Fine Tune with Corby Fine

You don't need to consistently look for big, humongous changes in your organization. According to Tanbir Grover, Chief Marketing and Digital Officer at Pet Valu, thinking about and focusing on the edges is critical as most things in your business are usually working quite well. The challenge is in getting alignment and support to work on making those things better. The trick according to Tanbir, is to figure out who you can ally with and gain alignment on a common vision to take things forward, and gain investment in making the good even better. Listen in as Tanbir and I discuss this as well as how Pet Valu has been transitioning itself into a digitally enabled, neighborhood partner in the health and wellbeing for pets of all kind. Oh, and learn that the movement of focusing on overall "wellness" isn't just for humans any longer!

Tanbir Grover is the Chief Marketing and Digital Officer of the Pet Valu, having responsibility of the Company’s omni-channel marketing, e-commerce and marketing analytics, including the Company’s loyalty program. Prior to joining Pet Valu, Mr. Grover served as Vice President, Digital at the Co-operators Group Limited from January 2020 to November 2020. Prior to that, he held a number of different roles at Lowe’s Canada from 2011 to 2020 where he most recently served as Vice President of e-commerce and Omnichannel. Mr. Grover also held senior digital and marketing positions at the Hudson’s Bay Company and Sears Canada. He is also a graduate of the Not for Profit Directors Education Program at the Institute of Corporate Directors at the University of Toronto.

It takes a strong leader to be vulnerable and ask their teams, "can we do it this way?" and if it doesn't work, admit that it's okay. It takes an even stronger leader to speak with all new hires as they come on board, empowering and encouraging them to be reckless. Imagine starting a new job and having you leader tell you to use your first 90 days to try and do things your way, and to break and change things as you see opportunity, without fear of repercussion.  That's the kind of leader that Shilpa Arora is, and DoorDash is benefitting from her leadership. As Shilpa states, "I think that's where a lot of the energy comes from, and that's where a lot of the will to do something different and think about something from a fresh perspective comes from, and it leads to better debates, better discussions, and better outcomes".

Shilpa Arora is the General Manager of DoorDash Canada, responsible for overseeing overall business strategy, operations and growth. With an international career spanning almost two decades and several industries, Shilpa has held leadership roles across financial advisory, mergers & acquisitions, corporate strategy and innovation as well as digital transformation. Before joining DoorDash, Shilpa led CIBC’s personal banking and client connectivity strategy and operations. Most recently, she was Senior Director of Transformation at CIBC, responsible for the bank’s digital enablement and business optimization initiatives. Shilpa is a trained architect, holds an MBA from Indian School of Business and is a certified business valuator (CBV). As a female leader in technology, Shilpa is an avid advocate for diversity and inclusion and
intersectional representation in the workplace and is passionate about mentoring emerging women leaders and mentors newcomers and early-career women.

As marketing teams change their focus from successful campaign launches to measuring outcomes in an agile operating model, there is a fundamental shift requiring significant trust from the rest of the organization taking place. As Meghan Nameth describes, it is probably the biggest leap of faith that an organization can take, as most people, especially in senior executive positions, are used to seeing everything before it happens. In an agile, outcomes based world, things are very different.

Listen in as Meghan and I discuss many of the issues and opportunities facing marketing teams and CMOs today including the effectiveness of creative, placement and message, the effectiveness of AI models versus simple triggers, and how complacency is the enemy of progress. Meghan gives some incredible examples and her established opinions on these and other topics.

Meghan Nameth is the former and most recent SVP of Marketing for Loblaw Companies, having led the marketing organization to grow and strengthen some of Canada's most iconic brands from Shoppers Drug Mart, Presidents Choice, No Name, Loblaws, No Frills, Real Canadian Superstore, Maxi and more...  

Meghan joined Loblaw in 2021 from Hudson’s Bay Company, where she was CMO and prior to HBC she held several executive positions in brand management, digital marketing, data & analytics and product innovation for PwC, TD Bank & TD Insurance, Mars Canada, and P&G. 

Michael Roberts, CMO of MetLife, believes in outcomes, so much so that in the organizations he has had a chance to lead as a senior marketing executive, he has changed team structures and operating models to focus on outcomes based marketing.  One of his key principles, is that if you can't find a pattern of things NOT working, then it means that things are completely out control. So how do you find ways to consistently make things better, whether they were already broken or perhaps even doing quite well?  Listen in as Michael shares a few personal tips from his incredibly successful career.

Michael is a senior operating executive and business leader with 18 years of experience serving financial institutions/professional services companies, leading teams of up to 150 people and product P&Ls of $1B+. Currently he is the CMO of MetLife running global brand and marketing for the organization. An operationally-focused business partner, his expertise spans strategic partnerships & M&A activities; strategy development; marketing, product management & technology; organizational re-structuring and process improvement. His exceptional communication, leadership, collaboration and relationship building skills inform all his work, as does his ability to identify/remove complexity in order to standardize/simplify. 

There is no question that digital technology is impacting all verticals and businesses, affecting both the customer experience and how organizations make money. The sports industry in particular, is undergoing rapid change and unlocking all kinds of opportunities for growth and new business models.

Joining me in this episode is Christina Litz, the Chief Brand & Commercial Officer at True North Sports and Entertainment who are the owners and operators of the Winnipeg Jets (NHL), Manitoba Moose (AHL), the Canada Life Centre, Bell MTS Iceplex and other venues. A lawyer by background, Christina has been at the front of digital transformation for brands including Corus, Rogers, Telus, The CFL and Woodbine Entertainment Group.

Listen in as Christina and I discuss;

• How has digital sports transformation been affecting consumers and fans?
• What makes a sports fan in the new world of digital engagement?
• New revenue streams and business models including sports data: real-time stats and numbers.
• Is data the core element of future monetization?
• Are sports gambling and the betting ecosystem the future?

According to Nic Beique, the payments space is generally boring, but his goal is to build a payments company that is loved by his customers and that can be the heartbeat of their customers success. Nic tells me that it would be enough of a differentiating point for Helcim to have built the brand that they have already built, one based on processing billions in payments per year with a human touch. But in an industry notorious for bad practices, he's going even further. 

Nic Beique is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Helcim, a payments company that makes it faster, easier, and more affordable for businesses to get paid.  Helcim is a payments company who believes in giving small businesses every possible edge to thrive and enrich their communities, delivering an easy, smart, and affordable payment experience with a human touch. They serve thousands of businesses in Canada and the US across 800 different industries, processing billions in payments each year.

In our chat, Nic discusses how the legacy players in the payments space have enjoyed their monopolies and it is the new entrants and fintechs forcing a customer service first approach to the industry. "A lot of companies see their customer service as a place for bottom of the barrel employees, and it's like, no, no, they are the touch point for our customers, they have the single most impact to our brand. We need to treat them very differently." 

We also discuss how the data at the core of the payments industry can paint of picture of the health of the economy. Through their platform they are seeing a huge shift to omni-channel commerce, not just online transactions. And on the technology side we discuss how anyone entering the payment space has to have a huge technology stack with a focus on uptime, security, and simply getting payments right.

The point is, being successful in the payments space is really, really hard.

When Daniel Dubois did the research, he realized that it takes an average of 27 years for the typical first-time Canadian urban home buyer just to save up for the recommended 20% down payment. That's when he and his co-founder decided to do something about it. They launched Key, a patent-pending two sided marketplace with a co-ownership model allowing people to move in and start building home equity, without being locked into a mortgage. Oh, it only takes $15,000 to start.

Growing up in Vancouver his entire life Daniel knew how unaffordable real estate could be. He saw it first hand living in a co-op in False Creek and his parents would often talk about a woulda, coulda, shoulda situation of getting into the market.  It hasn't gotten any easier. Young people are stuck on the proverbial rental treadmill where their income isn't going up at the same rates as housing prices and they're locked out of being able to build wealth with home ownership. 

As Daniel discussed with me, Key sets out to offer a new option, a model where someone can have most of the benefits of owning, but with the freedoms and flexibilities of renting. They call it "homeownership as a service". It's a new form of home ownership where one can consume real estate incrementally. If a condo is worth $600,000 in downtown Toronto, one can become a co-owner with just $15,000 down and every month in their app, choose to purchase more of the home. After three years the buyer has the option to purchase 100% of it. So anyone can own a home years sooner, continue to build equity, have the freedoms of renting, and after three years have the option to purchase it.  Oh, and at any time, the purchaser can give a couple of months notice and leave and buy a house somewhere else, or move to a new city for a job opportunity. Total flexibility.

Pinterest is not really social media in the traditional sense, it's more personal media. As the "ultimate discovery platform", Pinterest is just in its very nature, a place where people feel hopeful when they are thinking about the future. As Erin Elofson describes in our discussion, "when using Pinterest you're fundamentally happy, reflecting on the past is a harder emotional process, and that's what happens often in social media, you're sort of being compared to others. Kids for example are probably thinking, why wasn't I invited to that party?" That's not what happens on Pinterest.

As people start planning for milestones in their lives using Pinterest, not only does the platform get early indications, but that offers signals to advertisers of things like wedding planning, moving homes or even having a baby. All happy and future based events. Listen in as Erin and I discuss the business and consumer use of Pinterest. By the way, did you know that nine out of the ten people who use Pinterest to plan their happy future come with commercial intent? Often they don't know what brand or product they need to get there. What an opportunity for advertisers.

Given Pinterest in focused on the future, they have also become experts in predicting trends.  They call their annual insights on trends 'Pinterest Predicts'. Simply put it's Pinterest's way of saying what's going to happen, and 80% of the trends they reveal in the annual Pinterest Predicts report are correct.

The future is happy and Pinterest is helping their 400 million users get there!

Candice Faktor is on a mission to help creators make a living teaching what they love by re- imagining the future of learning through her platform, Disco.  She believes the future is learning live together and Disco's vision for learning leaves the industrial age behind and looks to a world of lifelong learning, that's live, with peers, led by trusted creators and accessible from anywhere.

Prior to Disco, Candice has held various positions including Global GM and Head of Business at Wattpad, one of the world’s largest storytelling communities, which sold for US$660MM. Her love of learning led her to create cohort based courses years ago and the Gamechanger.co learning community both of which inspired her to create Disco.

Listen in as Candice and I discuss learning 1.0 which was all about content and the ability to share it, mostly through prerecorded platforms, digitally or in written form, and how we are moving into the era of learning 2.0, which is all about experiences. The ability to actually facilitate experiences along with others, and that is really hard to make happen without synchronous video. So along comes Disco.

As Candice says, "Disco is next level, just watch what is able to happen when you create the space and a container for learning to occur."

Ever hear of The Peak? Well if you haven't it's time to change that. The Peak is a daily newsletter covering the latest Canadian and global business, finance and tech news in a fun and informative daily email. Over 42,000 Canadians start their day with this email and I am one of them!

Brett Chang is co-founder of The Peak, starting the business after a number of roles including working at Uber. As Brett explains in our discussion, The Peak is designed for the modern Canadian business leader. Mostly urban young professionals between the ages of 25 to 35 working at big companies like Shopify, Uber and Deloitte, across a range of different disciplines from marketing, to finance, to operations, and they're fairly senior in their roles.  The goal of The Peak is to work backwards when preparing content, thinking what do our readers want to know that  will help them through their day?

How have they been so successful? Well, as Brett explains there are peaks and valleys in terms of growth in any business. Listen in as he explains tips on growing your digital customer base including how to get success from LinkedIn, really compelling content and the effective use of giveaways, especially when partnered with different businesses focused on the same target audience.

Oh and monetization?  Yeah Brett has some incredible advice on that one too!  Don't miss this tactical and educational discussion (and it's less than a 20 minute commitment).

Don't forget to sign up for yourself: http://readthepeak.com?rcode=Aa8-_uGdnHE