Fine Tune with Corby Fine

Most companies don't bother spending time thinking about how they can create their own flywheel. The flywheel that comes from digitally transforming their business, and finding ways that one new business model or revenue stream can feed off the other. 

John Boynton is an executive with over 30 years experience and a passion and track record of turning companies around and delivering high growth rates in highly competitive industries in Canada, USA and Europe.  He is continuously transforming businesses and finding those new models that open up growth and opportunity. He is a master at identifying the flywheel. His passion for building teams with his unique coaching/teaching style drives contagious enthusiasm. I know...I worked with him.

Listen in as John and I discuss a few interesting topics. We discuss how consumer trends are shaping the way large and small organizations alike are having to transform themselves. We also talk about digital transformation and how large and small organizations need to adapt.

As John states, "Consumers are looking for simplicity, service delivered in an effortless way. People are looking for certainty, especially in the digital world as other things in their life become more complicated. They're looking for fairness, a fair price for a large volume of good services. They're looking for quality to over what's widely available for free out there. And there's something about unrestricted access easily facilitated by the subscription economy."

One final tip from John, don't forget to institutionalize your information consumption because information consumption is competitive and if you aren't doing it, someone else is.

In a world where consumers are moving their banking transactions online and leaving branches as remnants of the past, how does one bank differentiate themselves from the other? According to Maja Neable, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Banking at BMO Financial Group, it is a combination of what consumers think about as a perceived convenience, and the distinctiveness that a bank can create to try and convince consumers that they are really different.

The balance for automation and self-service, along with the need for timely advice, is something that banks are trying to figure out. The young Generation Z client believes that they will probably never set foot in a branch, though as their financial needs evolve and they mature in their financial journey, they often realize the need to ask for and get human advice.

Therefore, for those value-adding conversations, banks like BMO need to figure out why people should choose to stay with them, and it is mostly a result of being able to simply provide the right advice and truly help them. As we know, many things happen in life and we often need help. That help may not happen physically in the branch. Consumers can choose to talk to somebody on the phone, through video chat or perhaps even text chat. There is a lot of assistance and advice that can be delivered through digital channels.

Listen in as Maja and I discuss these and other topics around the future of banks.
 
Maja Neable is well recognized as an innovative, action-oriented marketing leader with strong digital background. Prior to her current role, Maja was VP Digital Marketing at BMO and prior to BMO, Maja held successively more senior roles across the US, Canada, and Europe in a variety of industries, including technology (Microsoft and Expedia) and telecommunications (Rogers and Telenor).  Maja is a mathematician who loves creativity, and this combination of left & right brain is what has guided her career. Her 20+ years of experience include digital marketing, design & product development, business & brand strategy and sales & service leadership.

Maja sits on the Board of Soulpepper theatre and is Vice-Chair of the Board at Skills for Change. She holds B Math degree from the University of Waterloo, and an MBA from IMD, Switzerland. She lives in Toronto with her husband and two sons, and enjoys skiing, running, and reading.

For anybody who is not familiar with it, there is a real productivity crisis in the pharmaceutical industry and they have even given it a name, which is Eroom's law, the opposite of Moore's law. Moore's law states that every 18-24 months, the amount of transistors you can get for the same or lower price doubles. In pharmaceutical, R&D is the opposite. Every 18 months, the price of getting a new drug to market DOUBLES!

The goal of BenchSci is to help bring new medicine to patients 50% faster by 2025. They are solving the problem that about 80% of preclinical R&D experiments in pharma are unnecessary. Why is this important? Well, upwards of 1% of the global economy, and 10% of the G7's economies as measured in GDP are tied to pharmaceuticals, and it is growing faster than inflation. They are trying to solve it by using machine learning to read scientific literature like a Ph.D. scientist, then use the knowledge to guide scientists to run more successful (and therefore fewer) experiments.

There aren't a lot of companies like BenchSci that are saying, well, we're not really trying to help find new biological targets or generate new drugs or optimize clinical trials. What they do is help scientists run better experiments, to move more quickly from having novel targets to testing that novel drug and getting it into the clinical environment.

Simon Smith is the Chief Marketing Officer at BenchSci, where he oversees all of their marketing including commercial marketing, product marketing, employer branding, communications, events, and creative and content. He joined the company when it was just about 19 people and a few hundred-scientist users; they are now at nearly 200 people, and over 41,000 scientist users. Prior to BenchSci, Simon was the SVP Strategy at Klick Health, where he led digital strategy for a portfolio of pharmaceutical products, including the US launch of two novel drugs. His career spans over two decades working at the intersection of technology, life science, and communications. His passion about applying emerging technologies to improve human health, longevity, and wellbeing is what makes me so excited to have him on the podcast today.

Oh, and did I say BenchSci is backed by F-Prime, Gradient Ventures (Google’s AI fund), and Inovia Capital. The platform accelerates science at 15 top-20 pharmaceutical companies and over 4,300 leading research centers worldwide. They are a CIX Top 10 Growth company, a certified Great Place to Work®, and top-ranked company on Glassdoor.

The Canadian healthcare system is typically ranked as either the lowest ranked or second lowest ranked performing healthcare system of all developed world nations. Our physicians are great. Our procedures, world class. Then why such a low ranking?

According to Dr. Brett Belchetz, the reason why we are so far behind in the rankings is access.

Only about half of Canadian doctors work full-time. That is one of the main reasons why Canadians wait so long for care. The perception is that there simply are not enough doctors. In fact, it's because we're not using our doctors properly.

Dr. Brett Belchetz is trying to tackle this exact issue. He is the CEO and Co-founder of Maple, Canada’s leading virtual care provider connecting patients and healthcare providers like doctors and therapists for online medical visits in minutes. He’s also a practicing physician in Toronto, and a Senior Fellow at the Fraser Institute. In addition, Brett’s passion for healthcare communication and policy have led him to work as an on-air medical expert for CTV and Global News, as well as a contributor to outlets such as the National Post. Previously, Brett worked as a management consultant with McKinsey & Company.

It is estimated that about 70% of the visits that people are making to clinics, hospitals and their family doctors can be digitized. Maple is out to enable that. As Maple continues to evolve, it is moving to a proactive model, where they can let patients know the frequency of visits that they need to have. They will tip you off when you need a screening test done or an intervention done. They will have resources available between those healthcare visits. So it's not just see a healthcare provider and you're kind of on your own until the next visit in a month or three months. It's an entire program. 

Best of all, Dr. Belchetz wants to make this made in Canada healthcare IP the basis of healthcare systems around the world.

Paul Burns is the Managing Director of Twitter Canada. Did you know that 1 in 5 North Americans use Twitter and 500 Million tweets are sent every single day? It is a platform with scale and is designed to generate conversation. As Paul states, "Twitter is look at THIS platform. It's pointing to a thing, an event, something that's happening in the world and people are talking about that thing rather than themselves." Other social platforms are designed as look at me, but not Twitter.

As brands try to figure out how to engage in the platform, the first step is for them to identify the conversations that they want to be made aware of before engaging. It is important to know that the conversational intelligence within Twitter exists on a few different dimensions, one at a brand level, one at an industry level and one at a more macro economic level. If done right, Twitter is a platform where a brand can actually become a conversational brand. 

Listen in as Paul and I discuss this opportunity to become a conversation brand, along with some other key topics, including;

• Can purpose and profit co-exist, can Twitter be a platform that actually improves the quality of public conversation in the world and generate revenue and profit?
• How can a brand become a conversational brand authentically?
• Do we honestly believe that conversation is the way to solve many of the world's problems?

Oh, and if you want to take over Twitter for a day, they have some pretty cool advertising products that allow you to essentially become the most talked about brand in the country for a day.

Consumers spent $861.12 billion online with U.S. merchants in 2020, up an incredible 44.0% year over year. That’s the highest annual U.S. ecommerce growth in 20 years and It’s also nearly triple the 15.1% jump in 2019.

With more and more people shopping online, retail media just makes sense.  But what exactly is a retail media network?

A retail media network is when retailers set up an advertising platform on their website, app, or other digital platforms within their network. This allows the store, and other brands, to advertise to customers on sites like Walmart.ca. It’s a form of in-store advertising in a digital format.

Dana Toering is a digital media and technology veteran with over 20 years of experience in high growth industries. In his current role as Vice President of Walmart Connect Canada, Dana is responsible for leading and transforming the business into the number one destination for omnichannel advertising solutions (aka Retail Media). Before being named Vice President in 2020, Dana held leadership roles in leading digital media and technology-based companies including AOL Canada, Adobe, and Accenture Interactive.  Listen in as Dana and I talk about the growth of the Walmart Connect Canada retail media network.

What is the future of loyalty?

Capturing and rewarding consumers for their time, money and thoughts.

When Derrick Fung thinks about Drop as a company, ultimately the big vision is to build both the world's most personalized rewards program and the largest transaction data set in market. To get there, one of the the biggest decisions they had to make in the early days of the company was to go directly to the consumer to get the data and not go through merchants as many other loyalty providers do.

Derrick explains that Drop's consumers, especially the younger generations, will give up everything, as long as they're getting value back.  And that's where the world of loyalty is going. Cutting the consumer in on the money, on the deal...that's the future.

Oh, and did we talk about Data?  Well as Derrick says, "I'd say data before was a good to have. Now it's a must have. You know the analogy and the saying, it used to be a vitamin and now it's a painkiller."

Derrick Fung is the CEO and co-founder of Drop, one of the largest mobile rewards products in market with 4m users, hundreds of top retailers and merchants and $40 billion+ in transaction volume. Drop was named LinkedIn's #2 top start-up in Canada, as well as a member of the Deloitte Fast 50. Oh, and Derrick and was a Forbes 30 Under 30 winner in 2014.

Your customers have so many options, so many different ways that they can relay feedback to you. Sometimes they call you, other times they fill in surveys. If you're like me, sometimes you just go to Twitter and shout it out publicly and hope that the company is monitoring it. The ways in which your customers can provide feedback has never been more complex.

Customers are communicating with businesses. They're providing unparalleled insights to inform  brands, organizations, the companies that they deal with, with all kinds of information. Now, the question is, are you as someone working in that business truly listening? Sometimes you actually think you are, but are you really? Do you really know how to listen to all of those different channels of feedback?

Shannon Katschilo is the GM and Vice-President of Medallia in Canada. She has a long career focused on all kinds of different verticals and industries where she has spent her time helping organizations understand what their customers are telling them. Shannon provides us with a great list of five things that leaders and businesses need to do to really understand their customers.

1. Listen before you lead
2. Leverage your employee insights
3. Pulse check your ego
4. Place power in the positive
5. Ask the right questions

Listen in as Shannon and I discuss what these mean and how you can apply them in your business so that you don't miss out on what your customers are trying to tell you.

Jed Schneiderman is a proven entrepreneur, and executive in the marketing, media and technology space.  When I think of Jed, I think of someone who is known for his thought leadership on topics ranging from marketing and technology, to being an entrepreneur and  building successful businesses in the mobile, streaming, broadcast and internet technology spaces, and in "connecting the dots" having been at the forefront of major consumer tech trends and events, and by leveraging strong marketing experience across multiple global brands.

Jed was the Co-Founder and President of Tapped Mobile, a leading North American mobile media company which was acquired by EQ Works in 2018 and before that, Jed was the On-Line Business Group Lead at Microsoft Canada where he was responsible for driving the business and marketing strategies for the Windows Live, Search and the Mobile Services businesses.  This is where I met him - as the lead on his agency doing a bunch of cool and innovative digital marketing campaigns...

So - the reason I asked Jed to join me today is that I find he is the most tagged LinkedIn profile I know of when people want someone's opinion on a variety of topics...and so my big theme of the day is, how is anyone expected to stay on top of all the fast moving and developing information or marketing, technology, business and digital transformation...

People always ask me, how do I seem to stay abreast of the latest and greatest...FOLLOW JED ONLINE!  Simple right....

Here are a few highlights of Jed's wisdom from our discussion and below, a list of the sources Jed referenced as his go to destinations for staying on top of our ever changing digital and marketing environments:

"We live in a world where there is so much content that at some point curation becomes one of the most important things"

"Machine learning is good for pattern recognition, but I don't think it's good for insight"

"Maintain curiosity"

 "Don't underestimate the power of asking great questions"

General
The Message  https://the-message.ca/
The Peak https://www.readthepeak.com/
Media in Canada https://mediaincanada.com/

Marketing
Mark Evans - https://www.marketingspark.co/

Tech
https://techcrunch.com/

Ad Tech
https://www.adexchanger.com/

Data / Charts
http://www.emarketer.com/
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/
https://www.chartr.co/

Fun
https://patentdrop.substack.com/ - shows new patent filings

Podcasts
How I built this - https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this
Reid Hoffman Masters of Scale - https://mastersofscale.com/
Work Life with Adam Grant - Org Culture - https://www.adamgrant.net/podcast/
Fine Tune with Corby Fine - https://www.corbyfine.com/

Newsletters
Tim Dolan Kickframe - https://www.kickframe.com/blog/
Ben Evan - https://www.ben-evans.com/
Tomasz Tunguz - SaaS focused - https://tomtunguz.com/
Daniel Eckler - Sapcecadet - Innovation and

Jeff Greenspoon thinks that the future of agencies is really in driving total customer experience.  He says that this can be accomplished by bringing together the right people at the right time to solve the right problems, while being focused on the need for speed, agility and simplification. He is passionate about being client and idea first, and an agency second. This thought leadership has given Jeff a unique role in the Canadian agency landscape. Listen in as Jeff and I discuss the role of agencies in today's ever changing landscape, and how dentsu is adjusting to meet the needs of it's clients and the market as a whole.

Jeff is currently the President of the dentsu Solutions Group in the Americas and the CEO of dentsu Canada. Previous to joining dentsu, via a merge with Isobar, Jeff was co-founder and CEO of SPOKE, a leading digital creative firm based in Canada. He has managed international campaigns for clients including Nestle Nespresso, Entertainment One, General Motors, Coca-Cola, Hilton Hotels, Disney, and LEGO. He was awarded PROFIT Magazine’s Young Entrepreneur Award and has been nominated as Canadian Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young. He is often called upon as a lecturer by the likes of Google, UofT, Ivey and several international business forums for his perspective on insight-led agency engagements and topics including Marketing, Advertising, Entrepreneurship and the Management of Professional Service Firms.