What have you learned that has allowed you to adapt and evolve in your marketing career? In today's episode of CMA Connect, Alison Simpson, sits down virtually with Lindsay Chase, Senior Strategist at Elemental, to explore her nine year journey at Elemental. They dive into her progression from Account Executive to Senior Strategist, her loyalty to her craft, her adaptability, and her pursuit of what truly matters.

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.

00:00:23.520 — 00:02:20.140 · Alison For today's episode, I am thrilled to welcome Lindsay Chase, Senior Strategist at Elemental and our 2025 CMA AIM Award winner. The AIM Award celebrates achievement of marketing by a rising star in our profession, who is absolutely destined for great leadership roles. Lindsay's speech at the CMA Awards show was equal parts inspiring, entertaining and compelling, and I know that our conversation will be that as well.

Lindsay's journey into marketing began with a background in English literature. She was drawn by what she describes as the fascinating blend of creativity meeting science that defines modern marketing. She's passionate about delivering strong business results through compelling storytelling, creating human narratives that really resonate in meaningful ways.

Lindsay describes her nine year tenure at Elemental as making her a bit of a unicorn in today's agency world, and I absolutely agree for a much longer tenure in one agency than is typically the case, since most people switch about every two years instead of taking that approach. Lindsay has built her career elemental, progressing from account executive to senior strategist.

Her insights into how her generation is learning and developing skills offers a really fascinating window into the future of marketing careers. Like all of us, Lindsay is experiencing firsthand how AI has begun reshaping marketing practices, making them more uniform, scalable, and streamlined, while also raising critical questions about skill development and strategic thinking.

Her perspective on the importance of mentorship in a rapidly changing landscape, as well as how to maintain strategic thinking in an increasingly automated world, makes this conversation as essential listening for anyone interested in marketing's future. And I can also share with our listeners that when you listen to Lindsay, by the end of this conversation, like me, you will feel very, very positive and optimistic about how bright our future marketing is with talented marketers like Lindsay rising through the ranks.

So welcome, Lindsay. It is absolutely wonderful to have you join us on CMA Connect.

00:02:20.180 — 00:02:25.140 · Lindsay Thank you Alison, it's wonderful to be here. And I'm looking very forward to our conversation today.

00:02:25.260 — 00:02:36.020 · Alison Let's start with your story. I'd love to hear what drew you to marketing, and how did you see this as an opportunity to really transform your English literature degree and love of stories into a career?

00:02:36.180 — 00:03:22.820 · Lindsay Yeah, it's a great question. You know, I tend to start with saying I didn't choose marketing because I loved ads. I feel very few people maybe do make that choice for that reason. I actually chose it because I've always loved stories. And marketing is where stories can really change outcomes in English Lit.

I learned how to read between the lines subtext. Motivation. Character tension. the gap between what people say and what they mean. So that to me was basically consumer insight in a lot of ways. And marketing gave me a way to take that skill and kind of apply it to real people, real decisions and real businesses.

It's effectively storytelling with consequences. So all of that to say, what definitely drew me in is a mix of that empathy and structure, and you can really feel something and prove it in marketing.

00:03:22.860 — 00:03:48.260 · Alison I absolutely love your definition of storytelling with consequences and beyond consequences, it's storytelling with an ability to have such a significant and important impact on brands and businesses, our economy, and ultimately our communities. So I love that definition. Thank you. I'm also curious, when you were graduating, was marketing and agency roles in particular a career that many of your fellow graduates were thinking of pursuing?

00:03:48.380 — 00:04:35.790 · Lindsay Another great question. Certainly a few, but admittedly, many of my peers went into, you know, the worlds of tech, finance, law adjacent paths and so on. I found that in discussions with them, agency life wasn't necessarily the obvious route. Marketing can definitely feel like a less defined path, and that ambiguity can be intimidating when you're graduating and everyone's asking, what are you going to do?

And you want to have that very kind of clear answer ideally. I also think a lot of people don't realize that marketing is a training ground. You get exposure to categories, audiences, channels, leadership styles and real business problems very quickly. So it's certainly an area that, you know, though sometimes maybe discounted is one very much worth its salt.

And I hope that more, more folks explore when they are looking at that graduation period in their life.

00:04:35.830 — 00:04:40.990 · Alison Now, I'd also love to hear what it meant to you to be recognized with the CMA AIM Award.

00:04:41.030 — 00:05:44.880 · Lindsay Yeah, that was a great honour and even better evening and congrats to the CMA for making it such a fun and impactful evening. But to me, I'd say the CMA Award was never just an individual recognition in reference to the speech I gave. If no one's sick of hearing it at this point, you know, I referenced the idea that if I've seen further, it's because I've stood on the shoulders of giants and that's genuinely how I view it.

Any progress I've made has been shaped by the people around me, and that goes multifold. For the mentors who pushed my thinking, the teammates who challenged my ideas and the clients that trusted the process. And that's really what the industry is at its best, is that collective effort to make something better than any one person could on their own.

So in reflection of the award, it certainly felt like that, you know, not just the work, but the environment that makes the work possible. And the CMA, to me represents that spirit of creativity, collaboration and a shared standard of excellence. So it was a great honour and great excitement for myself and all those that I got to celebrate with.

00:05:45.120 — 00:06:24.840 · Alison It was definitely a good celebration and certainly a well deserved celebration. Now, Lindsay, you mentioned that marketing wasn't the most popular choice among your peers, in large part because it really can be pretty overwhelming for students to understand what marketing roles are, given the breadth and certainly complexity of our profession.

Obviously, from a CMA perspective, from a professional perspective, we do want to be a desired destination for students in the months and years ahead. So what do you think we can do to help the next generation better understand and navigate this complexity and make more competitive and desirable on par with tech and finance when it comes to talent?

00:06:25.120 — 00:07:29.450 · Lindsay I think we have to stop explaining marketing like it's a list of job titles. You know, it's more of a system overall. And the best way to maybe demystify it is to teach some of those fundamentals - human behaviour, business strategy, creative problem solving, and the measurement of all those things.

Once you can get a grasp on those four pillars, every specialization becomes less overwhelming, especially to those who maybe don't have the full visibility or insight. And when it comes to tech and finance, you know, specifically, I find that they can sell certainty, you know. Clear ladders, clear compensation narratives, prestige signals.

You know, all the things that go into that. And I think where marketing can expand is by selling its impact. You know, you get to shape culture and build brands that people live with and drive real business outcomes, just like tech and finance can. So if we want that talent and future marketers to walk through our doors, I think we need to show that marketing is certainly anything but fluff and a great opportunity to build a career and life around.

00:07:29.530 — 00:07:56.770 · Alison That was so well said, and it's also incredibly timely. We have recently launched the CMA Marketing Impact Study that does exactly that. It quantifies the mission critical role that marketing plays in building Canadian businesses, increasing our country's ability to innovate, and dramatically contributing to our economy and GDP.

So that will give us some very valuable tools to really entice the next generation of talent to.

00:07:56.810 — 00:08:20.940 · Lindsay Yeah, it's a great effort, and I think the other piece is being willing and ready to have some fun with it. You know, I think of all the ads and jingles and brands that stick in my head as some of my favourites, and it's not just a moment in time. It really does stay with us as we move through our lives, and it's something that everyone hopefully will get more and more clarity around and be interested in.

00:08:21.260 — 00:08:36.780 · Alison Absolutely. Now, you've been at Elemental for nine years and you started as an account exec, moved to Senior Strategy and calling yourself a bit of a unicorn for how long you've been with one agency. So what's kept you engaged for nine years, and why have you chosen this less traditional approach?

00:08:36.820 — 00:09:44.350 · Lindsay I stayed with Elemental through many different roles and seasons of it, because I ultimately kept getting new problems to solve and people that I worked with, I really wanted to solve those problems with. You know, the work changes, the clients change, the ambitions change. And that's one of the most appealing things about marketing on a whole is no one day looks the same, so I never felt like I was repeating a year.

It also certainly helped that Elemental is the kind of place where you can be multidimensional. I didn't have to pick one identity early, and I think why that really worked for me is I didn't chase a title as much as I chased the skill stack. I wanted to understand the whole machine, not just one part of it.

And that's kind of what made the less traditional or unicorn path, for lack of a better phrase, something that made sense for me. I could connect the dots across, you know, account leadership to creative and strategy and just work with wonderful humans all along the way, so that that was something that was important to me in my personal growth, was understanding that it's not just that title, it really is about that personal development and professional development as you move through day to day and week to week.

00:09:44.390 — 00:10:25.280 · Alison It's such a smart approach to build your marketing toolkit, but more importantly, to build your ability to evolve and be curious and learn new skills. That's always been so important to a successful career in marketing. And when we look at the dramatic change AI and elsewhere is bringing to not just marketing but the world at large, the ability to pivot and be comfortable with ambiguity and be open to change will serve you very well in the years ahead too.

Now, you chose marketing for the blend of creativity meets science and the important role it has in building business. So let me hear a bit about the work that you're proudest of and the impact that it's had.

00:10:25.520 — 00:11:59.170 · CHECK THIS SECTION Yeah, I'll start higher level in that, you know, overall, I'm most proud of work that connects emotionally and drives the outcomes that we've all set out to achieve together. One without the other, to me, means we didn't really hit the nail on the head. So overarching certainly the work that kind of connects those two paths.

And then as far as specific work, you know, I was reflecting the other day on some work we did for Meridian and we launched a campaign called World of Numbers, which was very exciting because it really did reframe a traditional kind of transactional category of FI into something human and relatable, helping us kind of differentiate the brand and strengthen engagement.

A similar answer goes for some of the work we do with Canada Life. Um, Life Doesn't Move in a Straight Line, really just capturing that human insight and truth that no matter who you are, the differences and similarities can be there. But you know, it does look different for every Canadian. So making a brand feel a little bit more empathetic and relevant, especially in these, uh, wild and fast times, is certainly some of the work I'm very proud of and in both cases didn't just resonate creatively, it helped shift perception and build a stronger connection with their audiences.

We saw amazing brand lift, not to distill it all down to one KPI, but, um, I'm excited to continue kind of measuring that growth and working through unique challenges like that for clients that are trying to understand how do we show that we understand the Canadian consumer in a time where everything can feel quite overwhelming.

00:11:59.250 — 00:12:10.610 · Alison Now, some of my most powerful learning has come from the mistakes I've made along the way. So do you have a lesson that you've learned the hard way, that you'd be open to sharing? And hopefully by sharing, spare someone else from making the same mistake?

00:12:10.770 — 00:13:06.380 · Lindsay Where to start? There have been many lessons along the way. I think I would prioritize probably two for the next generation of marketers, because it's something that you certainly learn the hard way, I would say in every instance. But I'll start with I learned that a smart strategy can still fail if it's too complex to activate.

So while you may have this, you know, wonderful and compelling idea, if you cannot translate that to execution, it doesn't really matter how wonderful that strategy appeals. So that would be number one. And then I'd say number two, learning to kill ideas that I loved if they weren't true to the audience, you know. In marketing and advertising, we love all of our children.

But it often comes down to what is going to resonate with our target audience, and bearing them in mind and not carrying any personal biases through the process is always a good reminder to those starting out their careers.

00:13:06.420 — 00:13:20.380 · Alison Those are such great lessons learned, Lindsay, thank you very much for sharing. Now, I know from our conversations that mentorship is hugely important to you and crucial to helping build future marketing leaders as well. So how have you been fitted for mentorship so far in your career?

00:13:20.580 — 00:14:17.110 · Lindsay Mentorship, I would say, is one of the most important facets of marketing, certainly, but really any industry that somebody could be entering. It really helped me build confidence faster than I ever could have alone. I've said, you know, internally to some of my mentors themselves, you know, that I'm very thankful for the fact that they gave me language for what I was sensing but couldn't necessarily articulate yet.

And the right mentor doesn't just give answers. They teach you how to think, how to frame a problem, and how to hold your own in rooms you haven't necessarily earned on paper yet. Um, so I've benefited from working with some fantastic people along the way. You know, Dustin Brown, Debbie Bolton and so on.

So I just feel incredibly blessed to have had that opportunity. And I think mentorship is certainly a cornerstone of marketing, and that more and more folks should look for opportunities to mentor and be a mentee.

00:14:17.350 — 00:14:40.870 · Alison Now, I've had great mentors, and I've also really enjoyed being a mentor, and I joked with many of my mentees that I actually probably learned more from them than they learned from me. With our industry evolving so rapidly, that's even more true. Senior marketers are learning alongside junior colleagues to a greater degree than ever before.

So how do you think that might change the mentor and mentee relationship?

00:14:40.950 — 00:15:37.030 · Lindsay Yeah, it's a great question. I think, you know, the traditional perspective of mentorship and mentee relationships is that there's certainly more of a hierarchy there. Maybe, you know, a mentee is there more to listen, versus the mentor is there more to instruct? And to your point, Alison, I think where we are today, mentorship is much more collaborative.

You know, juniors might be faster at certain tools, whereas seniors might be stronger at judgment and taste. And I find that the best new mentor relationships are less top down and more, for lack of a better phrase, copilots. You know, you trade strengths and seniors help with some of those decision making frameworks, while juniors can help with new workflows and platform fluency.

I swear every other day a new platform emerges. But it really helps keep everybody humble and there are information gaps for all of us. And I think having the self-awareness to address that does really lead to pushing everybody forward and all boats rising.

00:15:37.470 — 00:15:50.430 · Alison I love your concept of copilots versus mentor/mentee. We launched our CMA Mentorship Program at the end of last year, and we've got hundreds of people, members engaged and loving it. Maybe we'll think of a rebrand for next year.

00:15:50.470 — 00:15:52.590 · Lindsay There you go. Free of charge.

00:15:54.840 — 00:15:58.160 · Alison CMA CAO Barry is cringing right now as he listens to this.

00:16:00.600 — 00:16:04.480 · Lindsay Hopefully not too badly, but yeah. Copilots, you can have it.

00:16:04.520 — 00:16:05.640 · Alison I love it.

00:16:07.000 — 00:16:16.160 · Alison So it's no surprise that AI is transforming many professions and certainly ours. So how is your role and daily work evolving as a result of AI?

00:16:16.560 — 00:17:07.650 · Lindsay Yeah, AI is, you know, well, it's changing everything to put it plainly. But what I found most is it's changing how quickly we can move from sort of a blank page to first draft in some of our marketing efforts. It's kind of compressing that messy middle, so to speak. You know, when I look at what it's changed for us as an agency and myself in my day to day, it's certainly on some of the pieces, like production, but it's definitely not replacing what matters.

CHECK THIS SECTION And I tend to say that's sort of the beginning of the journey. The insight, the taste, the strategy and the ability to choose the right direction. You know, AI can offer, here is many different paths that you can take or here are multiple different creative executions. But ultimately it's the marketers and the experts and humans that really keep that ability to choose the right path forward.

00:17:07.689 — 00:17:26.650 · Alison So, Lindsay, eons ago when I started my career, I learned so much through doing, hands on experience, trial and error, those important teachable moments. With AI starting to take on some of that initial "doing" work, how do you think your generation will learn and develop those fundamental marketing instincts?

00:17:26.890 — 00:18:35.370 · Lindsay Yeah, I think it's such a great question, you know, instincts come from consequence a lot of the time. And I think if AI removes some of that grunt work, so to speak, we need to replace it with real reps in judgment. You know, the critiquing, iterating, presenting, defending and learning what holds up in market.

I think ultimately juniors should spend less time formatting and more time thinking, and ideally, even failing sometimes to learn those hard lessons. I remember once, you know, sending out one of my first client emails, stressing over all of the words and still having a typo in it. And those are the things that you certainly carry with you.

So I think it's still about giving that permission to have those opportunities in those moments, even though we have all these tools at our disposal to help streamline things like that. And I think that comes down to more of the in-person meetings. And, you know, the face to face of it all and making sure that we uphold that with the most important regard and allow juniors to shadow and again, fail on their own two feet sometimes, but ultimately, yeah, giving the opportunity and the space for all of that, with AI kind of taking over some of the initial things that you learn through.

00:18:35.490 — 00:19:01.580 · Alison When you think back to the powerful lessons you shared, that you'd learn the hard way by making mistakes. No one gets through any career, certainly a marketing career, without making our share of mistakes. And it is such powerful learning that we need to certainly make it safe for juniors to continue learning that way as well.

So as someone who's actively adapting to AI's role in marketing, what are the new competencies that you're finding most essential to develop?

00:19:01.620 — 00:19:55.430 · Lindsay I would say that some of the new competencies are certainly, you know, stay learnable and stay curious and be adaptable to some of those fundamentals. You know, the tools are always going to change. I think, you know, there's a lot of discussion in AI of things are changing so rapidly. And, you know, how do we navigate this?

And I think it honestly comes down to that's kind of always been the way, you know, is it obviously much more topical and moving at a quicker pace? Yes. But you know, you have to stay adaptable to those things and stay hungry about learning new things, the ability to understand people and build value, you know, work on your process and your prompting and stay curious for sure as that landscape changes.

But there's so many opportunities for continued learning, the CMA being a great example of that. Um, so making sure that you're prioritizing that within your career with everything you also have going on?

00:19:55.470 — 00:19:57.510 · Alison Well, thank you for the CMA shout out too.

00:19:57.710 — 00:20:00.310 · Lindsay Hey, you're welcome. I truly believe it.

00:20:00.950 — 00:20:16.750 · Alison Now, one of the ways we all need to prepare for the future is preparing for the reality that there are roles in the future that don't even exist today, that we can't even dream about today, and a lot of roles that we're doing today will no longer exist. So how can we prepare for that?

00:20:17.110 — 00:21:11.280 · Lindsay A great question. I think one way we can prepare for roles that maybe don't exist today is, again, just doing a bit of a postmortem on ourselves, the industry and the work itself. You know, I think we as dreamers and believers tend to look forward all the time, but it's really important to look backward as well and understand what points of the process could benefit from that optimization, and you know where AI can help streamline some of those pieces demise. What could those potential roles look like? How do we prepare our team for integrating with them is going to be a really important part of the process, and it's kind of that internal reflection I think that will help get everyone there.

I know we've been doing a lot on our end as far as you know, what does an AI security and privacy person look like on our team? So it's really just identifying or trying to identify those moments and preparing and bracing for impact for the future.

00:21:11.560 — 00:21:30.360 · Alison So, Lindsay, I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. Before I let you get on with your busy day, I have one final question for you. I think you know, I end each episode by asking my guest to share a piece of career advice. So as someone absolutely destined to be a future marketing leader, what's one piece of advice that you have for our listeners who aspire to become the same?

00:21:30.440 — 00:22:03.170 · Lindsay This is certainly one of my favourite questions and one of the most difficult to answer, because you want to give multiple different iterations of it. But to simplify it, you know, I would say that probably the advice that I would have is fall in love with the question before you fall in love with the answer.

Great work comes from getting the problem right, more so than anything else, and making sure that you're taking the time to have that curiosity, that passion and interest in people, really, to find out what that question is for you and fall in love with it before you feel like you know the answer already.

00:22:03.650 — 00:22:22.410 · Alison That was a great answer. And because that was such a great answer, I'm going to throw a random question to you. Sometimes senior marketers, senior leaders, have trouble connecting with and coaching and managing younger generations. So as the younger generation, what advice would you give to people like me in managing you and your peers?

00:22:22.810 — 00:23:04.610 · Lindsay A great question. I would say probably the way to best relate to the younger generation of marketers is to try and meet them where they are in all of this. You know, it's a human industry, but I think sometimes with how fast everything is moving, we can forget that. So really understanding the overwhelming nature of where they're coming from with all the change and how to navigate AI and all the different pieces that go into it, and speaking to them as a bit of that copilot, um, that we talked about earlier is going to be a great way to help build those relationships long term and kind of minimize how transactional it feels and more personal. Because those, in my experience, have been the best and longest lasting relationships.

00:23:04.730 — 00:23:19.970 · Alison That is super helpful. I really appreciate it. So Lindsay, this has been an absolute joy. Great insights, great conversation, and absolutely, we have a very, very bright future as a marketing profession in Canada with upcoming leaders like you. So thank you.

00:23:20.010 — 00:23:27.930 · Lindsay Thank you Alison. I always enjoy a chance to connect and chat all things marketing. So this was a wonderful time to spend with you.

00:23:30.050 — 00:23:43.010 · Presenter Thanks for joining us. Be sure to visit the CMA and sign up for your free myCMA account. It's a great way to stay connected and benefit from the latest marketing thought leadership, news, and industry trends.