The Pivot with Ken Evans

Suddenly as a marketer, the stars align, the clouds part and everything comes up roses. That was certainly the experience of New Balance when they globally signed Kawhi Leonard, who went onto win the 2019 NBA championships for the Toronto Raptors. Marketers can only dream of an opportunity like this. Jon Purdy, Senior Marketing Manager at New Balance Canada led his team through this exciting challenge that captured the attention of the country. From fun guy t-shirts, to king of the north crowns, Jon's team took advantage of the attention to cut through the clutter and keep his brand top of mind. Tune in to hear Jon's insights into sports marketing, brand authenticity and taking risks.

Many believe that public relations and marketing can be two different but complementary practices, but merging the two together builds a better brand. Communicators must use their power of story and persuasion across all channels to see brand reputation management as a brand building thruster. On the other hand, marketers must put a greater emphasis and sensibility into risk managing their campaigns and decisions. During his time at the Toronto Transit Commission, Brad Ross not only managed the organization's reputation, but played an integral role in growing the brand and earning the trust of its customers. Tune in to hear Brad's insights into reputation management during his days at the TTC and how transparency remains a key element in communications.

Circumstances related to transparency, editorial integrity and ethics, are now shifting the whole ground within the influencer category. For brands and agencies, the way in which they work with influencers has changed and will continue to shift dramatically over the next few years. Tune in as Barry Choi, a Toronto-based personal finance and travel influencer discusses the growth of his own personal brand and outlines how agencies and brands can better choose the right influencers and work with them more effectively to achieve better results.

With the increasing access to data, it's no wonder insights have become the fuel for just about everything in communications and marketing. From market polling to algorithm-based insights, data is only as objective as the content it's fed, which itself could be filled with bias. To influence decision making, marketers need a diversity of data and research. Tune in as Andrew Grenville, author and Chief Research Officer at Maru/Matchbox discusses market research and how marketing and communications practitioners can connect with insights partners to take a problem solution approach to data and insights. Andrew examines the trouble in the insights industry is facing with the explosion in data and information, the decreasing cost of doing it, and an increase in the need for informed decision making.

For many brands, selling a product or service can be purely transactional and straightforward – but it doesn't have to be. When it comes to strategy for retention and new business leads, it's important to keep brand tone and personality in mind. Using humour and enthusiasm has proven to be a good strategy for this episode's guest – Shannon Lee Simmons. As a personal finance expert and co-founder of The New School of Finance, an advice-only financial practice, Shannon has used humour, enthusiasm and even real-life experiences to make the complex information of financial planning more digestible. Her team's approach eventually led to the business growing from one employee to eight since 2012. Tune in for her insights into how she's developed a personality for The New School of Finance and how brands should leverage their own personality to attract new audiences.

In the world of communications and marketing, we have no option but to learn, adapt and apply new techniques and technologies. In PR, we've evolved into integrated communication practitioners, to better understand and integrate social and digital plays into our storytelling. Marketers needed to master new digital platforms to amplify campaigns and access greater metrics and data. Now, we face artificial intelligence. It will change, upend, and influence like nothing before it. Tune in as Martin Waxman, artificial intelligence researcher and McMaster MCM instructor delves into the world of AI and how marketing and communications practitioners must understand the basics of artificial intelligence in order to develop strategies on how to approach it.

In this special edition episode of The Pivot recorded at the latest Ruckus Makers event, host Ken Evans chats with comedians Barry Taylor and Dena Jackson, Jacqueline Waters of the Royal Ontario Museum and Toni Shelton of Collective Arts Brewery, about brands taking the humorous route to their programming and content. Peeling the onion on comedy in marketing communications, the panel discusses how best to integrate humour into campaigns to connect with audience across multiple channels in powerful and genuine ways.

To be all things to all people is to ultimately be generic. And to be ultimately generic is the essence of risk aversion. In this episode, Ola and Mathieu of Hershey Canada delve into brand authenticity and the integrated approach behind recent campaigns like the Reester Egg and the Oh Henry 4:25 bar. Tune in as the pair discuss risk aversion, marketing to millennials and generation z and building consumer relationships.

Marketing touches many different areas of a business and in the future it's clear that the problems companies face are no longer siloed by business unit. Be it a bank, a courier company or a retailer, many legacy brands now claim their core competency to be technology. In that context, all businesses are essentially technology brands because technology now influences just about everything we do and sell. Organizations must take a multi-pronged approach to the way they problem solve and doing so requires not just involvement by the marketing team but by the entire executive suite. Rubina Shaikh, founder of Centered, discusses an honest, thorough and effective re-discovery of a brand's purpose. This isn't about conventional organizational or corporate culture audits and change management strategies…this is more like brand therapy.

Data and science only played a little role in the marketing industry in the early 1990's as art and creative lead marketing strategies until the digital disruption and democratization of media. Today's marketers have seen a shift from art and creative leading marketing strategies, to data and science leading marketing decisions and measuring attribution fully across all channels. Duri Alajrami, head of marketing, communications and digital at Moneris, discusses the art and science of marketing and how data has driven the shift in balance between the two. Has the art of marketing suffered? How can we analyze and use data effectively? Delve into the big data talk on our season 2 premiere of The Pivot.