Exploring the role of marketing in an age of disruption.
OCTOBER 1, 2019 ARCADIAN COURT TORONTO
Strategy magazine presents Canada’s premier forum for exploring the evolving mandate of the CMO — and of marketing itself. Join us to learn from industry leaders who are building brands for the future.
Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel | Banff, Alberta | June 11 - 14, 2017

2019 CONTENT

  • Flow Water: How to mainstream an out of the box idea

    Every marketer wants to have a compelling CSR story, and often look with envy at the successful brands that launched with an eco ethos at the core. But purpose alone is not enough when you’re breaking from convention.

    Krissie Millan, CMO of Flow Water, explains how they made a huge splash by pushing boundaries, and how they’re keeping their audience engaged in a crowded category.

  • Social Lite Vodka: Building a high growth Canadian brand

    The ready-to-drink (RTD) segment has been disrupted over the last few years, with consumers flocking to the convenience and better-for-you options on offer. Social Lite Vodka co-founder Neetu Godara and her team found a gap in the market and launched the first unsweetened vodka soda beverages in North America, disrupting the status quo.

    Learn how they exponentially grew a new product amid a sea of deep pocket competitors, and which marketing strategies won over their social scenester target.

  • PHD Overthrow II: What we can learn from challenger brands

    Challenger brands have carved out niches, disrupted categories and created whole new marketplaces. In the face of rapid change embracing a challenger mindset is becoming increasingly useful for all kinds of marketers as they shape the destiny of their brands.

    For the recent publication of Overthrow II phd has investigated challenger brands and how they are succeeding at outperforming their competitors. The result? Insights that all brand leaders can learn from. This session will provide case studies from around the world and introduce a framework that will help marketers understand their competitive landscape and identify their own challenger mindset.

  • Loop: Masters of disruption

    With climate change picking up momentum and becoming a bigger regulatory and consumer priority, Loop is hailed as a hero as major corporations are now collaborating with Loop to reduce their environmental impact through a truly reusable packaging program.

    Tony Rossi, VP of Global Business Development shares what it's like to launch an initiative of this magnitude, and what the cultural shift towards meaningful recycling means for your marketing strategy.

  • Loblaw: How to build brands for the future and be unignorable

    In an age of disruption, Loblaw’s is evolving the retail business with a consumer-centric approach to marketing. Uwe Stueckmann, SVP of Marketing will walk us through how his team is changing consumer mindsets through ease, convenience and relevance.

    His approach to building the most-loved Canadian brands focuses on “Being Unignorable”, being laser-focused on the total funnel, creating and harvesting demand and leveraging first-party data to drive brand love. Learn more about Loblaw’s marketing transformation and how the retailer is now dipping its toes into media.

  • Breakthrough or bust: Tap "Consumer Energy" to drive sustainable innovation

    Forrester's research shows that CMOs' ability to influence consumers with new technology and experiences is waning. Under the mandate of innovation, CMOs chase adjacent opportunities to iterate on products and services, but it’s an incessant battle, highlighted by the fact that demographic, social, and economic trends don’t predict consumers’ embrace of innovation.

    Years of multimodal research has revealed what gives consumers the motivation and energy to embrace the next new thing, as well as shut out potential new experiences; a force Forrester termed Consumer Energy. Anjali Lai explains what consumer energy is, how it shapes brand relationships, and how CMOs can harness it to draw customers in.

  • The future consumer

    By 2035, demographically, the world will look quite different; Gen Z will have surpassed millennials as the largest generational group in the US and Centenarians will be a cohort unto themselves, numbering 1.5 million globally (triple today’s population of people 100-plus).

    This session offers a peek into the evolved world of your future consumer. Stylus Media Group uncovers how today’s shifts will reshape the long-term consumer landscape, offering a cross-demographic, cross-industry lens into the trends transforming consumer values and lifestyles and the new opportunities for brands.

  • A&W: Staying relevant in a chaotic market

    Consumers needs are changing at the speed of light, and while fast food is squarely in the crosshairs of health and eco concerns, A&W manages to address those issues and appeal to the new mindset. A&W marcom lead Tom Newitt delves into how they manage to stay a step ahead from a strategic point of view.

  • Cannabis: one year later…

    Canopy Growth’s Senior Director of Portfolio Integration Josh Lyon explains what’s working (and what’s still a work-in-progress) in terms of marketing pot brands, and how they’re growing the world’s largest cannabis corporation amid a changing market.

  • CMO Interview: The impactful tenure

    What does the marketing department of the future look like? Nimble, diverse, multi-skilled and zero-based budget adept… but how do we recruit, train & inspire the next generation of brand builders? Tim Hortons and Ecobee share their knowledge on building a successful team.

  • MEC: Turning missteps into brand love

    Consumers today are very politically inclined, and with the ‘call-out’ culture, they are not afraid to let brands know what they think. Anne Donohoe, CMO at MEC walks us through how they acknowledged their mistakes, grew from them, and what processes were put in place to ensure everyone – all sizes, sexual orientation and race – was being acknowledged.

  • Labatt: Moving at the speed of pop-culture

    An in-depth discussion on how Labatt is upping the ante in marketing by leveraging cultural insights and social data to connect with consumers in a personalized and real-time way. With a new in-house creative agency, Draftline, and enhanced data and technology partnerships with Twitter, the Labatt content machine is aimed at getting rooted in culture and hyper relevant to mobile-first consumers.

  • Clorox: How to align your portfolio with CSR

    Sustainability is rapidly becoming a “must-have” for every business, large and small. For some brands that journey - and communicating it - is easier than others. Learn how The Clorox Company leverages sustainability for competitive advantage across a diverse portfolio of brands, from Burt’s Bees natural personal care to its namesake Clorox liquid bleach.