.840 · Alison Thanks, Amanda. Thanks, Jeff. So, Jeff, let's start with why you wanted to do this research in the first place and why now was the time to do it in Canada.

00:03:45.080 — 00:05:24.430 · Jeff Yeah. So there are many. First of all, in today's economy, it is more difficult for Canadian businesses to grow than it ever has. And so growth is a top CEO agenda for many of our clients. And then as we think about marketing, marketing should be a growth engine within the business. It should lead and be the key function in which the business looks to enable growth.

However, over a number of years, that hasn't necessarily been the case. Often the perception internally is that marketing is more of a cost centre than it is a growth engine. And in parallel, we're seeing the role of the CFO grow within the business. There now, as you mentioned, off the top, Alison, in your intro, one of the more strategic partners with the CEO and typically the right hand when it comes to business strategy.

And so as we think of the importance of Canadian businesses needing to grow now more than ever, and we know the value of marketing and what marketing can do, it's critical that marketing and finance come together to figure out how they can collaborate better together to enable growth. Another reason why we thought this was so important is often the CFO-CMO relationship is misunderstood.

We see and hear a lot of, well, we speak different language. We don't often collaborate. Well, we knew that that wasn't really the case, and we wanted to understand from organizations who are kind of leading and growing in Canadian marketplace, what are they doing differently from a CFO-CMO relationship that's enabling that growth?

And so we were thrilled to partner, of course, with the CMA and FBI Canada to talk to leading marketers and leading CFOs to better understand where this collaboration was happening, what's the mindset behind it, and what are the tactical and practical actions that other marketers and finance leaders can take to enable growth in their organization?

00:05:24.470 — 00:05:44.310 · Alison Now, one of your core findings is that trust is a business capability, not a trait. And that really reframes trust as something that you build through operating discipline rather than interpersonal chemistry. So what did you hear in the interviews that led you to that conclusion? And what does it look like in practice when an organization treats trust as infrastructure?

00:05:44.510 — 00:06:48.620 · Jeff Yeah, this was so key, because when you hear the word trust, naturally you think it's based on a relationship, it's based on personalities, and that's really not what it is. It's not the case. What trust is and what we found through our research is trust actually equals reliability. Trust is earned or created through the ability of these two leaders to come together and make decisions and move quickly.

And that happens over time and that happens through collaboration. It's not a you speak numbers and I speak emotion. That's not what it is. It's really about, you know, how do you create early, healthy tension when solving business problems versus showing up and collaborating late in the process, and to be turning into rechecks and slowdowns and challenging numbers versus collaborating around opportunities and challenges.

And so for us, it was definitely not personalities that lead to trust and collaboration. It's the reliability of decision-making and reliability that leads to faster, more efficient decision-making.

00:06:48.660 — 00:06:58.900 · Alison Now, did you also find that that relationship side of it still has a role to play, especially when it's not about talking numbers or talking emotion when both groups are talking about the business?

00:06:59.100 — 00:07:31.540 · Jeff Yes, we certainly did find there was that, but it was less about personalities. We didn't hear much, aside from when we start to collaborate early and come together around some of the research findings we have around shared language, shared metrics, shared understanding, shared education, that led to deeper trust within the functions because they are solving things together and collaborating, versus using the functions as mechanisms to check against performance, which is a very, very different way of of looking at the two relationships.

00:07:31.580 — 00:07:45.260 · Alison Now Amanda, you quote a CFO in the research saying we hold pen on allocations, but we as an enterprise should all agree on the methodology that makes sense. Can you unpack what changes when marketing and finance agree on methodology upfront?

00:07:45.350 — 00:08:42.310 · Amanda Whether we call it methodology or strategy or just simply a plan of action, it is really critical that leaders across functions come together to align on understanding why is the organization doing what they're doing, and how are they going to do it when it comes to solving for problems or achieving business priorities?

The outcome that we heard from doing this up front and aligning to whatever strategy you're taking, is really that you get a faster speed towards decision making, you get less rework in the end of the day. Finance doesn't need to know every single detail around execution of something like, for example, a campaign.

But they need to know why that campaign is helping to solve a business priority, and they need to have some understanding of how their investments are going to help drive shared outcomes. So aligning to that up front can really save a lot of rework at the end of the day.

00:08:42.830 — 00:09:16.640 · Alison Now let's dig into the key insight that healthy tension between CMOs and CFOs actually leads to the best partnerships and the strongest business results. And I'd love to share how to know when the partnership is working, when it's not, and ways to improve it. So that's a big topic. So we're going to start with measurement.

Amanda, you made a distinction that I think will resonate with a lot of marketers. Dashboards provide visibility. Scorecards create shared judgement. Can you explain the difference on why visibility alone doesn't produce collaboration?

00:09:16.680 — 00:10:24.540 · Amanda So this comes down to the question of not just, do we know what happened, but rather can we evaluate the outcomes? Data always refers to something that happened in the past. That could be five minutes ago, it could be one year ago. But what we heard is that it's not only important to have accurate data that can be shared, it's also very important for effective collaboration to understand, how are you translating that into what was achieved, what results came from those metrics, and a plan of action to move forward with that can evolve what it is that you're working on. These scorecards as a tool, for example, what we heard is that they're not just quantitative purely, they're also qualitative. So bringing different groups to the table in order to align on what that evaluation is up front, really helps to take all the great information that you can achieve from different activity and start to bring it forward to a more future state or target state to see, how do we allocate our budget and going forward, how do we ensure that we are getting the results that we're looking for and speak to the business about what is actually being achieved overall?

00:10:24.580 — 00:10:35.060 · Alison So building on that, what advice would you give to a CMO who's being asked to report on more and more metrics, but still finds that finance is questioning the value of the marketing investment?

00:10:35.140 — 00:12:00.250 · Jeff We heard quite consistently, it's not quantity, it's quality. And the advice we give would be to ensure that the metrics that you are defining together are aligned to the business outcomes and are not aligned necessarily to marketing outcomes. And so it's important that marketing pushes back in a way that is coming from a place of understanding how the business makes money.

It's understanding how the business creates value, and that the metrics that are ultimately being defined are aligned to those. And we heard a really fascinating story from one of our CMOs who, when they started with the organization ten years ago, it was very much that the function was seen as an execution function, not a strategy function.

It took this individual many years, this doesn't happen overnight, to start to show up to the leadership team in those discussions, talking about the business versus talking about marketing. And so the reason I bring up that story is that it's not only metrics that will help change the perception or help the business understand that marketing is driving value.

It's also in how you show up as a leader and demonstrate that you're fully aware of how the business needs to create value, and that you're not talking metrics and marketing metrics, you're talking business and value outcomes. So it's not more metrics that are ever going to solve this challenge, multiple things that CMOs can do, but first and foremost, make sure the metrics are only talking about business outcomes, not marketing outcomes.

00:12:00.250 — 00:12:48.380 · Alison That's great advice for anyone that's in a position where you are trying to transform the marketing function from very tactical to that strategic business driver that it is and always should be. So to find the early wins, and to really focus on speaking the language of the business and showing how you're able to advance the business goals and grow the business mission.

Now, Amanda, there's a pattern in your research that made me smile because I certainly saw it at times when I was a CMO. The whole concept of shadow finance, where marketing teams build their own models and analysis because there's no shared, trusted way to really evaluate value. One CFO told you, I see it in marketing a little bit more here.

Marketing especially seems to have a bigger group than most. So what's driving this? And when does shadow finance become a problem versus a workaround?

00:12:48.420 — 00:14:13.910 · Amanda So shadow finance, or marketing math as it's sometimes called, is often very well-intentioned but can lead to questions such as where did these numbers come from? Which ultimately erodes trust down the line. So between marketing and finance this can actually create a lot of instability, although seems to feel like something that is going to achieve shared outcomes, it doesn't always work that way.

It happens for a lot of different reasons that we heard. But the key one is really the perception of bottlenecks or a lack of access to shared information. And so this is a way that marketers feel that they can achieve results quickly, try to answer the mail on things that they need to get done as quickly as possible. The idea of it being a problem versus a workaround is highly subjective. But the most sophisticated organizations that we talk to don't allow any numbers to actually be present in materials going out internally or externally that aren't fully certified by their finance team.

We also heard from a couple of folks that built cross-functional roles to take over from a shadow finance function into something that is in the light, a actual role that interprets between the language of finance, business and marketing as a way of taking sort of the nuggets of what is a good idea and has well-intended behaviours behind it, and making it into something that actually provides better outcomes for the business as a whole.

00:14:14.030 — 00:14:24.670 · Alison Now, that idea of having almost like a translator between finance and marketing, when you heard CMOs and CFOs talk about it, did it tend to sit in the finance team or in the marketing team?

00:14:24.710 — 00:14:41.690 · Amanda We often heard that they may sit under marketing, but have a dotted line to finance, so that they would be able to have insight into what meetings are taking place, what goals are coming to light, how quickly things are moving, and be able to translate the most recent information for both sides when needed.

00:14:41.850 — 00:14:50.970 · Alison That's a great solution. Amanda, you suggest that shadow finance can become unnecessary when organizations design a fast certification pathway. So what does that look like?

00:14:50.970 — 00:15:45.740 · Amanda So that certification pathway can look different depending on the business. But at its core are some of the pillars that we get to in the report. So things like shared truth and having shared learning. The piece around education is very important for having finance understand what is marketing trying to achieve and vice versa.

So being able to speak the language between both teams becomes paramount to actually getting that certification early enough and getting, frankly, the approvals required for budget allocations moving ahead with certain decision making. It really varies organization to organization. And so that is why the way that we structured our research is really meant to be a groundwork that is flexible to the nuances of each organization as well.

What that ends up looking like at the end of the day is going to have its own flavour, depending on the industry, depending on the dynamics between the team and where collaboration is taking place.

00:15:45.780 — 00:15:52.260 · Alison I would like to take a moment out of this episode to thank the Earnscliffe team for helping bring CMA connect to our listeners.

00:15:55.260 — 00:16:20.660 · Alison Earnscliffe is one of Canada's leading independent communications firms, with teams across Canada and expertise spanning public relations, public affairs, digital marketing, data and design. Earnscliffe brings together national reach, regional insight and coordinated expertise to help clients make sense of complex issues to build trust and deliver results.

To learn more about Earnscliffe Team and Integrated services, visit earnscliffe.ca.

00:16:25.420 — 00:16:49.680 · Alison Jeff, one of the insights that really stood out to me is early finance involvement changes the role that finance plays. To bring this to life, you shared a quote a CMO had said, "Make me your partner or I'll be your judge." I know for many CMOs who are listening, that will certainly resonate. It's a powerful framing.

So what are the practical barriers that keep CMOs from bringing finance in early, and how do the best partnerships overcome them?

00:16:50.040 — 00:18:33.580 · Jeff Yeah, it's fundamental in various ways. And it's a great quote. What we did notice, and this was a few of the interviews we had, it wasn't so much in their experience now, but as general marketing experience through how they came up in the in the industry and what they see from others is marketers, and this is not just for marketers, other leaders do this too, but they tend to go to finance with wanting to have everything solved. Like, the decision's been made on what the product is, they've got the business defined. Amanda talked about shadow finance. You know, they don't have the data and they want to show up and say, here's the solution.

What do you think? What's the investment? Versus where we see leading organizations really start to get this right, is they bring finance in early and they start to talk about hypothesis. They start to talk to finance about, here's what we think we can do. Here's what we're trying to solve. Here's the outcomes we ultimately want to get to, here are the challenges in our way.

And they ask finance for input at that point. And then finance is now not coming in late and challenging outcomes. They're starting early and they're collaborating together and shaping it with you. And this is exactly what the quote is alluding to. It stops finance from being a judge, and it starts to allow them to become a partner shaping decisions.

It also really cuts through the important point around education. So now you're not just showing finance a solution, you're educating finance in a unique way by asking them to be a collaborator, to help them understand, you know, whether it's a campaign or whether it's a martech investment, how this is going to ultimately solve a business decision and drive an outcome, versus just getting them to validate or sense-check an investment. And that that creates shared learning, which is critically important in the CFO-CMO collaboration as well.

00:18:33.620 — 00:19:04.940 · Alison It's such a powerful way to also create shared ownership. So when questions come up at the executive suite, it's not just the CMO defending it in that dynamic. It should also be the CFO feeling equal obligation to support and defend. Now in your research scenarios, you describe moments like the martech investment that can sound like overhead or the multi-year brand commitment.

I know our listeners would benefit from learning more about how they can position important investments like these successfully. So can you walk us through one of these scenarios and show what early involvement actually looks like?

00:19:04.980 — 00:20:45.010 · Jeff Yeah. Instead of showing up and saying, here's a tool that we need to invest in to drive X outcome, what the finance leader hears is this is overhead versus what happens when leading organizations get this right, and CFO-CMO collaborate on a solution early for martech as an example. It's more about the conversation is, what will this solution, or a technology solution, not naming it at the time, but how will that help us make decisions faster? And what are the outcomes that ultimately the business will achieve? And so finance is not looking at a tool and a number associated with the tools and investment, you're talking to them about business problems and business solutions.

And this is the early involvement that's so critical, especially when we think of, the CFO needs to bring this investment ultimately to the CEO to make a decision. So when the CFO is involved early and understanding what the problems of the business we're solving. and what we're going to enable around faster decision-making and more valuable outcomes, they're more confident in presenting that solution to the CEO, not on a sticker price for a tool investment.

But here's how marketing is going to enable us to be a more efficient, more effective business and a tool that we believe is going to be the right investment for us to achieve that outcome. And now you're enabling the CFO to defend marketing, if you will, or show up as a collaborator for marketing to the ultimate decision maker who needs to say yes or no to to this investment. So that changes the relationship completely and changes the outcome for marketing ultimately, on what they're trying to get to, which is a tool that's going to allow them to help the organization grow, and it's going to allow them to make decisions faster and be more an effective, efficient function within the organization.

00:20:45.050 — 00:20:54.770 · Alison Now, Jeff, the research found that long term marketing value is widely believed by both CMOs and CFOs. And for all the marketers listening, that is great news that they do see the blue for sure. The challenge is it's structurally difficult to govern. And one CFO told you, not all business cases will have a financial return. And marketing often has been a very strategic component. So how do leading organizations govern that long horizon invest without defaulting to short term metrics?

00:21:14.210 — 00:22:52.560 · Jeff The CFOs we talked to do understand and see tremendous value in brand. So that was really a validating insight that we heard through our conversations. And exactly to your question, the challenge is not so much value, but how do we measure that? Because the brand KPIs don't traditionally fall within KPIs the business typically can understand and quantify. Bottom of the funnel performance marketing certainly does.

It's a dollar in. It's a dollar out. It's pretty easy to quantify and measure the outcomes. Top of the funnel, brand investment, sponsorships, etc., it's more difficult for sure. So what we have heard and what we've seen is it's not about tracking performance in a single moment. It's about collaborating with your CFO to define ways to track it and manage it over a longer term investment.

And so what we've seen is they come together and they collaborate around not necessarily maybe a defined KPI, but they look at what are some of the signals we can identify that can show proof of performance over time. And then how do we establish a governance system where we are coming together and tracking this and monitoring this together over a set amount of time to look at our performance?

And then what are the signals to show us if it's not working? How can we identify what might need to change, what might not need to change. But it's not a single moment KPI performance-led. It's a long term business outcome. And these are not necessarily KPIs are defining their signals within the business that we can attach brand to a business outcome that can show that there's performance increase or decrease that's ultimately going to change our strategy moving forward.

00:22:52.600 — 00:23:18.770 · Alison From a marketing perspective, I think we've done a bit of a disservice to our profession by ever coining the phrase performance marketing, because the reality is every marketing we do, including brand marketing, is all about growing the business and driving business performance. So I would love to be able to retire the term performance marketing.

Let's go on with marketing because it is all in the best interests in the service of building the business, delivering on the mission for the organization.

00:23:18.810 — 00:23:38.850 · Jeff Yeah, I echo that, Alison. I do think the analogy of top of the funnel, bottom of the funnel, it's all one funnel, right? We're all helping the organization move their customer from, you know, awareness through to purchase intent. And that's through the funnel. And if we can just look at it that way and not allocate performance marketing to it, I think that's a much easier way to understand it.

00:23:38.890 — 00:23:53.010 · Alison There's so much great Canadian and global research that absolutely demonstrates this. So Amanda, what did you hear from CMOs about the asymmetry between the speed of cost relief and the slow compounding cost of lost demand and rebuilding brand equity?

00:23:53.050 — 00:24:48.870 · Amanda So I don't think this should come as too much of a surprise in what we heard from CMOs. And it is just that if you do not invest in your brand today, it may be 3 to 5 years from now that you start to really feel that impact. And that's a hard item to try and sell internally without having that shared language and shared understanding of exactly why this matters.

I think even more interestingly, the CFOs that we talk to who speak a bit of marketing language had a lot of engaging perspectives on why brand matters for their business and that they were coming to the table with the ability to understand why the investment needs to be made consistently over time, rather than being on the chopping block or up for grabs when times get really tough.

And so we heard from both CMOs and CFOs that investing in this over time leads to better results for the business overall.

00:24:48.910 — 00:25:38.760 · Jeff If I could add, Alison, I think another thing we heard that was critical was institutional memory. So what happens is, the business sometimes forgets the trade offs it made in the past. And to Amanda's point, the 3 to 5 year time horizon to make up that investment. And then economics change, market activity changes and they go back to, it's easy to as we mentioned, cut costs and they forget what they just went through, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten years ago or whatever the time was. So the organizations that that do get it right and the ones we talked to, they mentioned institutional memory as a really critical function for them to be able to learn from their mistakes in the past and, and then manage a process to, of course, help with the trade off that need to happen. But they reduce the impact of those so they're not being impacted by it on the back end.

00:25:39.120 — 00:26:01.080 · Alison Now, I have no doubt we have got a lot of listeners who are really interested in strengthening their partnership with the CFO and the finance team, so let's make this super-practical. If the CMO is listening to this conversation and thinking, I want to build healthier tension with my CFO, what's one thing that they can do next week to start shifting the dynamic?

Jeff, why don't you kick us off?

00:26:01.440 — 00:26:47.730 · Jeff Yeah, this this comes back to a bit of the theme we've been talking about. This is early involvement. And I think, you know, critical. It's sitting down together. And before the next investment in defining, you know, what are the business outcomes, what's the value we can define now that's going to make this investment worthwhile for our business.

And these are simple conversations. They're not complex. It's questions like, you know why will this matter? You know, CFO how will you measure this? What does good look like? Very simple conversations that we would all ask ourselves for various reasons. Ask that together. Have that conversation together. That will quickly move from the CFO or the CMO having to defend this decision at the end to collaborating around a decision early.

It will lead to better outcomes.

00:26:47.770 — 00:26:49.010 · Alison And Amanda, what would you add?

00:26:49.050 — 00:27:47.670 · Amanda I would add the simplest thing to do is to be very curious and be curious about what your counterpart and their team is trying to achieve, and don't make any assumptions that they understand what it is that you do fundamentally. Because these functional roles come with a lot of depth of expertise. They come with different backgrounds, different education pathways often, and we really have to reinforce collaboration through being open, curious and not making these assumptions.

And so coming to the table with kind of sort of cheat sheets in terms of understanding, here's what we're actually trying to do. When we say this, this is what we mean. And making sure that that kind of playbook is happening early and upfront, that you're getting the shared language built early on so that as it comes time to make these very important decisions that are sometimes really speedy, you're not running into those negative friction points that you can encounter.

00:27:48.030 — 00:28:02.870 · Alison The research outlines four different collaboration principles, including shared truth, shared language, shared learning and shared ownership. So which one do you think marketers are under investing in most, and what's the cost of that gap?

00:28:02.950 — 00:28:45.200 · Jeff Shared language is so important Often CFOs and CMOs use the same words, but they mean different things. Terms like ROI, value, payback. Even something like investment, it might mean something different to a CMO in his or her context than a CFO. If you can start early and just align on the definition of shared language, that's going to save so much time debating, it's going to allow you to just move quickly to decision-making.

So if I could pick one, it's very easy. It sounds simple, but no one invests in, what do you really mean by ROI in this context? Have those conversations, define those early. You'll move so much faster on collaboration and decision making.

00:28:45.240 — 00:28:49.960 · Alison And the clarity that that ensures is mission critical. Now, Amanda, how would you answer the question?

00:28:50.000 — 00:29:42.730 · Amanda I won't double down on shared language, although I really do believe in its value as well. I think shared learning is how you can really start to achieve a lot more for your own role and for your team. And we heard from one CMO that they do sort of Marketing 101 sessions. So very basic shared learning that they carry with them.

Nothing super in-depth, just very brief. How do we get people up to speed on what we're trying to do here? And I think that kind of investment really does go a long way. And in totality, all four pillars really act together to build that better system. And again, it's not about doing it perfectly right, but really getting started and starting to build that infrastructure for your team in the way that that works for the business that you're in.

00:29:42.730 — 00:29:52.210 · Alison So given everything that you've both learned through the research, if you could give Canadian marketers one principle to govern their relationship with finance, what would it be?

00:29:52.250 — 00:30:28.110 · Jeff One? That's a tricky question. How do you pick just one Alison? There's so much rich insight in that report, so hopefully everyone gets a chance to read it. There's plenty of good advice in there. It's going to go back to the theme. I think it's aligning on value upfront so you can make decisions together and not have to defend them later.

I think that's pretty critical. Don't wait till the end of the process, similar to the martech example we talked about. Don't show up and ask for an investment in a tool. Align on value upfront, collaborate on outcomes and challenges, and that will ultimately create a different relationship and different set of shared outcomes.

00:30:28.150 — 00:30:29.190 · Alison Great advice. Amanda, what's yours?

00:30:29.190 — 00:30:43.790 · Amanda So I'm going to echo a lot of what Jeff said and reinforce that being empathetic to your colleagues at the end of the day does more to support the infrastructure for what you're trying to achieve together than almost anything else.

00:30:43.870 — 00:30:59.390 · Alison Thank you both. Now, I'm very lucky to have amazing guests like you on each of the CMA connect podcast episodes, so I always end by asking our guests to share one piece of career advice for our listeners who aspire to follow in your footsteps. So, Amanda, why don't you kick us off?

00:30:59.390 — 00:31:31.520 · Amanda So my best piece of career advice is, it is never too late to learn something new. And I think especially in the very disruptive age that we're living in, because there's a lot of changes in process and tools and technology, it is important to keep in mind that you are never too old or too late-stage in your own career to learn something new, to pivot into something that interests you, and to keep that openness for yourself alive and well.

00:31:31.880 — 00:31:33.680 · Alison And Jeff, what's your career advice?

00:31:33.720 — 00:31:59.980 · Speaker 3 Find great partners. Amanda's been a great one. Alison, CMA, you guys have been great ones. So find great partners. You'll get much further together than on your own. And then maybe it's two Alison, you asked for one. The other one, I'd say is tied to this research piece. As a marketer, it's critically important to understand how the business creates value and makes money.

So you stop showing up as a marketer and you start showing up as a business leader. I think that's critically important.

00:32:00.020 — 00:32:25.500 · Alison So great advice from both of you. And I really want to thank you for your partnership on the research and for really helping give marketers a practical roadmap to turn tension into trust. And for all of our listeners, the full research paper is available on the CMA website, and I really encourage you to read the collaboration scenarios.

They're so helpful and really recognizing key moments where partnership can either accelerate or stall. So Amanda, Jeff, many, many thanks for a great conversation.

00:32:25.500 — 00:32:26.500 · Amanda Thank you Alison.

00:32:26.500 — 00:32:27.540 · Jeff Thank you Alison.

00:32:30.140 — 00:32:43.020 · Presenter Thanks for joining us. Be sure to visit the CMA.ca and sign up for your free my CMA account. It's a great way to stay connected and benefit from the latest marketing thought leadership, news and industry trends.

How do you win gold in Canada's top marketing competition in 24 hours? Host Alison Simpson gets the story behind the win from Joanne Chen and Lydia Yoon, Google product marketing managers and Canada's 2026 Young Lions Marketing gold winners. Their winning idea – Google Maps Earth Mode – turns everyday walks into donations for the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada and now it's taking them to the Cannes Lions world stage.

00:00:00.920 — 00:00:19.680 · Presenter Welcome to CMA Connect, Canada's marketing podcast, where industry experts discuss how marketers must manage the tectonic shifts that will change how brands and businesses are built for tomorrow, while also delivering on today's business needs. With your host, newly retired CMA CEO, Alison Simpson.

00:00:24.040 — 00:03:43.430 · Alison The best ideas in marketing don't always come from the most experienced people in the room. Sometimes they come from two sharp, curious young marketers with 24 hours, a blank page and the creative conviction to trust a truly elegant idea. Before I introduce today's guests, I want to take a moment to talk about the competition that brought them to this microphone, because it's one that I am genuinely proud the CMA is part of.

The Young Lions competition is run by The Globe and Mail as the Canadian chapter of the global Cannes Lions program, which is the most prestigious creative competition in the world. The Canadian competition runs across seven categories including marketing, media, PR, digital, design, print and film.

Teams are given just 24 to 48 hours to develop a full campaign concept for a real charity client. There's no safety net, there's no extended timelines, just raw creative thinking under real and incredible pressure. The CMA is really proud to be a sponsor of the Young Lions Canada, because this program does something that we care deeply about.

It creates a meaningful, high stakes stage for the next generation of Canadian marketing talent to prove what they're capable of. The Globe and Mail has built something genuinely special here, and we are really happy to support it. This year's Marketers Category Challenge asked teams to build a campaign that would drive awareness and action for the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada and specifically support their new Hike for Hope, which is a national fundraising initiative.

The jury, which was co-chaired by CMA Board Directors Susan Irving of Kruger Products and Eva Salem of the Canadian Tire Corporation, included leaders from Sleep Country Canada, Scotiabank, Ipsos Canada, and Air Canada, all CMA member organizations. And the team that took the gold, well, they're today's guests.

Joanne Chen and Lydia Yoon are product marketing managers at Google, and in just 24 hours, they created Google Maps Earth Mode. It's a concept that reimagined one of the world's most used products to become a bridge between the digital and physical worlds, and to do so in service of the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada's Hike for Hope initiative.

Their idea was rooted in a really powerful human insight, which is often referred to as the connection paradox. While Gen Z is the most connected generation in history, they've never been more disconnected from the physical world that they care so deeply about protecting. So Earth Mode proposed a new Google Maps layer that reveals local biodiversity and nature-first routes that are hidden in plain sight, where every step taken can earn Hope Kilometres with Google Maps, then donating to the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada for every milestone reached. It's the kind of idea that makes a judging panel stop, listen, and be inspired. And that's exactly what it did.

Joanne and Lydia walked away with a Canadian gold, and now they're heading to the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity to represent Canada on the world stage. I am genuinely thrilled to have both of them here with us today. This conversation is for every marketer, wherever you are in your career, who really wants to understand what creative excellence looks like when the clock is ticking.

So a huge welcome to Joanne and Lydia.

Lydia - Thank you. We're excited to be here.

Alison - Now before we get into the campaign itself, I want to start at the beginning. Your decision to enter. So, Lydia, why did you and Joanne sign up for Young Lions? I'd love to hear what drew you to it.

00:03:43.430 — 00:04:51.280 · Lydia So I actually did a lot of case competitions back in undergrad, and when I started working, I missed doing them. At the same time, I also learned about the Cannes Festival of Creativity and wanted to figure out a way that I could go. And that's how I discovered the Young Lions competition. So while I was researching, I heard about this competition.

I thought it was the perfect opportunity to not only get back into case comps, but also hopefully win a trip to the festival. So I looked into it, and then what I realized was that you actually submit in pairs, and that's a unique part of the competition, it's not a solo activity. And they call it Young Lions, because you have to be under the age of 30 in order to compete.

So one day I was in the office and I bumped into Joanne and I asked if she was under 30.

Joanne - And I was!

Lydia - So yeah, we decided to give it a shot together. We were drawn to it, mainly because it was a way for us to challenge ourselves outside of work and push ourselves beyond our comfort zone, really test our creativity, our teamwork, our critical thinking.

And I think what finally convinced her to join was that we also agreed to run our first half marathon together. So shortly after the competition, we did that too.

00:04:51.960 — 00:05:06.610 · Alison So, Lydia, you're clearly very persuasive and joining a great opportunity and really identifying a great opportunity when one's presented to you. Now, were the two of you working together at Google, or did you know each other beforehand or was it a random spontaneous meeting?

00:05:06.650 — 00:05:25.170 · Joanne We don't work directly together, but we had seen each other in the hallway and at the water coolers. I think this opportunity really brought us closer, not only as co-workers but also as friends. It was cool to work on a Google project outside of work, and I think that, yeah, just really pushed our creative boundaries and and tested us there.

00:05:25.250 — 00:05:34.850 · Alison Well it's amazing. So now that you've lived through the whole experience, there is a pressure of the submission, getting up and presenting, the win. Would you recommend it to other young marketers and why?

00:05:34.890 — 00:06:12.500 · Lydia I would say 100%. My only caveat is that the more work and effort you're willing to put into this competition, the more that you'll get out of it. And that's something Joanna and I witnessed firsthand. It's an incredible opportunity where you get to meet great people, make industry connections. It's a good practice of working under pressure and ultimately really broadens your marketing skill set.

I actually competed two years ago with a different partner. We didn't place gold, but even throughout that process still learned a lot. And that motivated me to want to try again this year. And yeah, for us this year, the cherry on top was being able to now represent Canada in Cannes, so I would definitely recommend it to everyone.

00:06:12.620 — 00:06:51.420 · Alison That is a very big cherry on top. Your lesson that the more you put into it, the more you get out of it is certainly true of the Young Lions competition, but it's a great work and life lesson to learn at this stage in your life. The more you put into, whether it's training for a half marathon or the career that you're investing in, the effort will definitely be returned in spades.

So kudos to you both for recognizing that. So let's talk about the competition format itself because it really is intense. You've got 24 hours, a charity brief, a complete campaign to develop. So Joanne, take us back to the start. What did that first hour actually look like and what did the two of you do first?

00:06:51.660 — 00:07:17.030 · Joanne We were really ntentional about not rushing into an idea that first came to us. What we did was we read the brief and we parted ways for a bit. We wanted to form our own unfiltered thoughts so we didn't groupthink into the first idea that came to us. We did our own research and try to look at the problems from all different angles.

And by the time that we finally sat down together to align on what the key ask was and what the problem was, the first hour, it was over.

00:07:17.030 — 00:07:23.590 · Alison So when you came back together, did your ideas build off of each other? Had you come up with similar ideas? I'd love to hear a little bit more about that.

00:07:23.630 — 00:07:50.910 · Joanne We came back with different ideas on what products we should use, but I think we understood the key ask pretty similarly. We built on each other on a few topics. I think we saw problems from different angles in which I think for like some of the main insights that we had, there are parts that we had missed from each other, and I think we were able to build on top of each other's ideas.

And together we kind of filtered out our thoughts for what made sense versus not and pressure tested.

00:07:51.080 — 00:08:07.600 · Alison Now, the insight that's at the heart of Earth Mode is the tension between Gen Z being hyper hyper connected digitally while becoming increasingly disconnected from the natural world. That is really the emotional engine of the whole campaign. So, Joanne, where did that come from?

00:08:07.600 — 00:08:35.560 · Joanne So we are both guilty of being too connected to the digital world ourselves. Personally, my average screen time per day is about eight hours, which I'm not super proud of. Um, but since we are the target audience, we just reflected and asked what's stopped us from doing more. We spent time thinking about what was a personal truth for the both of us, and realized it was actually a shared truth for a lot of the people in our generation.

Once we found that emotional tension, it became the anchor for everything we built.

00:08:35.680 — 00:08:42.120 · Alison And Lydia, once you had the insight pinned down, how quickly did Google Maps emerge as the right canvas?

00:08:42.120 — 00:09:31.850 · Lydia I would say a bit quicker than we expected, honestly. Um, as Joanne mentioned, we came back with a few different product ideas, but once we were aligned on the ask and the insight together, we realized that there were two key factors that we should look at when thinking of a product connection. So firstly, something that would drive awareness.

A product that has ubiquitous reach and daily usage, as well as a product that would drive action. So something that would actually connect with Gen Z and the environment in the mission of JGIC. And then from there we thought Google Maps fit the build. We thought it felt the most natural. We were both really excited about it.

And I think ultimately it was hard to know if it's the one, especially in those 24 hours. It's really easy to second guess, but especially since we only had 24 hours, the time constraint really allowed us to stick with our gut and just run with Google Maps.

00:09:31.850 — 00:09:40.610 · Alison Now, sometimes the simplest ideas are often the hardest to find, and you were doing that under such compressed timelines. So how did you know that this was the one?

00:09:40.610 — 00:10:05.500 · Lydia I think, representing a global and larger company like Google that has several brands, you are faced with the paradox of choice. But I think when the both of us, like, thought of Google Maps started ideating a bit, we both just felt like it was right in our gut. And again, due to the limited time, we just kind of went with it and believed in ourselves and all the prep that we had done to date.

00:10:05.620 — 00:10:29.540 · Alison Now I want to dig into the creative decision-making for a moment, because Earth Mode is really brilliantly restrained. You didn't try to build something entirely new. You took a product that is already in hundreds of millions of pockets and then changed the lens. So, Lydia, how did you resist the temptation to overcomplicate it in a 24 hour competition where you're trying to impress a jury, there must have been a pull towards doing even more.

00:10:30.180 — 00:11:18.630 · Lydia For sure. It was actually super-complicated. During our ideation we had so many ideas for different features, different naming conventions, how to gamify it, etc. but when we zoomed out and we tried to summarize our idea in one sentence, it was harder than we thought and we realized we couldn't. So that's when we knew we had to make it simpler. And something we often hear leaders at work say is that it takes longer to write a shorter email.

It takes longer to make something more concise and simple and clear. So we kind of approached the case with a similar mindset. And then in the end, once we got to that realization, eventually we landed on a simple enough one-liner summary, which was our idea being that "Earth Mode is a new Google Maps feature to help Gen Z discover the world beyond their screen", and we were happy with that.

00:11:18.670 — 00:12:02.840 · Alison It is such a great and smart discipline to take the time to say, can we summarize this in one sentence that makes sense? And to your point and to your manager's point, it is a really hard discipline to do, so it's such a good quality check of how good the idea is and whether you need to continue refining, refining, refining.

So kudos to you for being smart enough to take that into a pressure cooker of an assignment. Now, the campaign hinges on a partnership between Google Maps and the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada. Two very different organizations with very different audiences. So getting that kind of pairing to feel authentic rather than opportunistic is one of the hardest things to pull off in marketing.

Joanne, how did you think about that connection?

00:12:02.880 — 00:12:33.360 · Joanne We focused on a very simple synergy between the two brands. Google Maps help people navigate the world, and the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada helps them protect it. It felt real to us because it wasn't all about making just an ad. We were adding a layer of purpose to a tool that we use every single day. We decided to use the screen that everyone uses every day as a bridge to nature, rather than a barrier.

So by meeting people where they are, we could realistically guide them to where they need to be.

00:12:33.480 — 00:12:36.840 · Alison And what made you confident that this would feel genuine to consumers?

00:12:36.880 — 00:12:58.730 · Joanne We had to be realistic and we kept having to check ourselves. We asked ourselves if this was something that we would do on a Saturday morning, because if we didn't believe in it ourselves, then we knew our peers wouldn't either, given that we knew we were the target audience. So we focused on the small and tangible actions and focused on building habit rather than just a one and done big campaign.

00:12:58.810 — 00:13:16.810 · Alison So let's fast forward and talk about the moment that you actually had to stand up and present. You've got ten senior industry leaders in front of you, including co-chairs from the CMA Board and jurors from some of Canada's most respected organizations. So, Joanne, take us into that room. What did it feel like in the seconds before you started?

00:13:16.850 — 00:13:49.940 · Joanne We'd be lying if we said we weren't nervous. We were really, really nervous. We were even practising in the bathroom and trying to keep it down. But the second we stepped into the room, all that nervousness turned into excitement. I remember the big smiles on the jury's faces, and it made us feel comfortable right away.

And as crazy as it sounds, since we prepped so hard, it really became just muscle memory once we started. I just tried to keep reminding myself to have fun with it, soak in the moment and really enjoy every second of it.

00:13:49.980 — 00:13:55.980 · Alison Such great advice. So looking back, what do you think was the single thing that truly connected you with that panel?

00:13:56.180 — 00:14:20.140 · Joanne We think that it worked because even though the insight was specific to Gen Z, it was a truth that everyone is living with right now. We're all feeling the same pressure of being glued to our screens regardless of our age. It didn't feel like a niche problem. It was something that everyone in the room could see themselves in.

We just leaned into a reality that almost everyone is experiencing this in the digital world.

00:14:20.180 — 00:14:38.140 · Alison Now, one of the things that I find most fascinating about this competition is what it can reveal about a marketer's instincts after you've stripped away all the usual safety nets - the long briefings, the approval processes, the opportunity for rounds of revisions. So, Lydia, what did 24 hours teach you about yourself as a marketer?

00:14:38.180 — 00:15:34.510 · Lydia I would say two things. Firstly, even with time constraints, just the importance of taking breaks and resting. So for us, in those 24 hours, we tried to go for walks. We tried to step away from the screen. We even spent time to actually eat meals and also sleep a solid eight hours at night to review it again in the morning with fresh minds before we did our final submission.

And I think the limit for pushing yourself creatively doesn't exist if you can take those proper breaks. And that was one main thing we learned. And then secondly, I think it also just taught us that we can do hard things. Um, Joanne and I were actually both travelling when we heard we made the top five, so we worked on our deck in the middle of the night on our trip, and then also on the plane back, and I think that was something that we really put our mind to because we cared and wanted to prove to ourselves that we could do it.

And in the end, it paid off. And yeah, we're proud of ourselves for proving to ourselves that we could do that.

00:15:34.990 — 00:15:43.720 · Alison That's going to be such relevant experience for when you're in Cannes. Throw in a 12 hour time zone that and ended up with gold in Canada, so that bodes well.

00:15:44.560 — 00:15:45.640 · Lydia Even with jet lag.

00:15:45.680 — 00:15:46.960 · Joanne Always on the go.

00:15:47.200 — 00:15:52.280 · Alison So, Joanne, did anything surprise you about how you work or what you're capable under that kind of pressure?

00:15:52.480 — 00:16:31.120 · Joanne Yeah. So to be honest, I was terrified about the presentation part. It was one of the main reasons why I almost didn't want to sign up for Young Lions. I have never considered myself a natural public speaker, so I had a lot of imposter syndrome going into the competition. I was really worried that I would freeze up or lose my train of thought in front of the jury, but I surprised myself because the second we started, the adrenaline just took over.

It gave me a chance to really practice that set of skills in a high stakes environment, and I walked away feeling really proud of how we handled all the pressure and work, and very happy with how we've ended it.

00:16:31.120 — 00:16:47.210 · Alison So now you're heading to Cannes, which is a genuinely remarkable opportunity. You're representing Canada on the international stage at the world's most prestigious creative festival. So, Joanne, what does that actually mean to you personally? And honestly, is it more exciting or more terrifying right now?

00:16:47.250 — 00:17:17.970 · Joanne First of all, it's a massive honour to represent Canada on that stage. But personally, I think the best part is I get to do it with my best friend. Oh, since we're still so early on in our career, we're just ready to absorb everything. We want to see the best work in the world and meet as many creative minds as we can.

The goal is to get inspired to do bigger and better things when we come back. And to answer your question, it's definitely more exciting than terrifying and I would recommend everyone to give it a shot.

00:17:18.010 — 00:17:20.850 · Alison And Lydia, how are you feeling going into it?

00:17:20.890 — 00:17:33.970 · Lydia Oh, I echo all those sentiments. Very excited. We extended our trip in Europe, so we're excited for that too. Hopefully after the competition's over, we can relax on a beach with some rosé and and reminisce on everything.

00:17:34.770 — 00:17:39.540 · Alison I'm so glad that you're extending your time. Are you going to stay in the south of France or where are you going to head to?

00:17:39.580 — 00:17:46.500 · Lydia Mainly explore the south of France. We'll pop around some other European cities as well, before we come back to Toronto.

00:17:46.500 — 00:17:58.420 · Alison That's great. So I also want to use this moment to address something directly, because I think it really matters to the senior marketers that are listening today. Lydia, what's one myth about Gen Z talent that you'd love to bust for the leaders in our industry?

00:17:58.460 — 00:18:44.390 · Lydia So as to Gen Z, I think a myth is that Gen Z uses AI and tech as a shortcut for creativity, leading to a loss of original thought. And I want to debunk this because I think being a digitally native generation actually is our creative advantage. We're exposed to all this emerging media and subcultures that allow us to bring fresh perspectives that other generations may miss.

And I wouldn't say that we're replacing creativity with AI, but instead we're using the AI to buy back the time needed for tasks that require that human touch, like empathy and cultural storytelling. And I would say we aren't actually letting AI be creative for us, but instead using it to get more time so that we can be creative ourselves.

00:18:44.830 — 00:19:07.830 · Alison As a terrific myth to bust. So thank you. Now, selfishly, I want to ask this one because at the CMA, it is something that we think about constantly. We are super proud to sponsor the Young Lions Canada program alongside The Globe and Mail, and we really care deeply about how the industry is developing the next wave of marketing leaders.

So having just lived through this experience yourselves, Joanne, what was the most valuable part of it for you?

00:19:07.870 — 00:19:29.510 · Joanne For me, it was definitely the people. It was a cool opportunity to meet marketers and marketing leaders from all around the country, and now we get to do it globally. The competition pushes you to think outside the box without the usual limits we might have in our day jobs. It's also an incredible way to push our brains and see what we can do under that pressure.

00:19:29.510 — 00:19:40.520 · Alison So as you look ahead, what can organizations like the CMA, The Globe and Mail, or companies like Google do even more of to genuinely support emerging marketing talent? Lydia, why don't you take the lead on this?

00:19:40.520 — 00:20:16.320 · Lydia I would say we definitely felt supported throughout the entire experience. So kudos to you and thank you to the CMA and all the other organizations for that. A few other ideas, I think in general, creating more opportunities, like the Young Lions competition for us to build connections and relationships with the marketing community is always super valuable.

Whether that be through events or conferences, competitions, mentorship programs specifically targeted to emerging talent. In general, for us, just being able to learn from other marketers in the industry and also those who have more years of wisdom than us, is what we find most supportive and helpful.

00:20:16.320 — 00:20:51.770 · Alison So I end every episode by asking my guests to share one piece of career advice for the listeners who aspire to follow in your footsteps. So you're both relatively early in on what I can already tell are going to be absolutely outstanding careers. You've also just done something that most marketers don't get the chance to do.

You've built something bold, under pressure, and had it recognized as the best in Canada. So for the marketers listening right now, maybe they're sitting in a meeting, a bit hesitant to share their crazy idea, or wondering if they're ready to put themselves out there the way that you both did. What's the one thing you'd say to them?

Lydia, let's start with you.

00:20:52.930 — 00:21:14.730 · Lydia I would say, ask yourself two things. Firstly, what is the worst that could happen? It's probably not as bad as you think. And then secondly, ask yourself, what's the best that could happen? Maybe they'll end up running with your idea, or you'll get some helpful feedback that you didn't think of. Or in our case, like in Young Lions, you could win a free trip to Cannes and represent the whole country globally.

00:21:14.770 — 00:21:18.890 · Alison I love those questions. Joanne, I'd love to hear your take too.

00:21:18.890 — 00:21:34.860 · Joanne I would say do it and have fun with it. I've spoken to some young marketers and they were thinking about it but just always hesitated. But there's literally nothing that you can lose and you will be surprised by yourself and all the great ideas that will come to you when you're under that type of pressure.

00:21:35.020 — 00:21:59.420 · Alison Lydia and Joanne, I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know you and learning from you in this podcast. I am thrilled to have you both on a plane to Cannes representing Canada, and I wish you the very best of luck. Have a great time. It's going to be intense, but it's going to be absolutely remarkable. And just the friendships and the experience that you're about to enjoy is going to be one for the memory books for sure.

So a huge thank you.

00:21:59.620 — 00:22:01.700 · Joanne Oh, thank you for taking the time.

00:22:02.100 — 00:22:04.020 · Lydia Thank you so much, Alison. This was fun.

00:22:06.620 — 00:22:19.500 · Presenter Thanks for joining us. Be sure to visit theCMA.ca and sign up for your free My CMA account. It's a great way to stay connected and benefit from the latest marketing thought leadership, news and industry trends.

How do you build a career that spans CPG giants, Crown corporations, fashion retail and one of Canada's largest grocery empires? In this episode, host and former CMA President and CEO Alison Simpson sits down with Sandra Sanderson, CMO of Empire Company Limited and 2025 CMA Lifetime Achievement Award recipient. Sandra unpacks the career pivots, leadership lessons and the principle she calls confident humility that have defined one of Canadian marketing's most remarkable careers.

00:00:00.920 — 00:00:19.680 · Presenter Welcome to CMA Connect, Canada's marketing podcast, where industry experts discuss how marketers must manage the tectonic shifts that will change how brands and businesses are built for tomorrow, while also delivering on today's business needs. With your host, newly-retired CMA CEO, Alison Simpson.

00:00:24.200 — 00:02:58.890 · Alison A successful career in marketing requires embracing change, agility and reinvention. However, the most successful marketers go beyond this and really recognize emerging patterns, often before others even see them coming. My guest today is a terrific example. Sandra Sanderson has built her career on a deep understanding of consumers, very strong business acumen, strategic thinking and perhaps most importantly, the courage to act quickly and take measured risks. As the very deserving 2025 recipient of the Canadian Marketing Association's Lifetime Achievement Award, Sandra's career really demonstrates how marketing can transform organizations, and how measured risks can really open up amazing new career opportunities. Early in her career, Sandra recognized the power that was shifting from CPG to retail and made quite an unconventional pivot to Canada Post, using it as a strategic investment to learn retail fundamentals through their retail network of 6000 post offices and B2B partnerships with major retailers.

This is just one great example of many that led to tremendous success for the brands that Sandra has led. From starting her career with Procter and Gamble to transformational leadership roles at Shoppers Drug Mart, Walmart Canada, White House Black Market, which is a leading U.S. fashion retailer, and now the Empire Company Limited, Sandra has consistently led marketing that creates competitive advantage and delivers significant business results. Sandra joined Empire in November of 2018 as their Senior Vice President of marketing, and was promoted to Chief Marketing Officer in July of 2023. Empire is the second largest grocery retailer in Canada, with brands like Sobeys, Safeway, IGA, Thrifty Foods, Foodland and Fresh Co.

In her time with Empire, Sandra has orchestrated complex transformations, including relaunching their long-standing approach to loyalty. She received the CMA's Marketer of the Year award in 2020. She has been recognized as Strategy's Marketer of the year twice, and most recently, Sandra was honoured with the Retail Council of Canada's Grand Prix Lifetime Achievement Award this year.

Sandra has also been great about giving back to our profession. She served on the CMA Board for four years, including as Vice Chair, and Sandra currently serves as a Board Director for Special Olympics Canada and Scene Plus. Perhaps most remarkably, despite an enviable career track record of success, Sandra really does embody confident humility, leading change and reinvention across diverse industries while nurturing and building many future CMOs and a well-deserved legion of fans. Welcome, Sandra, I am really looking forward to our conversation today.

00:02:58.970 — 00:03:03.690 · Sandra Thank you so much, Alison. It's great to be here with you on CMA connect.

00:03:03.930 — 00:03:28.210 · Alison Sandra, congratulations again on your CMA Lifetime Achievement Award. And you knew very early in life that marketing was a career for you. In fact, you wrote about the ambition in your high school yearbook. That's pretty rare in our profession. So to say that you achieved your goal is definitely an understatement, as your many amazing contributions and awards really demonstrate.

But what was it that attracted you at such a young age to marketing?

00:03:28.250 — 00:04:24.140 · Sandra Well, thinking back to high school, it's a bit surreal to think that early ambition has turned into a decades-long career journey. What drew me to marketing was a unique intersection of art and science. I was intrigued by the idea of using data to decode human behaviour and using creativity to build emotional connections, and that curiosity led me to business school.

Once I started taking marketing courses at Ivey, there was no turning back. I knew that's what I wanted to pursue, and after graduating, I was fortunate enough to land a role at Procter and Gamble. I started out as at brand assistant on Ivory, along with 26 other new graduates. P&G was a very big on-campus recruiter that year, and it was great to be able to work on such an iconic brand right out of the gate.

Looking back, that high school ambition really did set the stage for everything that followed.

00:04:24.220 — 00:04:34.660 · Alison Now, you have recently announced your retirement for the summer, so you've definitely been in marketing for a few decades. What has kept you so engaged in our profession throughout your career?

00:04:34.900 — 00:06:12.740 · Sandra I think what has kept me engaged for so many years is that marketing as a profession keeps evolving. It's in a constant state of reinvention, which has given me a never ending stream of challenges and opportunities to learn and grow. I've always been drawn to business transformations, but the most significant one by far has been my journey with Empire.

My role today has fundamentally changed from what it was when I first joined the company, which was in 2018. I was actually working in the U.S. when I got a call about Empire, and at the time the company was in deep crisis. The Safeway acquisition had not gone as planned. The company had lost $4 billion in market cap, and investor confidence was at an all time low.

Michael Medline had been hired the previous year as President and CEO, coming from Canadian Tire to lead this massive transformation of the business. And so I was intrigued. I flew to Toronto to have lunch with Michael, and at that lunch he was very transparent. He shared with me all the challenges on the business and the changes that would be required in marketing to achieve his vision, and he didn't sugarcoat a thing.

And so at the end of the meal, I remember he looked at me and he said, you're either going to be very energized by a challenge this big, or you're going to walk away and we won't see each other again. Well, Alison, I didn't walk away. I was all in because it was clear that marketing would have an instrumental role to play in the transformation, and I was genuinely excited.

00:06:13.300 — 00:06:34.300 · Alison I love Michael's candour with you in the interview process. He clearly understood how important it was for the CMO, choosing to step into the role to really understand the unvarnished reality. His partner needed to be energized by the rare career opportunity to help lead a massive transformation. And you clearly were.

So I'd love you to share some highlights of the transformation and what's kept you engaged.

00:06:34.620 — 00:09:04.230 · Sandra Looking back, what has kept me so deeply engaged is the sheer scale of the marketing transformation within a broader business transformation. We moved from having separate Quebec and English Canada marketing teams started to a unified national organization. That gave us the scale we needed to stand up a Centre of excellence in marketing, technology and digital, which modernized our entire marketing engine. A big turning point was the transformation of our loyalty program. For over 20 years we had been part of a coalition program, so the stakes were really high when we decided to pivot, and I had the privilege of serving as the executive lead on the loyalty transformation.

We made a bold decision to become the co-owners of Scene Plus, together with two other iconic Canadian companies, Scotiabank and Cineplex. And today, we scale that program from 10 million to over 15 million members. And the level of personalization we can offer today is just light years ahead of where we were.

And, you know, the Scene First party data also became the bedrock for another venture, which was Empire Media Plus, our new retail media business. It's an example of how transforming one part of the business creates the fuel for the next. And it was super exciting to have the opportunity to launch a new media start-up within a $32 billion grocery retailer.

It's a completely different business model, and honestly, I have learned so much over the past year, which has been energizing. We also launched an in-house agency called Atelier, and having that creative engine embedded directly in our business and our culture allows us to move at the speed of the market.

In retail today, as you know, there's simply no room to stand still. And lastly, within all of these changes, there's one that's particularly rewarding for me personally, and that's the reinvention of our community investment strategy. We shifted from having over 200 fragmented partnerships where our impact was diffused to one focused national strategy, where we could truly make an impact.

And since making that pivot, we've been able to raise and donate more than $130 million for our communities. It's a powerful reminder that at the end of the day, we're not just selling groceries. We're serving a greater purpose. And because of all of these opportunities to learn and grow, it's not at all difficult to remain engaged, and energized every single day.

00:09:04.350 — 00:10:00.080 · Alison That is a very impressive transformation. And you've accomplished an incredible amount in seven and a half years. I also love that Michael was completely transparent in that lunch conversation, because he was absolutely right that this was going to be a role that the right candidate saw as a once in a lifetime opportunity to come in, make big bets, have marketing at the centre of leading much needed change, or it was going to scare the bejesus out of them and they were going to be like politely thanking for the lunch and going on their merry way.

So kudos to him for recognizing that. And kudos for you for raising your hand for a challenge and most importantly, clearly delivering on it too. In talking about how much transformation you've led, it also highlights just how much the role of marketing is evolving, certainly from when we were both in high school and thinking you were thinking about it as a career.

So if you were in high school today, do you think marketing would still be your dream career?

00:10:00.360 — 00:10:34.200 · Sandra It's an interesting question. I'd say yes, absolutely. In fact, I think I'd be even more excited today because back then, marketing was largely about brand-building. And today our profession has become so much more complex and multidimensional. The dream hasn't changed for me, but the job would be so much bigger and more impactful than I had anticipated.

So if I was writing in my yearbook today, I'd still say marketing, but I'd do it knowing I was signing up for a career of constant change and transformation. And it's exactly why I would choose it all over again.

00:10:34.240 — 00:10:44.320 · Alison So building on that, what are the two or three skills that have made you so successful and would make that high school student today who is aspiring to follow in your footsteps successful as well?

00:10:44.440 — 00:11:37.060 · Sandra I've been fortunate to join several iconic organizations and brands with deep legacies at exactly the moment they hit a critical crossroads. So being in those pivot moments has really forced me to sharpen two specific skills. The first one is taking on the role of a change agent, and the second is having a growth mindset.

Throughout my career, I've been asked to lead initiatives where I had zero previous experience, whether that was launching a B2B loyalty program at Canada Post or launching a marketing technology team at Shoppers Drug Mart, or even recently, you know, building a national sports sponsorship portfolio at Empire.

These opportunities forced me to embrace the idea that my abilities are not fixed. There are muscles that can get stronger if I make the effort to learn, and that has served me well in a profession where there is so much change.

00:11:37.380 — 00:11:58.000 · Alison So building on how quickly our profession is changing and if anything, it's only getting faster, that means embracing change and being open to a less traditional career path can be very important to success and longevity, and you very much embody this. So what is the most unconventional career pivot you've made so far, and what did it teach you?

00:11:58.200 — 00:15:10.400 · Sandra Well, I had spent the first 12 years of my career in consumer packaged goods, starting at P&G, then Kraft, and eventually becoming Vice President of Marketing for Minute Maid at Coca-Cola. And I knew how incredibly fortunate I was to hold a senior leadership role at such an iconic global brand. But I craved a new challenge.

I wanted to be in retail, but pivoting to retail was not easy. It turns out retail companies weren't exactly lining up to hire a Vice President of Marketing with zero retail experience. And Alison, I spent months trying to land a job with no success. And at the time it was incredibly discouraging. But I kept at it.

And eventually a recruiter called and he said, Sandra, I have an amazing retail opportunity for you. It's a Canadian company with thousands of retail outlets. And I was like, I can't figure out which retailer has thousands of stores across Canada. Well, the mystery retailer turned out to be Canada Post, and they did, in fact, have the largest retail network in Canada at the time with over 6000 post offices.

And it was not quite the retail opportunity I had in mind. But I didn't have other options and I was intrigued. The role was for General Manager of Marketing, and it would report to an executive from Pepsi and I thought, hey, we'll speak the same language. The role included areas of marketing I knew very well, but it also threw me into entirely new territory.

Leading a retail marketing team, running their e-commerce site, and driving B2B marketing. And I decided to take the leap. And I can tell you plenty of people, including my colleagues, my friends, thought I had lost my mind. They said, you're giving up a VP role at a global powerhouse like Coca-Cola to go to work for a Crown corporation. To the outside world it didn't make any sense, but I trusted my gut, and that decision turned out to be transformative. It felt like I was getting a masterclass in retail, and I had the opportunity to co-lead the creation of an award winning flagship post office. I collaborated with retailers like Amazon and Indigo and others, and I learned how to lead an e-commerce team.

I launched a small business loyalty program, and so taking that seemingly off course detour turned out to be exactly the springboard I needed. It gave me the foundational experience to eventually land a job as Chief Marketing Officer at Danier, where I learned all about speciality retail. I was then hired as Senior Vice President of Marketing at Shoppers Drug Mart, then Chief Marketing Officer at Walmart, and ultimately led me to my role today.

My advice to others is this - don't assume your career has to be a straight ladder. The most rewarding paths rarely are. Don't be afraid of making a detour, sometimes taking a step sideways, or maybe making a move that other people think is crazy. It may be exactly the experience that you need to grow.

00:15:10.960 — 00:15:19.040 · Alison That's such a great example. Also, kudos to the recruiter who knew his prospect well enough to know how to pitch it and pitch it in a very compelling way.

00:15:19.080 — 00:15:19.840 · Sandra He certainly did.

00:15:19.840 — 00:15:43.380 · Alison It takes a lot of courage to, like, go against what people that you respect, whether your friends, people you're working with, people in your professional network, if they're all saying, what are you thinking? And to be true to yourself and really trust that gut. That takes courage. Now with any change brings challenges.

So when you did make the move to retail, What challenges did you experience working in such a new industry?

00:15:43.500 — 00:17:22.839 · Sandra Alison. Moving from CPG to retail was a huge culture shock. I quickly realized why companies hesitate to hire senior marketers without retail experience. It was a completely different beast. If CPG is a marathon, retail's a series of high stakes sprints that's happening simultaneously and sometimes the track is on fire.

A big lesson for me was agility over perfection. In the CPG world, we were strategic, deliberate, meticulous. In retail, perfection is often the enemy of progress. If you wait for the perfect data set, the season is over and you're sitting on millions of dollars in unsold inventory. I had to learn very quickly to make decisions with incomplete information.

I remember a Monday morning meeting where weekend sales had slumped. Our CEO looked across the table and said to me, we need an incremental promotion live by Friday. Well, coming from CPG or we plan for months and years, I was like a deer in headlights. I had no idea how to move that fast. Fortunately, my team was great.

They knew the ropes and eventually I did learn to be more nimble. And it was great for me that I started my retail chapter at Danier Leather, which was a smaller business with a tight knit executive team. It allowed me to see the full picture from supply chain to the storefront, and it gave me a holistic view that's often hard to get at in a very large business enterprise.

And so that was great. Eventually I figured it out and I found out that I love the fast pace and the complexity of retail.

00:17:23.160 — 00:17:47.250 · Alison Now, there is such an adrenaline piece to it and just the momentum behind it. I love it as well. So your career definitely demonstrates quite a remarkable ability to recognize patterns that others often miss. And seeing how the Canadian CPG industry was evolving when you were at Coke is one great example of many.

What signals were you seeing that made you realize the power was shifting and inspired your move?

00:17:47.450 — 00:18:44.590 · Sandra Back when I was VP of Minute Maid at Coke, manufacturers told the stories. We built the brands, the retailers provided the shelf space. But I started to notice some shifts that were reported. I saw retailers becoming so much more sophisticated. Brands in their own right. Their private label wasn't just generic.

They were becoming genuine competitors with real customer equity. And I realized that while we in CPG knew who bought our brand, the retailers knew what else was in that basket. They had that direct relationship with a human being behind the transaction. I could see that whoever owned the data and the last mile was eventually going to hold the cards, and we saw consumers becoming more demanding and retailers were in the best position to react to that in real time.

And I wanted to beware. The actual moment of truth happened between the customer and the shelf.

00:18:44.710 — 00:18:54.470 · Alison So what advice do you have to help our listeners recognize shifting market dynamics so that they also know when to pivot, both for their businesses but also for their careers?

00:18:54.550 — 00:19:57.480 · Sandra Well, it's incredibly easy to become insular in your own industry, but the biggest shifts usually start as whispers and not shouts. And to hear them, it's helpful to look outside your industry. For a number of years, as you know, I was on the CMA Board and something that I found so helpful was working with leaders across diverse sectors that provided insights that brought me important perspectives that I would never have found on my own.

And so that was great. I would also say watch the friction. Power almost always shifts to whoever is removing friction for the consumer. Think about Ubers versus taxis or Airbnbs versus hotels. If you see another player solving a problem more elegantly, then your company is, that's something to look into.

And perhaps even more importantly, don't wait for 100% certainty. Don't wait for the perfect data to prove the market is shifting, because by then you're already behind. There needs to be a willingness to start moving even without full data.

00:19:57.840 — 00:20:11.400 · Alison Getting to market is such an important and increasingly competitive advantage as well. So great advice. Now looking ahead, what trends are you tracking now that are shaping your strategic thinking about the future of marketing? Just a simple little question for you to answer.

00:20:11.960 — 00:21:41.440 · Sandra Well, I'll try to keep it simple. And when I look at the horizon, I see the marketers' role shifting from being creators of content to being orchestrators of intelligence. And there's a few key shifts that are shaping my thinking. We're moving towards a world where marketing isn't just hyper-personalized, it's anticipatory.

It's the ability to use data to anticipate a customer's need before they even articulate it. Allowing for every digital touchpoint to be uniquely generated in real time, to be relevant to that specific person. I think the real challenge for marketers now is mastering that high tech efficiency without losing the soul of the brand, and there's such a fascinating tension right now between the explosion of AI and a growing hunger for the human dimension.

We're entering into an era where technology can definitely handle the scale, but humans have to provide the heart. And if a brand loses its authenticity in pursuit of automation, that's a big risk. And at Empire, we're predominantly a full service retailer, right? At like Sobeys and Safeway and Foodland, we have service counters and it's one of our strengths.

And at those counters, we offer the expertise of a master butcher or a baker who knows your name. And that local expertise provides a level of trust that no algorithm can replicate. The shift here is using digital innovation to protect it, enhance those human moments and not to automate them away.

00:21:41.480 — 00:22:01.360 · Alison It's very wise counsel, and it's also a great way that you're continue to be part of your communities across Canada with every store that you're in. Now, I've personally learned some of the most impactful lessons the hard way. Definitely through mistakes, failure. So before we talk about some of your many successes, I would love you to share a mistake and a lesson that you learned the hard way.

Wow!

00:22:01.360 — 00:25:09.770 · Sandra I made a rather big mistake when I was promoted from manager to director, and it almost cost me my job. I had spent almost six years at P&G, and then I took a role at Kraft as Senior Product Manager on salad dressings. After just a year in the role, I was surprised to be offered a promotion to Marketing Director for the enhanced risk category, and I knew I had performed well as a Senior Product Manager, but I wasn't sure if I was ready for the next big leap, because with that promotion, I had to go from managing just one category to leading a portfolio of five categories, and I was responsible for a much larger team.

It was pretty daunting. At the time, I was the youngest Marketing Director in the company, and I felt a lot of pressure to prove myself. But instead of stepping up to the challenge and seizing the opportunity to grow, I made the mistake of falling back on my strengths as a Product Manager, sticking to what had made me successful in the past.

I just kept operating like I was still a senior product manager, except on five categories, and I was micromanaging my team to the ground. My VP at the time saw this train wreck coming and he tried to help me, but I was stubborn and frankly, uncoachable. I think I was just scared to leave what had made me successful.

And I'll never forget the turning point. We were actually at a marketing offsite, I think it was at Hockley Valley, and I remember my VP asked me to step out to have a chat with him in the lobby lounge and he was very direct, he said. Sandra, I promoted you because I believe in you, but you can't be a director if you don't learn how to step back and delegate.

You're drowning in the details. And then he said, I'm going to take a gamble. I'm working on a restructuring of the marketing team, and I plan to expand your portfolio from 5 to 10 brands. He said, I'm going to try to make it impossible for you to keep managing the way that you have been. So you're either going to rise to the challenge and become a leader, or you're going to fail.

It's up to you. So it was sink or swim. And when the restructuring announcement came out, I actually had colleagues come up to me and say, that's crazy. You're not going to be able to manage ten brands. Well, their doubt turned into my fuel and I was determined to prove them wrong. And I realized I had to either delegate or I was going to drown.

So overnight I had to transform my leadership style. And I was forced to trust and empower my team. And I had to let go. And the moment I did, everything did change. I focused on becoming a coach versus a doer. I stepped back, I let them shine. And you know, it took some time, but I ultimately discovered a new sense of fulfilment in watching my team succeed.

And I realized that true leadership isn't about doing everything. It's about creating an environment where people can thrive and grow. I was fortunate that my VP saw my potential, but more importantly, he pushed me off the dock so I could finally learn to swim.

00:25:09.930 — 00:25:39.860 · Alison That's a great example. And you're absolutely right. You're fortunate to have the right VP who took a bet on you and continued to take a bet on you and put you in a situation where you had to let go of your old way of working. But there's also the fact that you were scared of taking on five new brands, very reasonably, and then that doubled. And how did your team, because sometimes when people are micromanaged, you teach them to work a certain way too. And now suddenly they're not being micromanaged. So how did your team around you perform?

00:25:39.900 — 00:25:47.620 · Sandra They flourished. They thrived. I don't think I was going to have the success if I had not changed.

00:25:47.700 — 00:25:58.580 · Alison It would have been hard to learn at a director level. But thank God you learned that because that absolutely gave you the foundation you needed to step into bigger roles and to have the success that you've enjoyed since.

00:25:59.100 — 00:26:00.180 · Sandra That was the turning point.

00:26:00.220 — 00:26:10.540 · Alison Now, we often talk about the standard path to success involving a mentor who opens doors, and your VP, in some ways was certainly an example of that. What's your experience been like with mentorship?

00:26:10.660 — 00:28:03.530 · Sandra Well, when we hear the word mentorship, we usually picture that traditional model like the one I was just describing, right? A senior executive pulling a junior person under their wing. And I was so fortunate to have had several of them. But there was also a different type of mentorship that has profoundly shaped my career, and that's a peer mentorship.

Years ago, I was nominated to participate in a women's leadership program at the Rotman School of Management. It's called the Judy Project. You might have heard of it. It's an intensive one week immersion for women in senior roles, and at the end of that week, they place us into what they call personal advisory groups - small circles, 8 to 10 women.

And the core idea was to give us a personal board of directors. It was designed to be highly confidential, completely safe space made up of smart women from entirely different industries. And the goal was to have a sounding board where we could bring our most difficult leadership challenges and get objective, unfiltered advice from people who have no political stake in the outcome.

That was over 20 years ago, and seven of the original nine women my group are still together and we're still meeting, although less regularly now than the monthly meetings we had in the past. And over the last two decades we have been through thick and thin. We've navigated career setbacks, relocations, promotions, health challenges and all the beautiful, messy realities of raising families while building demanding careers.

They know my blind spots. They challenge my thinking, and they're not afraid of hurting my feelings to save my career. So when people ask me about finding a mentor, my biggest piece of advice is this - don't only look up the corporate ladder, also look across the table, find your peers, build your own advisory council and surround yourself with a circle of trusted peers who understand your ambition and have your back.

00:28:03.730 — 00:28:09.770 · Alison That is such a spectacular example. I'm also a Judy Project graduate.

00:28:09.810 — 00:28:10.530 · Sandra I thought so! Wasn't it great?

00:28:10.570 — 00:28:31.350 · Alison It was a phenomenal week, but they hadn't put the advisory board into place yet, so I wish I'd been a later year. But the fact that you have stayed in touch and they continue to advise you, and you're advising and supporting their careers three decades later. I can only imagine the friendships and how each of you have flourished as a result of having that advisory council and resource to leverage.

00:28:31.390 — 00:28:32.910 · Sandra It's been very rewarding.

00:28:33.190 — 00:28:42.950 · Alison Now you have an incredible amount to be proud of. So this next question might actually be the hardest one to ask. Of all of your successes, which one are you most proud of and why?

00:28:43.310 — 00:31:00.140 · Sandra I feel the most proud when I achieve something that requires a lot of dedication, something that really challenges me and scares me. And this is true both in my personal life and my professional life. So can I share one for each?

Alison: I would love that.

Sandra: The personal one is something that I know you can relate to, Alison. For years I was a runner. I ran five km every morning. Predictable, easy. And honestly, it was in my comfort zone. And if you'd asked me back then, could I run a marathon? I would have said like, absolutely not. But that changed when a friend of mine, someone who wasn't even a runner, decided to train for a marathon.

So watching her resolve inspired me to sign up for a marathon as well. And I started small. I went from 5 to 7 km, then nine and 11. I spent months training - hot, humid days, cold rainy days, and I just kept pushing those physical limits. And as I did so, I realized I was actually building mental confidence. And when race day came, my mantra was pain is temporary, pride is forever.

And I felt such a sense of pride when I crossed that finish line. And it wasn't just about the 42.2km, it was proof to myself that I could do something that I had thought impossible in the past. Now, I don't know if I'm going to go and do 65 marathons like you have, Alison, but that for me was a proud moment. And then on the professional front, the toughest challenge and one that I'm most proud of, is the transformation of our loyalty program.

As I mentioned before, we had been part of a coalition program for over 20 years, and there was a lot of different opinions at the time on what our course of action should be. We had many options, which we evaluated, but in the end we decided to become the co-owner of Scene Plus along with Scotia and Cineplex, and to launch it across our 1200 stores from coast to coast.

Scene Plus was at the time the biggest, most complex and most cross-functional high stakes project at the company. And one of the most rewarding parts of the experience was a collaboration across my entire marketing team, and across all different functions in the company. I feel such a sense of pride about what we've been able to accomplish together.

00:31:00.180 — 00:32:09.120 · Alison Those are both big bets, and I love the fact that, thank you for sharing personal and professional, because there's such an interconnection between how we spend our personal time, what personal goals we set for ourselves, and the mental connection and the way that that can really empower our professional lives as well.

That's certainly been my experience, and with running, you take on a big, hairy, audacious goal that you didn't think you could do. You achieve it. And it opens up possibilities not just in your personal life, but in what you think you can accomplish in your professional life. And then to have the equivalent of that professionally being taking what was an incredibly massive debt and taking an ownership stake in Scene Plus and fundamentally evolving that program, as well as Empire and Sobeys approach to loyalty is such a great example.

So thank you. Now at Empire Sobeys you have led massive transformation, certainly like the new approach to loyalty that you shared. And this obviously requires a significant amount of change management as well as really strong internal support from across the organization. It's so much broader than marketing.

So what advice do you have for listeners who are leading a transformation and navigating that sort of complex challenge?

00:32:09.560 — 00:34:25.929 · Sandra Transformation is rarely just a technical challenge. It's almost always also a people challenge. And one of the biggest challenges we had was the confidentiality around this project. Because it included several publicly traded companies we could not risk a media leak. We had to keep everything under wraps and share information on a need to know basis.

At its height, we had over 2000 people under NDA, so ifsomeone worked on the project for a day, they had to be NDAed. And it worked for security, but it backfired for engagement. Our leaders felt like they were holding a single puzzle piece without ever seeing the picture on the box. And the reality is people don't buy into what they can't see.

And we had reached a tipping point. I realized that the risk of a leak was smaller than the risk of an uninspired team. So we brought our Vice Presidents together and we showed them everything. We spent a day, you know, showing them the consumer research, the financial rationale, the why behind the transformation.

We let them weigh in on critical decisions, like whether to go big bang launch or regional rollout. And the moment they started shaping the plan, they stopped being observers and they started being advocates. But a transformation of the scale at a grocery retailer is not won in the boardroom, it's won in the aisles.

You can have perfect technology, great value proposition. But if the person at the checkout is not excited, the customer won't be either. So to engage our frontline employees, we launched in-store program where we traded boring manuals for these challenge kits that we shipped to every store. We had teams dressing up like movie characters competing to build the best displays.

We leveraged gamification to engage digitally with all of the teams, and what we did, really, is we turned a corporate mandate into a shared celebration. And the launch of Scene Plus was highly successful, not only from a commercial perspective, but also the engagement of our team. My advice to anyone leading a complex change is this. Your most valuable asset isn't your data or your technology. It's the collective energy of your people. Show your team the whole picture. Tell them why it's important. Give them the trust they deserve to make it happen.

00:34:26.010 — 00:34:44.290 · Alison That is so well said and your line about the risk of a leak was smaller than the risk of an unengaged team, and then how you involve the people who needed to involve, how you gave them a voice, and how they helped refine and improve and make the new program even better is a masterclass. So, thank you.

00:34:44.330 — 00:34:51.970 · Sandra And you know, we never had a media leak. It did not happen. So we trusted them. And, uh, it worked.

00:34:52.010 — 00:35:07.530 · Alison They rewarded your trust. That's another great and important lesson for sure. Now Sandra, in our earlier conversations you talked about confident humility. And that really resonated with me. So I would love you to share more about the concept and how it has really shaped your approach in leadership.

00:35:07.530 — 00:35:44.070 · Sandra There's a common misconception that leadership authority is built on having all the answers, but in reality, true authority comes from confident humility, which is the ability to be secure enough to be unsure. You can have total faith in your capacity to solve a problem, but the humility to admit you don't have the solution yet.

And when a leader makes that shift, they stop worrying about being right and they start obsessing over getting it right with the help of others. This is something that I had to learn over time, but I think it's a powerful concept.

00:35:44.310 — 00:36:12.470 · Alison It's a very powerful concept, and especially for some younger listeners or for people that are in a leadership role for the first time. You can feel so much pressure to have all the answers. And when you step back from that statement and think about, it's like there's no one alive that has all of the answers.

Yet we put this ridiculous pressure on ourselves, which sets us up for failure. So the whole concept is such an important one for, I think, leaders at every level, but especially people that are new to a leadership role.

00:36:12.840 — 00:36:14.000 · Sandra Absolutely.

00:36:14.040 — 00:36:26.520 · Alison Sandra, I'm really lucky to host senior leaders like you on this podcast. So I always end each episode by asking my guest to share one piece of career advice that they have for listeners who want to follow in your very illustrious footsteps.

00:36:26.800 — 00:37:55.700 · Sandra At the start of our conversation, we talked about my early ambition to be in marketing. And while it's true that I knew my northstar early on, I think it's important to distinguish between having a compass and having a map. A map implies a fixed, predictable path, but in an industry that's changing as fast as ours, a career map isn't necessarily realistic.

My own path went from CPG to Crown Corporation to entertainment, a fashion retailer to pharmacy, mass merchandiser to grocery. I didn't foresee that. And if I had stuck strictly to a map, I would have missed the very opportunities that have defined my career. My advice would be this follow your compass, your North Star would be open to taking an unconventional route.

Maybe it's a different industry for a few years or another function to open up your aperture and build a broader business perspective. Whenever I'm at a crossroads and I need to make an important career decision, I always ask myself, what would I do if I wasn't afraid? And usually that question cuts right through the noise, and it can help you to confront your fears, whether it's fear of the unknown or fear of failure.

And it can point you towards the path that you actually want to take. So don't wait for that perfect map to appear. Adopt a growth mindset. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable and choose that path that requires courage.

00:37:55.860 — 00:38:17.870 · Alison Thank you so much, Sandra. I knew going into this conversation it was going to be insight rich, highly informative and a lot of fun. And you have absolutely delivered in spades. So a huge thank you. A wonderful congratulations on your outstanding career. Thank you throughout for your support of the CMA, and I wish you every success as you embark on retirement.

00:38:18.110 — 00:38:33.750 · Sandra Thank you, Alison, for inviting me to be a part of CMA connect. It's been fun and I want to also take the opportunity to thank you for your leadership of the CMA and everything you have done to future proof and to elevate our marketing profession in Canada.

00:38:33.790 — 00:38:40.150 · Alison Oh, thank you. It was definitely a team effort, and with members like you, it's helped make us a lot more scalable and a lot more successful.

00:38:40.190 — 00:38:41.030 · Sandra Thank you.

00:38:43.590 — 00:38:56.510 · Presenter Thanks for joining us. Be sure to visit the CMA.ca and sign up for your free my CMA account. It's a great way to stay connected and benefit from the latest marketing thought leadership, news, and industry trends.

Marketing isn't a cost centre – it's your greatest growth engine. Drawing on three decades at brands including P&G, Mars, TD Bank, Hudson's Bay and Loblaw, CMA Board Chair and President and Owner of Pattern and Path Consulting, Meghan Nameth joins CMA President and CEO Alison Simpson to make the case. Discover how to tie marketing directly to business outcomes, why most teams have the 80/20 planning rule backwards and the mindset shift Canadian marketers need to compete on a global stage.

CMAConnect-Ep69-MeghanNameth_FINAL.txt English (UK)

00:00:01.720 — 00:00:20.280 · Presenter Welcome to CMA Connect, Canada's marketing podcast, where industry experts discuss how marketers must manage the tectonic shifts that will change how brands and businesses are built for tomorrow, while also delivering on today's business needs. With your host, CMA CEO, Alison Simpson.

00:00:23.640 — 00:03:03.100 · Alison In a world where marketing can be wrongly treated as a cost centre instead of a growth engine, transforming that perception requires more than great marketing. It absolutely demands strong business acumen, strategic vision, a deep understanding of consumers and the evolving market realities, and really knowing how to speak the language of business.

For today's episode, I'm absolutely delighted to welcome Meghan Nameth, the newly appointed Chair of the Canadian Marketing Association's Board of Directors and President and Owner of Pattern and Path Consulting. Over three decades, Meghan has built a diverse and very impressive marketing career, working in both Canada and the U.S.

She started at Procter and Gamble, where she learned brand building fundamentals that have served her well throughout her career. After spending almost 11 years with P&G in progressively senior roles in Canada and at their U.S. head office, Meghan moved to Mars. She then expanded beyond CPG with roles in financial services as VP Marketing at TD Bank and Managing Director at PWC Canada.

She was also CMO at Hudson's Bay and the SVP of Marketing at Loblaw. This diverse industry experience further strengthened her marketing and business acumen. Meghan's work has been very well recognized at the Cannes Lion Cassie's, of course, the CMA awards, Cleos, Effies and the Media Innovation Awards. In May 2025, she was appointed Vice Chair of the CMA board, where she led the search for a new President and CEO following my announcement of my retirement, a responsibility that speaks to the trust and respect she commands in the marketing community. Meghan has now stepped into Board Chair role, and I'm really excited to see how she builds on the CMA's strong momentum during her two year term. What makes Meghan's perspective particularly valuable is her conviction that Canadian marketers have untapped potential.

We both share a belief that marketers must think bigger, drive more innovation, and really position themselves not as service providers seeking approval, but as strategic partners co-creating growth. Throughout her career, the CMA has been an anchor, providing the network's learning resources and advocacy platform that have really enabled her to elevate marketing's role in every organization she served.

Welcome, Meghan, it is an absolute pleasure to have you on CMA connect, and I'm really looking forward to your conversation today and celebrating your appointment as Board Chair.

02:41 - Meghan Thank you. I'm thrilled to be here. I'm happy to talk about marketing anytime actually.

Alison So our third annual CMA Marketing Week wrapped a bit earlier this month. And I know that you, along with thousands of marketers across the country, took full advantage and really engaged with a number of our events, thought leadership sessions as well as the training sessions. So I'd love to start by having you share your three big takeaways from this year's CMA Marketing Week.

00:03:03.100 — 00:05:59.800 · Meghan It was an amazing week. I feel that these events are in some ways a bit of a reunion. I get to see so many people that I haven't connected with in so long and catch up and learn. And so it's really an amazing opportunity for networking and reconnection. And I think that's probably one of my biggest takeaways is that when I attend these events, I really feel the full value of what the CMA brings in connecting people across industries.

I see people from financial services, from when I worked in retail, CPGs, that I haven't connected with in a long time. So it really is that power of connection and learning what people are doing. So I think that's the biggest takeaway I have, because you can get really heads down in your own day to day job and forget to sort of look up and look around.

And that was kind of one of the biggest values that it brings. Secondly, though, there was a keynote speaker, Tucker Bryant, who talks a lot about how creativity and actually the creative process of poetry can bring value into innovation cycles. And from that, his message was do different things differently.

That really resonated for me because, you know, we talk a lot about AI, and AI was very present throughout the week of how we leverage AI, what AI can do for us. But there is a risk that we go so fast with AI that we forget to really interrogate the ideas, to really think about what's creative, what's different, what's really driving growth for an organization.

And I think his message was really about, you know, we can't all be the same. We should be different. We should be thinking about things differently. And so really thinking about a process to sort of do that inside your organization, I thought was really valuable. And then I think the third takeaway is the impact of marketing.

So there was a study that the CMA did with Signal 49 that really demonstrated or proved, I guess, the value of marketing to the Canadian economy. And so there was some sort of shocking statistics that, you know, $130 billion in GDP, really, 1 in 25 jobs are marketing jobs. This, for me, underscored, I think, what I've known for a long time, which is marketing, has tremendous value to drive growth for organizations, and that's really critical.

It also is the unlock for our productivity challenge in Canada that we can really demonstrate that these companies that we work in, we can help them to grow beyond our borders. And lastly, with the number of people in Canada involved in marketing, how critical the CMA is and our role to sort of really upskill and future proof that sort of function and people involved in the discipline.

So I think that was my takeaway, is the power of connection, doing different things differently and then the impact that marketing can have on productivity.

00:05:59.920 — 00:06:45.120 · Alison Those are such great takeaways and the impact that marketing have now that we've been able to quantify it and really demonstrate that it is foundational, regardless of what sector or industry you're in, marketing is a driver of our economy. To your point, it's a key way that Canada can overcome our productivity issue.

And building on the keynote from Tucker, we are the best served around the executive table to really drive innovation and doing different things differently. Now Meghan, before we dive into your vision for the role as our new Board Chair, can you share a bit about your story? I know you started your career in supply chain at Procter and Gamble, which isn't the typical path into marketing.

So what drew you to this profession and how has that background really influenced your approach to marketing?

00:06:45.240 — 00:08:39.610 · Meghan It definitely is not the typical path forward, but I'm so grateful, actually, that I got a chance to start in supply chain. And and after that, I actually did a really very brief moment in sales as well before moving into brand at P&G. But supply chain really helped me understand the mechanics of an organization.

Like, how does the product actually move from R&D into production and then onto customer shelves and all the challenges that can exist within that system? You know, especially in packaged goods, you can generate demand, but if there's no product on the shelves, it's really it's really sort of like, does a tree fall in the forest?

Will anyone know because they can't buy the product? And so I think really understanding that a strategy or a demand generation plan is only as good as what you can operationalize has sort of really continued on through my whole career. And now as I sit in a more service provider role, what we're working with clients on is not just how do you generate insight, but it's how do you actually take that to a business strategy?

How do you take that into your execution? And so I think that actually has been foundational for me. And how I approach marketing is more as a system. So it's marketing is part of an organization's system for growth. And it's not the only part of the system. And so we have to work across all these different functions to pull them together, to really realize that demand generation and benefit that we create.

I feel really lucky that that's where I started, because I think that was a huge benefit. And I think the other thing was that very early in my career, because of how supply chain organizations are structured, I had very early people management experience and that, you know, has really benefited me in leading teams and helping to like, learn how to unlock the power of the talent on your team.

And I think that was a really great benefit as well.

00:08:40.169 — 00:09:09.060 · Alison That sounds like a great starting point when you think of it. The best marketers have a very deep understanding of all aspects of the business and from a credibility perspective as well, the fact that you know and have worked in the operational side of the business, the fact that you've worked in the sales side of the business, those are such key partners to delivering on the marketing strategy and the marketing initiative.

So I would think that it also helped elevate your credibility across the organization as well. When you did move into a marketing role.

00:09:09.100 — 00:09:39.140 · Meghan Maybe, I mean, I moved to different organizations, so sometimes that doesn't always translate across. But I would say what it gave me is tremendous empathy for those roles. So a lot of times when you sit in one function, you really haven't walked in the shoes of another function. And I think it helped me to say, you know, we're not giving them enough information or we're not collaborating strongly enough or learning what they are up against to be able to influence different outcomes.

And so I think it gave me a lot of empathy for the challenges that exist in other parts of the organization beyond marketing.

00:09:39.180 — 00:09:58.750 · Alison Now, we've talked a bit about your career spanning CPG, financial services and retail, including moving from very marketing-focused organizations to PNG to industries where marketing traditionally has had a bit less emphasis. So what motivated you to make these industry pivots, and what did you learn about leveraging your skills across very different sectors?

00:09:58.830 — 00:12:28.120 · Meghan So many things, we could do an hour just on this, I think. Yeah, I did start my career in CPG and I would say the biggest difference was that they were multinationals. So in most of my time I was in Canada supporting organizations like Mars and P&G that were headquartered out of the U.S. And so Canada, you had to, first of all, you had really big roles.

Like maybe the size of the market wasn't as large, but the breadth of your role was quite large. And so you had to touch a lot of things, even if you couldn't go very deep, you were kind of moving across different elements of the business. And so that was a huge benefit to being in those multinationals. But you're always sort of, you know, working with your North American partners to sort of prove the value of investing in Canada, and you're sometimes adapting more work than you are creating work from scratch or even strategies from scratch.

And so it builds a different muscle in those multinational roles. Moving into financial services, in part, I did it because I wanted to work for a Canadian headquartered company where there was room for career growth, so that was a big part of that move. I wasn't actually sure that my skills would translate into financial services, but I think what I've learned is that the fundamentals of marketing, you know, who are you trying to attract?

Why are you marketing like, are you trying to convert new business, you know, deepen relationships? Those things move across all different industries. From what I've really experienced, the benefit of moving into financial services is how digital those businesses are. That really built out a different muscle for me around digital marketing and the amount of data.

And so I think one of the best things about moving into financial services was I really fell in love with analytics and insight because of how rich the data sets are in financial services, and also the talent that exists in those organizations to really look at new insights from all of that data. And it's kind of the same in retail.

You know, I had the great benefit of working for Loblaws and their PC Optimum portfolio has a tremendous amount of insight because of the breadth of that program. And so I think a lot of what motivated me was the opportunity to have an impact and opportunity to learn something new and experience something.

But I think the skills from each role sort of built on top of each other to help me make an impact in those roles.

00:12:28.160 — 00:12:44.970 · Alison That's a great perspective for everyone in our audience to understand. I worked across very diverse sectors as well. And initially you think, oh, is this going to work or not? But to your point, the fundamentals are absolutely there, and I have a bit of a bias that makes us even stronger marketers when you have to translate them to very different industries.

00:12:45.010 — 00:13:21.450 · Meghan When I think about what gets in the way of a great plan, often it has really nothing to do with understanding the industry, but a lot to do on aligning the pieces of an organization to make choices and move something forward. And that's kind of true across all different industries. If you can get everyone sort of aligned on a direction, making those clear choices a clear point of view and, and execute with excellence, that really works.

But often what disconnects is not understanding the industry. It's often getting the internal alignment.

00:13:21.610 — 00:13:28.650 · Speaker 2 Our ability to influence, for sure. Now you embraced a much more entrepreneurial career path. So what led you to take that plunge?

00:13:28.690 — 00:14:40.940 · Meghan Well, so many things. I would say that the number one thing is, and I talked about it a bit as I talked about TD and the opportunity to work with the insights and analytics team. I really have always loved finding that unique insight that is going to move a business forward. That's been the favourite part of every job I've ever had.

It's, you know, really looking for that unlock from the consumer, from the market, from the business and trying to figure out what is it that's going to move something forward. And so when I thought about what did I want to do next? After my last role, I wasn't sure that I wanted to work in a larger CMO role because I wanted to work on multiple businesses and brands.

I've had, to your point, a lot of different experiences. And I also really wanted to focus on helping organizations find those unlocks. And that's really what we do is we are looking for deep insights that help move an organization forward, and we're really focussed not just on what is the insight, but how does a company take that forward, how do they get aligned, how does their, what are the next steps coming out of that insight? And that part is the part that I love the most. So I'm very happy to be doing this.

00:14:40.940 — 00:14:49.380 · Alison And what was the biggest surprise, moving from the corporate brand side into more, much more entrepreneurial and service side part of the profession?

00:14:49.420 — 00:16:31.550 · Meghan Well, there's a couple of things, and I think one is that it's hard to be a small business. Go from a large corporate organization where you have all these resources and support to, you know, a small business where you have a small team and you're trying to make an impact. So for smaller agencies and organizations, it is tricky.

There's a lot of bureaucracy, there's a lot of things that you need to do that you don't have as many resources to get it done. So that part's challenging. But also, you know, you just build a different muscle. I think the second thing that is maybe surprising is in some cases, we see clients being very disconnected from their customer.

And so I think it's an opportunity for everyone to remember that you need to see and talk to the people that are using your product or service on a somewhat regular basis to stay connected, and I am seeing a lot of people using AI, which is good to be efficient and using data to make decisions. So these are all good things.

But what's missing is that we've, in some cases, lost the human connection, and we're not spending enough time seeing people in real life using the product, observing people in stores and how they're shopping or observing how they're shopping online. I think we're relying a lot on digital tools, which have a limit to what you can really see in terms of human behaviour.

So I think what's an opportunity for everyone is to remind ourselves we can't understand our customer from our desk and to really get out there and see people in real life.

00:16:31.590 — 00:16:50.510 · Alison Great advice. Now, you've also spoken about the importance of marketers connecting their work to the business growth and really helping the C-suite understand the mission critical impact that marketing has on the business. So from your experience leading marketing, where do marketers need to improve in order to get more credibility with the executive team?

00:16:50.550 — 00:17:56.200 · Meghan Yeah, I think there's really nothing worse than a marketer that comes in to a leadership team and says how great the marketing is doing when the business is not doing well. So I think the first thing is, is that all marketers need to operate like leaders of the business and that marketing is a component of success.

And so that's the first thing, is to really recognize the context in which you're operating. So if the business isn't doing well, the marketing campaign might be performing, but something else is not, and everyone needs to be a part of that solution. The second is we have to speak the language of the business, not the language of marketing.

So I very much believe in building brands, but building a brand isn't a business outcome. And so I think we have to sort of start to translate our language into language that the CFO and the CEO are really interested in, creating shareholder value, generating income sources, new revenue streams, and really thinking about it from their lens, not from our own lens.

00:17:56.280 — 00:18:09.800 · Alison So the language is such an important piece of how to do this effectively. So can you share an example of how you've translated marketing strategy into business outcomes that really resonated with the CEO or the board?

00:18:09.840 — 00:19:37.820 · Meghan Yeah, definitely. So we talk a lot about whether marketing is a cost centre or not. I firmly believe that marketing should be really tied to revenue growth, because why would you be marketing if you're not trying to grow? That's really what marketing is designed to do. So one of the things that I did in a previous role is we were able to use and work with some great partners to build a model that helped to show when we market, are we generating profitable sales?

So what is the Ebit contribution to each marketing dollar? And what we agreed with our CFO is that we would spend until that got to a certain threshold, so that we were able to, on an ongoing basis, measure contribution of the marketing and whether or not it was incremental. And then we would stop marketing when it stopped being incremental to the business.

I mean, this was on a somewhat of a small scale. We were testing it before we rolled out, but it proved out to be very successful. And not everyone has access to that kind of data or that kind of performance. But I think what it demonstrates is that marketing should be very tightly tied to contribution. And that's where I think the you get more credibility is when you're willing to stop marketing, when it's not incremental, and you're also able to show how high is up and how big something can be if you continue to to invest in marketing that works.

00:19:37.820 — 00:19:54.980 · Alison That's a really great example. Now your consulting work and being on the service side of our profession gives you quite a unique vantage point. You're now advising organizations instead of operating within them. So what patterns are you seeing across different companies when it comes to how marketing as both positioned and leverage?

00:19:55.180 — 00:21:30.470 · Meghan Yeah, I think one of the things that is I think a myth is that that people don't value marketing. I think every CEO or leadership team that I have spoken to highly values great marketing. They may not think that the current marketing function is operating at its best, or they may not understand the constraints that the marketing team is up against.

But I have not spoken to a CEO or a leadership team that doesn't think marketing's important. So I think that's one thing that marketers should take to heart, is that it's not necessarily that you have to earn a seat at the table. People want you there. They want to know how marketing can make a difference.

And it's really up to us to demonstrate how we can do that for the business in a way that they can understand. So we come back to that, that language. And, you know, I had I was facilitating a session with a marketing organization and people were saying, oh, you know, we're not sure if if people really value us and the conversation we end up having is if a company wants to grow, how would they do it without marketing?

I'm not sure. I mean, they may be able to grow just on a sales team, which is possible, but the sales team will also want marketing support. So I think there's really if companies want to grow, they're going to need marketing support. And so I think we just need to step into that chair, need to step into that role and demonstrate what we can do to support the business in a really meaningful and efficient way.

And so I think we need to take less of a defensive posture and more of a proactive posture.

00:21:30.510 — 00:21:36.270 · Alison Are you seeing any common blind spots that organizations don't realize are really holding back their marketing function?

00:21:36.310 — 00:23:35.960 · Meghan Yeah, definitely. I think in some cases we've done a disservice by silencing different parts of marketing. Like we may push the marketing tech stack over to a technology team that may not have marketing experience. We may have siloed digital e-commerce into one role and then marketing into sort of more of a comms function.

I think marketing is at its best when they can see across a number of different capabilities so that they can more seamlessly connect communication to execution with technology. So I think that that's one area that organizations need to deeply look at is their connectivity across these different silos, and whether or not that's working effectively for them.

I think the second blind spot is, you know, with AI coming in in particular. Everyone thinks it can move really, really quickly. So what's true is that great creativity takes a little bit of time. You know, people really need to deeply find an insight and an unlock and understand the business challenge.

And so when I was in product supply, we had a rule that you should spend 80% of your time planning and 20% of your time executing, because if you have a great plan, your execution is pretty seamless. But I see today most people are spending 20% of their time planning, if that, and 80% of their time trying to execute so many different things that I think were off balance.

So I wish leadership teams would take a minute, do the offsite, spend some time planning what they want, what they need, what each function needs to contribute, how they want their customer experience to deliver. You know, all the different great strategic planning that we know makes a difference, because that would enable the whole organization to actually go faster in that execution.

And we would remove maybe that layer of suboptimal execution that we see, get out the door and or tactical things that people are spending a lot of time on, but might not be making a big difference.

00:23:35.960 — 00:23:44.800 · Alison It's such a great point, because when you're under stress for driving results, when you're short on time, it is hard to resist the urge to move to tactics.

00:23:44.800 — 00:23:45.640 · Meghan Just do do do.

00:23:45.680 — 00:24:14.600 · Alison Yeah, yeah. But to your point, you end up spinning wheels and wasting a lot more time on the tactics and getting them right than you could have saved if you spent a little bit more time up front getting the alignment, making sure the strategic focus was solid, and committed to you by the organization before you moved into tactics, for sure.

Now I'm going to switch gears a little bit. You have been an active member for the CMA for many years, so a huge thank you for that, and I'd love to hear what led to your active involvement and how have you benefited?

00:24:14.600 — 00:26:32.620 · Meghan I think the first time I went to a CMA event actually, was when I came back to Canada from the U.S. and I had gone to the CMA Awards, and I, I very much remember feeling this huge sense of community that I didn't really know existed because I had been connected to my organization at the time. I was at Mars, and I felt really good about my network there, but I realized there was this whole other world of people facing some of the same challenges I was facing and understanding the world I lived in, and that that was really meaningful.

And so that's when I started to get involved and really enjoyed the events. And every time I would take the time to come to a CMA event, I would realize again and again what that connectivity brings in meeting new people, hearing what they're working on, hearing the challenges, getting access to new insights or, you know, some of the policy work that the CMA does.

Those things are very, very helpful. And I think they're a bit of an untapped resource for many people. So that's really what inspired my involvement. You know, I've been lucky enough to be a member of a Council. I have been on different committees and now sitting on the Board, and I think that continues the connectivity across the vendors, across a different agencies.

It's the breadth of experiences people have. If I have a question about sponsorship, there are, you know, easily 4 or 5 people I can call to get insight if I'm, you know, concerned about how do we implement an AI policy. There is one ready for me to look at as a starting point. And so I think that's really been the benefit of the CMA for me is that connections, the connectivity, the resources, and for my teams.

You know, when I was at a couple different organizations where we didn't have built in marketing training, the benefit of being able to leverage the CMA course catalogue to help augment people's personal development was really helpful, and then my organization didn't have to build our own marketing training.

We were able to really just tap into what already existed and that that was meaningful. Certainly for the people that worked in my teams.

00:26:32.660 — 00:26:51.460 · Alison And in some of our earlier conversations, you also mentioned that the CMA served as a bridge to connect you with leaders across other industries. So can you share a bit about how the association supported you as you've navigated your career across from CPG to retail to financial services, and now to the entrepreneurial path that you're on?

00:26:51.500 — 00:27:58.110 · Meghan Yeah, again, I think it's always about the people that you're connected to. And in some cases when you work in one organization, you only are talking to the people that you work with. So people inside your organization, vendors or agencies that you work with and so you don't get the opportunity to meet those that are outside your circle unless you really go out and look for it.

So it's been a really great opportunity for me to hear from other client partners. So when I was sitting in a CMO chair, you know, speaking to other CMOs, what are they working on? What are they finding successful in different challenges? And then I think, secondly, now as an entrepreneur, it's really wonderful to have the different councils and some of the white papers and the thought leadership that they produce allows us to stay on top of what's happening in the industry, what's happening across different elements of the industry.

And so I think that's been very meaningful for me my career.

00:27:58.110 — 00:28:24.360 · Alison And you're sure we are incredibly fortunate to have an incredible calibre of leaders, certainly on the CMA Board and also across our CMA committees and councils and the thought leadership that they helped generate is a really powerful resource for everyone that's a member and part of our marketing community.

So what has working alongside these industry leaders taught you, and what industry insights or trends have most resonated with you from those conversations?

00:28:24.400 — 00:29:48.160 · Meghan Yeah, one of the things would be public affairs. The Public Affairs Committee is, first of all, a very well-run committee. They're the ones that helped to spearhead the marketing impact report, and they have skill sets that I haven't had as much exposure to working with government, talking about policy and self-regulation.

And those things are areas that I haven't had as much experience with. So I get a lot of value out of hearing from that group and hearing their perspective on different issues like privacy and AI, that I wouldn't have considered from this seat that I have been in. And so that's always meaningful to me, is hearing a perspective that's completely different from my own.

It really helps to sort of elevate my thinking. I would also say the leadership on the Board is incredible. So these are some of the strongest leaders in Canada, and they're across different industries. So it can be financial services, it's agency world, it's CPG, it's analytics. There's so many differences that are represented.

And the challenges that they're facing are sometimes similar and sometimes really different. And so it always gives me a person that I can call if there is something that I would like a different perspective on. And yeah, it just brings a lot of diversity of thought to the table. So we're very lucky now.

00:29:48.160 — 00:30:31.690 · Alison It's also a really exciting time for the CMA. Our talented new President and CEO, Esther, officially joined us in March. And thank you so much for leading the recruitment process for that. I know we had a wonderful outpouring of very senior leaders from across the country raised their hand for the role, and it was wonderful to see Esther emerge as the unanimous choice.

And she is certainly off to a brilliant start. Now you're stepping into the Board Chair role. So we've got such a wonderful opportunity with two talented new voices to really lead us into the future. So I know our listeners are very curious to hear a bit about your vision for the CMA, and what do you really hope to champion and prioritize during your tenure?

00:30:31.850 — 00:31:43.420 · Meghan Yes, so I think Esther is a wonderful choice. And actually I think I need to say thank you to you, Alison, because what you have done in the last few years at the CMA is what what made it so easy to lead a search for the CMA. So I think you've really elevated what the CMA can do for the marketing profession. And that made it an attractive role for so many.

So I actually think it's due to you that we are in this very fortunate position. And in terms of the vision for the CMA, for the future, I would say Esther and I are very aligned that marketing has a huge potential to support the growth of the Canadian economy. And so our focus is going to be on how do we need to support the industry to really accelerate that impact, and whether that is going to be learning and how we do that, or whether that's going to be advocacy or more community focused initiatives, we are very aligned that the CMA is here to help future-proof the industry and to help really accelerate the impact on the Canadian economy and help marketers be equipped to do that in the best way possible.

00:31:43.420 — 00:32:03.060 · Alison And part of that is really helping Canadian marketers to think bigger, to drive innovation, to be really proud of the mission critical role that we have to really recognize that there's a lot of untapped potential in our industry. So where do you see some of the biggest opportunities for Canadian marketing and marketers to raise our game?

00:32:03.340 — 00:33:11.350 · Meghan We need to be bold. So I would say that that is one of the biggest things we need to start to be bold and think really big. I was very inspired by a conversation I had with the team at Bell Media around how they've made Heated Rivalry such a global success, and that was a risk. And it was a risk in two ways. I think one thing it could have been a risk that that kind of show doesn't see the light of day, that someone doesn't greenlight that project, that someone doesn't distribute it effectively, that it doesn't get the platform that it could have deserved.

And so I think kudos to them for not just making the show, but making it a huge success by thinking boldly about how can this be a global phenomenon? And that's what I think Canadian marketers need to do, is instead of thinking about, how do I make this a little bit better than last year, it's how do I make this a global phenomenon?

That is, you know, second to none. There's no reason that we can't have our companies and our brands sit on a global stage. And I think we can we can be bold. We have that opportunity.

00:33:11.470 — 00:33:27.950 · Alison You're absolutely right. It is long overdue time to retire the humble Canadian thing that we are so proud of and absolutely come out to be proud of the boldness and the seats that we all deserve, both nationally but on a global stage as well. I love your Heated Rivalry example of that.

00:33:27.990 — 00:33:32.750 · Meghan Well, thanks to Bell for that, because that certainly has nothing to do with me, but very impressive. Very impressive.

00:33:33.510 — 00:34:00.720 · Alison Oh, it's definitely an inspiring example of what we can do when we approach opportunities like that with the boldness that we should do. So I have the pleasure of hosting very senior people as guests on the podcast, so I always end each episode by asking you to share one piece of career advice for our listeners who aspire to follow in your footsteps.

Now, given you've got quite a unique journey across industries into board leadership, I'm very excited to hear the piece of wisdom that you're going to share.

00:34:00.760 — 00:34:32.480 · Meghan I wish I could say more than one, but I think the biggest thing that I would say is to say yes. So I think one of the things that has helped me in my career is being willing to say yes to opportunity, to say yes to the job, say yes to the next project, to the challenge. And I think saying yes was part of what has enabled me to move across.

So I think a lot of people might have said no to moving from, you know, chocolate marketing to insurance. Or they might have said no to, you know, moving to the U.S. or trying to move into insights and analytics. And all of these moves have been so helpful and have built on new skills. And so I would say for those that are starting out in their career, say yes to that next opportunity. Really look to build a portfolio of experiences that are going to help to drive you forward, because that's that's what I think has helped me the most is the breadth of experiences and the, um, you know, the different experiences.

So my advice would be to say yes to this.

00:35:05.120 — 00:35:27.800 · Alison Well, that is great advice. And on behalf of the CMA and our marketing community, thank you so much for saying yes to coming to your first CMA event years ago, saying yes to your first Council, to joining the Board, and now saying yes to becoming our Board Chair. I'm really excited for how bright the future is for the CMA under your leadership.

So a huge thank you and thanks for a great conversation.

00:35:27.800 — 00:35:32.160 · Meghan Thank you. I'm very honoured to be part of the team. So thanks.

00:35:34.560 — 00:35:47.520 · Presenter Thanks for joining us. Be sure to visit theCMA.ca and sign up for your free my CMA account. It's a great way to stay connected and benefit from the latest marketing thought leadership, news and industry trends.

When you can't outspend the competition, you have to out-think them. In one of her final episodes as CMA President and CEO, Alison Simpson sits down with Rachel McAdam, Vice President of Marketing at Skip, to explore what it takes to build a Canadian challenger brand against global giants. The conversation covers the "Skip to the good part" rebrand, a partnership ecosystem built on Canadian passion points and a three-sided marketplace strategy. The standout? The cultural agility that turned a rap beef into a campaign so effective it shut down competitor apps.

CMAConnect-Ep68-Rachel MacAdam v2.txt English (UK)

00:00:01.720 — 00:00:20.280 · Presenter Welcome to CMA Connect, Canada's marketing podcast, where industry experts discuss how marketers must manage the tectonic shifts that will change how brands and businesses are built for tomorrow, while also delivering on today's business needs. With your host, CMA CEO, Alison Simpson.

00:00:23.040 — 00:02:26.210 · Alison In a market dominated by global giants, how does a Canadian founded challenger brand like Skip not just survive, but thrive? The answer lies in doubling down on authenticity, building strategic partnerships and really recognizing that marketing is about much more than reaching consumers. It's also about driving growth across every stakeholder in your ecosystem.

For today's episode, I'm pleased to welcome Rachel McAdam, Vice President of Marketing at Skip. Rachel is leading a Canadian founded and built business and one of our country's most recognized food delivery brands through a significant transformation, from Skip the Dishes to simply Skip expanding their delivery service beyond restaurants to retail, and also navigating intense competition in a market where deep-pocketed competitors can easily outspend smaller players.

Rachel brings deep expertise and loyalty marketing to this challenge. Having spent significant time at Loyalty One, she played a key role in building Air Miles into one of Canada's largest brands. She really understands how to create emotional engagement and build lasting customer relationships.

This expertise has proven invaluable at Skip as she navigates the loyalty wars in food delivery. Under Rachel's leadership, Skip has distinguished itself through a uniquely Canadian approach to partnerships. They're going beyond sponsorship deals to becoming strategic pillars that can really help reinforce Skip's Canadian roots, while also expanding reach in ways that transcend traditional marketing spend. From priority concert access through Live Nation, wide-ranging partnerships with the Toronto Blue Jays, Disney Plus, CIBC, and WestJet,

Rachel has built what she calls an ecosystem approach to loyalty, tapping into Canadian passion points rather than competing purely on price. What makes marketing at Skip compelling is how the team understands and approaches managing the needs across a three-sided marketplace. Rachel has some great examples to share in how her team is delivering on this.

Rachel is part of a leadership team, transforming Skip from a functional utility into something broader and much more meaningful. Rachel, welcome to CMA connect. It's a real pleasure to have you on the podcast today, and I'm looking forward to a great conversation.

00:02:26.210 — 00:02:27.450 · Rachel Thanks. Looking forward to it.

00:02:27.530 — 00:02:42.250 · Alison Now, Rachel, as I mentioned, you spent a lot of time at Loyalty One and really helped build Air Miles into one of Canada's largest loyalty brands. So coming off of that experience, what was it that attracted you to the Vice President of Marketing role at Skip, and what were some of your early priorities?

00:02:42.490 — 00:03:25.270 · Speaker 3 Yeah, you know, what was great about Skip is that it had a lot of the similarities of Air Miles from its early days. So, you know, it's a great Canadian brand. Um, it was rooted in really a three way marketplace, which was very similar to Air Miles. You know, Air Miles is about connecting consumers to retailers through the loyalty program, and Skip really is about connecting Canadians to their favourite restaurant or retailers through the delivery ecosystem.

And so I really loved that about it. And I love a good challenging opportunity. And so to your point, the delivery category is, um, it's it's very fast paced, it's very competitive. And I really felt like there was a huge opportunity for marketing to play a key role in the transformation of the business.

00:03:25.470 — 00:03:44.870 · Alison We're like-minded when it comes to being attracted to big, hairy, challenging goals, and you're doing an amazing job with Skip. So one of the big things you did was evolve the brand from Skip the Dishes to simply Skip. And clearly there's a lot of strategic thinking behind dropping the dishes, so I'd love to hear more about that.

And also, how does it reflect where you're taking the business?

00:03:45.110 — 00:05:34.640 · Rachel Yeah. So when we were looking at the transformation of the business, you know, what's interesting is Skip was a scrappy start-up. Covid hit, you know, exponential growth in delivery. But it really created a new expectation for consumers that it wasn't now just about delivering my favourite pizza on a Friday night, but now I'm looking for convenience and delivery much broader than that,

And we really felt that our brand positioning of Skip the Dishes wasn't really reflecting this broader services that we were offering to Canadians, and it was really keeping us limited in the minds of Canadians. We also felt that we weren't tapping into a key point of differentiation, that we were the Canadian brand, you know, created in the prairie provinces.

We run on Canadian technology, but we weren't really leveraging that. And we did research. And, you know what Canadians said was, that if all things were created equal, you need to be price competitive. You need to have my favourite restaurant, but I will choose a Canadian brand. And this was sort of before the the upswell of Canadiana came in.

Even before that, that really was very much part of what Canadians were looking to support Canadian brands. And so between those two things, we really said we are missing an opportunity to set ourselves apart from these big global organizations or brands in the market. And so we took that research. We worked with Courage as our agency to understand what's the consumer insight?

What's happening culturally? And where's that white space opportunity for Skip to really own and differentiate? And that's where dropping the dishes, bringing the maple leaf into the logo so that when you quickly look at your phone, you probably have multiple delivery apps on your phone. Let's make sure that we're reminding you that you do have a Canadian option, an opportunity there.

And then we dropped the dishes really as we were launching into retail. So that really was the first signal to the Canadian consumer that I can actually get much more than just food delivered by Skip.

00:05:34.960 — 00:05:52.680 · Alison Now you're doing a great job of reinforcing Skip's Canadian roots. Also through your new spokesperson, the new campaign, and partnerships with really iconic Canadian brands. So why is this Canadian positioning such a crucial differentiator, and how do the partnerships in particular work together as an ecosystem?

00:05:52.720 — 00:08:45.630 · Rachel Yeah, I think we are in a very competitive category with two very large brands in particular that come with deep pockets. And if you're not going to outspend on media or in vouchering, how do you make sure that you set yourselves apart? And we really felt that the Canadian element of our brand, of our technology, the fact that we are feet on the streets in Canada was a key part of differentiating, but we couldn't do it alone.

And that's really where partnerships came in. So we we introduced the new brand positioning. We leveraged actually a previous spokesperson with Jon Hamm because he came with actually great affinity to the Skip brand. There was very positive association. And the original campaign had sort of positioned Jon as wanting to be Canadian.

So it was, well, he's not Canadian, it was actually reinforcing that he wanted to be Canadian aspect of it. And so we used that sort of as a nod to our past. But also we then had Jon tell the new story that it was Skip at the grocery store and at the pet store and sort of all the ways that you could Skip. And then partnerships launched shortly after.

So we introduced the new brand in October, and then we quickly launched Skip Plus subscription. And so we felt that the brand promise of "Skip to the good part." We help you skip the hassles of every day. That was always foundational to what Skip was a part of. But now it wasn't just helping you skip dinner, but it was helping you skip the trip to the pharmacy, skip the trip to the liquor store.

But we wanted to make sure there was a proof point, that it wasn't just a tagline, that it actually was a brand promise of helping you Skip to the good part, which is where partnerships came in. And so we launched subscription about six weeks following the brand relaunch, and that really became the proof point that said, we talked about helping you skip to the good part. Here's another proof point to say we can help you skip to the things that matter most to you, which really tapped into passion points. You know, we were we were third to market on subscription. You know, you could look at that as a disadvantage that we were last to market.

We actually looked at it as an advantage that we had the opportunity to see what's in market, what are we competing against, and then how do we create that ownable, authentic aspect to Skip. And that really became our partnerships, that we are going to help you skip to the good part, not just on delivery, but that Canadians are passionate about music and they're passionate about travel.

And so how do we bring that to life? That was through partners, that we're going to help you skip to the good part to get to the concert that you love most. We're going to help you skip to the good part and get to the travel that you love. And so that's really where partnerships came in. And we launched with CIBC, with WestJet, with Live Nation, really to help prove out that brand promise of helping you to skip to the good part, which was an addition to the core value proposition that was required.

So we need to be competitive on price. We need to be competitive on supply. But opening up that emotional engagement, those additional exclusive experiences, really, we felt were the point of differentiation we can make in the Canadian market.

00:08:45.870 — 00:09:09.370 · Alison And skip to the good part, is such a compelling promise to consumers, and I love the way that you're delivering on it. You're also somewhat unique in that you're marketing to three very distinct stakeholders: consumers, couriers, partners. There are other brands that certainly have multiple stakeholders as well, but it can also be fairly unique for a number of our listeners who aren't in that current environment.

So why is this multi-stakeholder approach critical to your success?

00:09:09.410 — 00:11:09.460 · Rachel Do you know what's interesting? Often, you know, as marketers, we talk about what we're doing and we talk about the consumer. But equally, if we think about our role as marketing, it's really about ensuring the flywheel works. And so really as this three way marketplace, we need to have all three stakeholders getting benefit out of this relationship in order to make it work.

So, you know, if marketing puts a great campaign in market and we drive you to the app, but your favourite restaurant isn't there, you're not going to order. Or if we put a great campaign in the market and we drive you to the app, but the delivery time is really long because we don't have enough couriers driving, you're not going to order again.

And so that's why the three way to marketplace and making sure that we are delivering on that brand promise to all three stakeholders is so important. And I would say, you know, I think one of the things that has been so impactful for us, as we sort of are on this transformation journey is that the brand promise of skip to the good part is fully embraced by our CEO, Paul Burns.

He really views that brand promise not as the responsibility for marketing to deliver, but everybody across the organization has the responsibility of delivering the good part to their stakeholder. And so as much as we focus on delivering the good part to the consumer, we are equally supporting our partnership team on how do we make sure that we're delivering marketing campaigns and marketing tools and capabilities so that our partners like McDonald's and Loblaws, that we just announced can actually grow their business off our platform.

And with the couriers, how do we make sure that we're helping our couriers with their businesses, grow their business on the Skip platform? And we do that through activations with McDonald's, where we set up pop-ups, where couriers can come in, we give them new bags, they have fresh, you know, Skip delivery bags, but they also get free coffee from McDonald's.

In the fall, we ran free oil changes, so like helping them grow their business. And so I would say that's really been a key part of that ecosystem. That flywheel working is making sure that skip to the good part is a brand promise for all three of the stakeholders.

00:11:09.500 — 00:11:36.900 · Alison Those are great examples, especially when you think about how much of your brand is in other people's hands, and courier being the best representation of someone's going to either be really pleased with the experience or if something goes wrong, not just blame the courier, but it reflects badly on your brand as well.

So I love that you're taking them into consideration and helping set them up for success, whether it's your oil change or recognizing that it can be a tough job and often fuelled by coffee too.

00:11:36.940 — 00:11:42.820 · Rachel Yeah, I mean, they literally deliver the last five feet of our brand promise, is the Courier experience.

00:11:42.820 — 00:11:50.820 · Alison And in your time at Skip, has the approach evolved at all or was that something that the brand has long recognized the importance of?

00:11:50.820 — 00:12:06.160 · Rachel I think the brand always felt that couriers were a key part of the experience. I think because of the relaunch of the brand and rallying the organization around this brand promise, I think has brought new ideas and new ways in which we're engaging couriers that we haven't been doing in the past.

00:12:06.200 — 00:12:26.400 · Alison Now, leveraging pop culture moments can also be a very effective brand strategy. And when we were talking earlier, you shared a great example of that when Kendrick Lamar mentioned a Toronto restaurant during the Drake rap beef. Your team moved super quickly to capitalize on the moment, so I'd love you to share what happened there and how you were able to be as agile as you were.

00:12:26.440 — 00:14:37.410 · Rachel You know, I think it's a great example of a close partnership with our agency, so I give great credit to Courage. They very much embody our brand as much as we do. They really are an extension of our team. And so they're always looking for cultural moments where Skip can authentically play a role and be part of the narrative.

And so the Kendrick and Drake beef was a great example. I think the rap dropped on a Wednesday. We had a call Thursday and they were like, you know, it mentions the restaurant that's on the network, we should do something about it. And by Friday morning we had a digital truck driving around downtown Toronto, leveraging some of the phrases from the rap with a 50% off at that restaurant.

And what was great is it created some, you know, obviously we had influencers, there's some organic conversation around it. And we exceeded what we would normally put through that restaurant in a three week period, we delivered in one night. And one of the best signals to say, like, did we really make an impact is they actually turned off the competitor apps because they couldn't handle the volume we were driving through Skip.

So that's one example of if you know what your brand stands for, you've got a finger on the pulse of what's happening, you can really tie it together. I'll give you another example. When the tariffs first came out and we wanted to reinforce the fact that we're the Canadian alternative, we introduced what was what was called spell codes.

And every day for a ten day period, we would put out a clue in social where if you spelt the word the right way, the Canadian way, we would unlock a voucher and we tailored the vouchers based on what the conversation was around tariffs. So it was a 15% voucher. And then oh no, no, it's a 25% voucher and now it's a 50% voucher.

And and it was great because we had people talking in social, about like what's the clue going to be today and what do we think the keyword was. And so again, it was another way of like reinforcing where the Canadian option without saying we're the Canadian option, but it was a point in time that only Skip could authentically be a part of that conversation.

We weren't going to have an American competitor start talking about, you know, being Canadian during the tariff situation. And again, it was another one where we know what we stand for, we know who we are as a brand. And when that cultural moment came, we were able to quickly turn it on and really create something of value to the consumer.

And that really put us in, you know that conversation.

00:14:37.650 — 00:14:47.050 · Alison I love those examples. And the ultimate proof of success is when the restaurant shuts down your competitors because you've driven so much demand to their location, so...

00:14:47.050 — 00:14:48.610 · Rachel It was a great day.

00:14:49.290 — 00:15:03.110 · Alison Now, you mentioned earlier that you were last to market with your subscription offering, but instead of seeing that as a disadvantage, you very much positioned it as an advantage. So how are you differentiating from the very functional offerings of your competitors?

00:15:03.150 — 00:17:05.510 · Rachel Yeah, I think that was one of the things that we saw when we were taking a look at, you know, what is in the market today. And what we saw is even though there is well-established subscription programs in market, there was still a high degree of app switching. So consumers clearly weren't seeing enough value in what was in market to have loyalty to those.

And we really felt what was missing is that while there was functional benefits, there really wasn't anything in there that was exclusive or, you know, recognition-driven. And we really thought Skip had an opportunity to own that. And it very much lined up with our brand promise. And so from a subscription perspective, launching with Live Nation, launching with WestJet, really taking some of those gamification kind of aspects and delivering it in a way that drove exclusive experiences would be a point of differentiation.

And and we're really seeing that take root. And, you know, I'll give you an example. We sponsored Oseaga last year, which is a music festival in Montreal. About 50% of the people in, uh, in the festival actually come from Ontario and other parts of Canada. So it really does represent, you know, a Canadian target audience.

And Skip sponsored it. But we had an exclusive experience just for Skip Plus. And so to get into this exclusive, sort of premium experience, you got to be a Skip Plus member. And then you get access to, you know, a makeup touch-up area. And we had soft seating under coverage from the hot sun. And most importantly, we had an exclusive bathroom and bar area.

And if you've ever been to a music festival, there's nothing better than exclusive bathroom and bar. And, you know, it was a weekend that we had some of our our highest signups for Skip Plus because consumers saw that there was added value, added experience, exclusive experience of being a Skip Plus member.

And so those are the kind of opportunities that, yes, we need to deliver on the functional benefits of free delivery, reduced service fee, bonus points. But there's an opportunity to create that higher degree of engagement and loyalty by offering something above and beyond. And so that's been a big part of the Skip Plus, uh, value proposition since we launched.

00:17:05.870 — 00:17:16.069 · Alison That's another great example. Now with free bathrooms out of music festival, you did set a very high bar. You drove a lot of interest in sign-ups. Were you able to keep them all as well?

00:17:16.430 — 00:17:35.470 · Rachel Yeah. So converting them over is a great question. That's where we then followed up quickly with a life cycle program to say welcome to Skip Plus. And then we started giving the functional offers the value proposition to get them to use Skip. And so the quantity and quality of customers coming through that activation have been very positive for Skip Plus.

00:17:35.550 — 00:18:12.060 · Alison Now I do want to drill down a little bit more on customer service because as we talked about earlier, you're not in control of the final five feet or often five miles. So given the interdependencies that you have on fulfilment delivery partners, when we talked earlier, you shared that part of the inspiration for everyone at Skip and led by your CEO, Paul, is around unreasonable hospitality, which is very much a philosophy that comes from 11 Madison Park. So I'm intrigued to learn more about how that served as an inspiration to you and the leadership team, and how it's really helping evolve Skip's approach to customer experience.

00:18:12.340 — 00:19:51.960 · Rachel Yeah, I would suggest if you haven't read the book, it's a it's a quick read, but it's a really interesting read on on creating exceptional service across every touchpoint. And so I think rooted in the fact that Paul really believes that the brand promise of skip to the good part is not a marketing responsibility, but it's an entire organization has been a key part of that.

And so then we've all gone back and said, how am I contributing to helping my stakeholders skip to the good part? Get over the hassles, get over friction in the experience working with us or delivering for us or ordering through us to make that happen. We did an end-to-end research study around the customer experience journey from start to finish, to understand where are we excelling, and how do we lean into those moments of delight that Skip gives?

Where are we meeting the competition and where are we behind, so that we can then prioritize. You know, there's always more opportunities than there are resources to solve them. So then it helped us prioritize, where do we need to address first. And then we took the lens of, we're a Canadian brand and there's a way that Canadians help others that can be a point of differentiation.

And so our customer care team in particular is taking a look at our policies, our engagement strategies, and we're testing different things to say, how can we deliver a better experience? First, we want to make sure you don't have a problem to begin with, which is our logistics and our app.

But if you do have a problem, how do we make sure that we are making that as delightful a solution, a Canadian way to solve your problem as possible? And so there's a series of tests and measurement that's going in through a CARED group in particular, to address that and find ways that we can elevate the customer experience beyond what's happening in our category.

00:19:52.400 — 00:20:24.420 · Alison Now, you've shared a couple of times that you are very fortunate to have a CEO who not only understands and supports marketing and sees it as mission critical to driving the business forward, but also understands that bringing the brand proposition to life can never only be the marketing team's responsibility.

So not all of our listeners will have the benefit of that. So I'd love you to share any advice you would have for marketers that are working with senior leaders that don't necessarily truly appreciate the powerful impact that marketing drives from a business perspective?

00:20:24.580 — 00:22:20.150 · Rachel Yeah, you're right. As a marketing leader, I'm very fortunate to work not only for Paul, but for an organization, you know, the Skip leadership team believes in the role of brand and believes in their role in contributing to the customer experience. I would say a big part of it was bringing teams along.

It was sharing the voice of the customer, not just with the marketing, but across the different functional areas within Skip. You know, we did a kick-off across the organization. We did a brand video that talked about what this opportunity was for us to have this come to life. What did that mean across the organization, you know, and the best example like I think when we knew we had shifted it from a marketing initiative to an organization initiative is when we saw some of the other teams that were doing off-sites and they were producing merchandise that said, skip to the good part.

It's like, okay, this is no longer within marketing hands. It's in, it's in the organization. And that's really just been fed over the last year and a half, two years that the brand's been in market.

And so I would say that the big piece is, is bring people along. The voice of the customer is always more powerful. Storytelling is really effective at getting a message across. Yes, our finance team likes to see the numbers, but they're also consumers. And so when you talk about solving consumer problems and how the brand can own a unique way of delivering that versus the competition, you bring people along.

People want to be a part of it. I think there's a lot of pride in the Skip organization when they see the brand in market, when they see social commentary around things like spell codes and skip the diss with, you know, with Kendrick Lamar. People are proud to work for an organization that is culturally relevant that, you know, has a voice that is, you know, delivering great experiences for customers.

And the more you can share that and have everyone feel a part of it, the more effective it will be, and sort of transcending the marketing function into being, you know, across the organization.

00:22:20.470 — 00:22:36.310 · Alison It sounds like you're doing an amazing job in creating really powerful ownership across the organization. And then there's such a wonderful momentum to that when you see the team come together, you celebrate your shared successes. It's just going to drive it even further in the future. So kudos to you for accomplishing that.

00:22:36.630 — 00:22:50.710 · Rachel There's some great momentum, and I give great credit to Paul and the way in which he has led across the leadership team. It's not really a marketing function as much as it's really an organization-wide success story, for sure.

00:22:50.870 — 00:23:14.770 · Alison Now, you mentioned CFOs are always interested in numbers. So if your CFO is listening, we'll make this next question for him. I know from our earlier conversations that the marketing you're doing is delivering measurable business growth for Skip, which is absolutely the goal for every marketer. And I'd love you to share what marketing business results you're the most proud of, and how you're demonstrating marketing's business impact to not just your CFO, but everyone in the organization.

00:23:15.010 — 00:25:15.340 · Rachel Yeah, Skip is very much a data-driven organization. You know, as a marketing team, we get daily metrics on our order volume. We have weekly reviews of all of our business metrics. And so we very much are looking at how the work we are doing is driving the KPIs for the organization. And so, you know, marketing we take a look at what is the business trying to solve.

And then we build our plan in support of those OKRs of those key metrics. And so we're looking at how is our upper funnel awareness driving sessions? How is our venturing and offers driving conversion? How are we driving greater customer engagement through our life cycle journeys? You know, upward migration of customers, retaining our best customers, those kind of things.

I would say that the metrics I'm probably most proud of is related to Skip Plus. We were third to market. So, you know, it's not easy to break through a market that had well-established, two existing subscription programs and then delivering, you know, sustained engagement. And I would say, you know, what was great with that program is, you know, we came out of the gate with CIBC.

They've been a great partner for us, not only, you know, delivering value to their customers, where you can get Skip Plus for free, but, you know, tapping into an audience that we otherwise wouldn't necessarily get access to. And so, you know, we achieved a significant amount of new customer growth through our CIBC partnership.

And we're seeing not just the quantity of customers coming through there, but the quality of customers being very positive. And so Skip Plus is driving lift and frequency. And we are seeing lift and retention of those customers that sign up for Skip Plus versus a comparable control group that are not signing up for Skip Plus.

So I think, you know, the team has done a great job of building the first phase of Skip Plus. I would say, you know, like anything, you can't launch and leave it. It requires constant feeding and nurturing and so more evolution and enhancements to come to Skip Plus in the coming months ahead. But we're really proud of the launch out of the gate and more to come.

00:25:15.540 — 00:25:30.500 · Alison Terrific. Now, Rachel, I know you're super busy. I appreciate you giving us the time that you've been able to give us today. Before I let you go on with your busy day, though, I would love you to share one piece of career advice that you have for our listeners who aspire to follow in your footsteps.

00:25:30.620 — 00:27:06.750 · Rachel You know, I will share advice that was given to me once, which is, think about your career as a spider web and not a ladder. And if I was to look back at my career, you know, I spend the vast majority of my time at Air Miles, and I benefited from growing my career at the time that the organization was growing. So there was the benefit of always new opportunities within the same organization.

Take the opportunities, even if you don't directly see the upward trajectory of that opportunity, but the ability to learn how to learn and to put yourself into roles that you might not have the specific experience, but you're going to build transferable skills over time. You know, I didn't know delivery at the time that I joined Skip, but I had transferable experiences coming from Air Miles I could apply to it, because the reality is that the jobs in marketing today didn't really exist ten, 15 years ago, right?

And so I would expect that the jobs in five years from now probably don't exist today. And what's going to take you there is going to be your transferable experience, your ability to learn on the fly, to take new opportunities and embrace sort of the ambiguity that comes with new opportunities. But getting that, you know, lateral opportunities, lateral roles, try different areas will just create a benchmark of experiences that you'll be able to take into any new opportunity.

So I think it's served me well over my career. And so I would just encourage, you know, try not to say no, take opportunities that come. And I think marketing just as a career is a career of constant curiosity, and that'll set you up well for any role in the future.

00:27:06.790 — 00:27:28.790 · Alison I couldn't agree more. Especially now. And when you think about it, every time you take a lateral position or stretch yourself with a new role, the business and the marketing, new skills that you're building give you this powerful toolkit, and you're also ensuring that your brain is always agile and embracing the change that is inevitable for everyone that's decided to have a wonderful career in marketing.

So thank you, Rachel.

00:27:29.150 — 00:27:29.870 · Rachel Absolutely.

00:27:29.910 — 00:27:33.910 · Alison I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation and I'm wishing you a great rest of your day.

00:27:33.950 — 00:27:35.430 · Rachel Thank you. This was fun.

00:27:38.030 — 00:27:40.229 · Presenter Thanks for joining us. Be sure to visit the cam.ca and sign up for your free my CMA account. It's a great way to stay connected and benefit from the latest marketing thought leadership, news, and industry trends.