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Proprietary research by TBWA reveals the cultural forces that have the potential to revolutionize the future of food in Canada. Bill Chamness, VP strategic planning at Juniper Park\TBWA explores this further.

The new Future of Food report comes at a crucial time in Canada, we are no longer the country of yesterday, but still not the country of tomorrow.

Food is at the centre of this radical evolution – where we are re-evaluating topics ranging from climate change, supply chains to social justice.  The findings should pique the interest of anyone interested in understanding the powerful impact of culture on the way we are interacting with food, and vice versa. We explore topics including:

• Food RX: Food and pharma intertwine, reshaping our plates and cravings.
• Food Under Review: “Good” food now means ethical, sustainable, and inclusive nourishment.
• Beyond Consumption: A redesigned food system turns passive consumers into active participants.
• Tech’s Kitchen: Technology’s role in food ascends.

Tech’s kitchen has the power to disrupt our lives in Canada the most acutely. We enthusiastically embrace science and technology in most aspects of our lives, while remaining hesitant when it comes to food. We hold romanticized nostalgic narratives of food sourced as close to nature as possible, and any inclusion of technology in this formula taints this notion.

However, our futures depend on technology, the planet’s food systems are currently responsible for about 70% of biodiversity loss, and yet we’ll need to produce 56% more to feed the projected population of 10 billion people by 2050. The tension is real.

Welcome Lab Grown Meats to the chat. The Canadian government has committed millions in funding to two start-ups from Canada, in hopes of creating the next generation of vegan seafood. They aim to replicate the texture, taste, nutritional benefits, and cooking experience of traditional seafood.

One of these businesses is Toronto-based startup New School Foods, which has received funding from multiple government agencies, including Protein Industries Canada, to help develop its whole-cut vegan seafood products that aim to emulate the texture, taste, nutritional benefits, and cooking experience of conventional seafood.

The other is Vancouver’s Modern Plant Based Foods, which received a government grant from National Research Council of Canada’s Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) for research and development costs towards its new vegan meat and seafood portfolio, Modern Meat, which includes products such as crab cakes.

Meanwhile, AI is solving one of the most taxing parts of being an adult…trying to figure out “what’s for dinner?”

According to a 2023 Morning Consult survey about consumer’s preferences around AI products,

AI-generated grocery lists and AI-generated menu recommendations at restaurants topped the list. In fact, 48% of people in the United States surveyed want AI-generated recipes.

More specifically, get ready for custom-crafted recipes delivered to your doorstep. Instacart’s ChatGPT plugin does just that. The attached image supplied by Kelvin Chong, strategist, TBWA\Sydney, shows this in action.

The future of food is here. It will be ground zero for some of our more contentious debates, our most impactful decisions, and hopefully our most delicious and fulfilling moments.

Food is at the centre of our lives and our lives are changing, fast.

Bill Chamness, is the VP strategic planning at Juniper Park\TBWA, the Toronto-based agency that is part of the wider TBWA Worldwide network of advertising agencies. For more information on its Future of Food report, visit here.

Juniper Park\TBWA is a member of the Institute of Canadian Agencies. Report on Marketing is where leading Canadian agencies showcase their insights, cutting-edge research and client successes. The Report on Marketing provides a valuable source of thought leadership for Canadian marketers to draw inspiration from. Find more articles like this at the Report on Marketing.

Practical training programs based on micro-credentials offer a “third way” forward in post-secondary education beyond universities and colleges. Darian Kovacs, the Indigenous founder of BC-based Jelly Digital Marketing & PR and Jelly Academy, describes how these programs can deliver a more diverse and dynamic talent pool.

Every post-secondary institution carries a stigma.

Many believe that university prioritizes theory and neglects specialities and job-ready skills. Another common critique is that if you’re not attending to become a doctor or lawyer, you’re taking on debt for a four-year degree only to graduate with general knowledge.

College suffers from a misconception of being “less” than university. It’s “easier to get into.” You don’t need to take academic courses in high school to apply to college. And it’s where our “future hairdressers and firefighters go.”

The third post-secondary option that suffers from a stigma is micro-credentialing. You might be surprised that this option is even being considered here as it’s not as popular as traditional routes, which is exactly the point.

The benefits of micro-credentialing

Up until the last couple of years, micro-credentialing has received minimal federal or provincial support. The benefits of upskilling and reskilling institutions remained unrecognized. And students continued to apply to colleges and universities because those were the two options they knew. But just like the false narrative that university is meant for doctors and lawyers and college is easy, micro-credentialing isn’t an option to glance over.

Canada is suffering from a critical skills gap. More than half (56.1%) of businesses reported having employees who weren’t fully proficient in the ability to perform their job at their required level, according to the Survey of Employers on Workers’ Skills 2021. And of those participants, more than half (57.5%) reported that the in-demand skills were technical, practical or job-specific, and problem-solving.

There is an increasing need for education and training providers to put effort towards future-ready training and education. And micro-credentialing is the poster child of offering job-ready skills. Upskilling institutions are actively fighting to diversify the nation’s talent pool—and many of these are also non-profits, fighting for funding to stay afloat. If micro-credentialing continues to get put on the back burner, Canada’s skills gap will only widen.

Leading programs in Canada

In light of this, it’s worth discovering a little more about Canada’s leading future-ready educational programs:

• Lighthouse Labs: Tech education company that offers 12-week boot camps for web development and data science, as well as part-time up-skilling courses. All of its programs are online so they are accessible to all, and prepare students for the work-from-home culture that is growing in demand.
• Palette Skills: Upskilling for quick career transitions in all industries. All programs include employer-led projects, 1:1 career coaching, and opportunities to network with companies. The organization offers both hybrid and online learning. The Automation & Digital Agriculture Specialist Program is hybrid while the B2B Sales & Tech Sales Training is a live online format.
• Jelly Academy: Focused on helping students upskill, reskill, and gain the necessary micro-credentials to thrive in the world of digital marketing. Its core course is the Digital Marketing Bootcamp, which covers the fundamentals of Social Media, SEO, Google Ads, Facebook and Instagram Ads, Google Analytics, Public Relations and Email Marketing. The company provides an online or in-person learning environment with both live and self-paced learning.
• PLATO: The eight-month PLATO Software Tester Training program consists of five months of in-class training and a three-month paid internship. Successful graduates are offered a full-time apprentice position with full benefits and paid vacation. Upon completion, they join the team as junior software testers.
• NPower: Offering digital and professional skills training, NPower Canada programs are fully funded and provided at no cost to participants. Classes are accessed via the learning management system Blackboard. Participants are expected to log on Monday to Friday, for a minimum of four hours daily.

So, it’s safe to say that stigmas around university and college are often misinformed. Many successful CEOs went to university and many incredibly intelligent nurses went to college. University isn’t just for lawyers and doctors. College isn’t easy.

As for the stigma that micro-credentialing isn’t as important as university or college, we think the nation’s skills gap speaks for itself. And without action, who knows how much wider this gap will get? The World Economic Forum has forecasted that by 2026, nine out of ten jobs will require digital literacy.

Canada has an impressive roster of future-ready education programs—those who don’t leverage these institutions run the risk of falling behind.

Jelly Digital Marketing & PR is a member of the Institute of Canadian Agencies. Report on Marketing is where leading Canadian agencies showcase their insights, cutting-edge research and client successes. The Report on Marketing provides a valuable source of thought leadership for Canadian marketers to draw inspiration from. Find more articles like this at the Report on Marketing.

It’s never been so easy for employees to find new jobs. An ongoing labour shortage coupled with a market still reeling from the pandemic have given applicants heightened negotiating powers.  Catherine Jolicoeur-Giunta, Strategy Director, Employer Branding at Cossette, asks how can we navigate this issue and manage to stand out from our competitors as a top employer?

 The pandemic and the subsequent period of adjustment have weakened employees’ attachment to their company. Engagement rates reached 73% at the beginning of 2020 but fell to 62% in the first quarter of 2022, according to a Kincentric report. In July 2022, McKinsey estimated that 30 to 40% of workers were thinking of quitting their job.

In a world where candidates are now shopping for jobs the way they would for a consumer product using comparison tools like Glassdoor, Indeed and Fishbowl, your employer brand has never been more important. While most companies do leverage theirs to attract potential employees to their teams, it’s key to remember that it should also be leveraged to boost engagement and the sense of affiliation amongst your current workforce.

With the costs of replacement of a qualified employee going from half to triple an employee’s yearly salary, it is crucial to put retention at the heart of your employer brand strategy. A strategic employer branding exercise gives an unprecedented perspective of your employees’ expectations of their work and allows you to measure their degree of appreciation of the experience you offer them as an employer. And to ensure you retain the best talent, providing a memorable and distinctive employee experience is key.

Mindfully crafting an employee experience has never been so crucial

For the first time ever, five different generations of professionals are working alongside each other in the labour market, each with their own perspective on work, their role within a company and the relationship they’d like to have with their employer. To adapt to their respective aspirations and engage with them every day, the challenge will be to assess their needs and expectations, and—above all—develop personalized strategies to live up to them.

What’s more, not everyone is looking for the same advantages or benefits when it comes to their work. It’s no surprise then that a personalized job experience is increasingly important for workers. By providing them with an experience that resonates with their own realities, you can create real connections with your employees and increase their levels of engagement.

How to achieve a personalized employee experience?

There are different ways you can go about personalizing the employee experience, whether you’re targeting internal communications procedures, benefits, wellness resources, career progression plans, development opportunities, or new approaches to management. Personalization also improves recognition at work, because recognizing and rewarding a worker’s personal contributions means understanding what they value beyond traditional monetary compensation.

The important thing is to have a solid understanding of your employees’ expectations and use this to create different profiles and build customizable experience journeys.

Among other benefits, this exercise will give managers the tools they need to guide and bolster their teams. They’ll be better equipped to adapt their support to each worker’s situation. Employees for their part will feel that their needs are considered and respected. This will have a ripple effect, resulting in stronger relationships within the team.

So, how do you see your employee experience in 2023?

Cossette is a member of the Institute of Canadian Agencies. Report on Marketing is where leading Canadian agencies showcase their insights, cutting-edge research and client successes. The Report on Marketing provides a valuable source of thought leadership for Canadian marketers to draw inspiration from. Find more articles like this at the Report on Marketing.

It’s time to harness data, navigate complexity, and deliver on the unification promise, says Kristin Gower, Global President, B2B Practice, EssenceMediacom.

B2B marketing has reached an inflection point. As business and sales models have changed, so have the customer profiles and the complexity of the audience’s journey. These shifting dynamics are redefining the role of CMOs as both growth-drivers and data stewards.

No longer responsible for only the bookends of “brand” and “demand,” CMOs and marketing leaders are taking over roles that historically belonged to sales teams – events, nurture, even the sale itself. This evolution to full-funnel customer management requires expertise across strategy, demand, automation, content, and advanced analytics — along with the ability to provide a seamless connection throughout.

Our buyer has evolved

Who comes to mind when you think of a B2B Buyer or marketer? Chances are it is a middle-aged man at a conference. The reality is very different; she’s more than likely a millennial, a “digital native” who researches products and solutions online, consumes vast amounts of content, and expects a consumer-grade experience at every touchpoint. These empowered B2B customers are also more likely to seek out the increasingly important purpose-driven companies.

A seismic shift in the market

These new buyers, coupled with digital disruption, have transformed the B2B landscape, creating an e-commerce market forecasted to reach $18.6 trillion by 2026, according to a recent study by Facts and Factors. In parallel, the explosion of everything-as-a-service (XaaS) has redefined not only what companies sell, but also how they acquire and retain customers.

The good news for marketers? A significant increase in their budgets (to nearly 10% of total company revenue in 2022), and a significant increase in the number of digital touchpoints with which to meet the customer.

But “owning” the customer, and having access to larger budgets demands greater accountability, the ability to drive quantifiable business growth.

The explosion of data and the acceleration of technology

The increased digitization and proliferation of touchpoints has resulted in data scaling faster than marketers can aggregate and analyze, with a corresponding increase in the range of tools and technology with which to understand, engage and measure customer value.

The ability to aggregate, analyze, and use this multiplicity is the holy grail of modern-day B2B marketing.

Marketers that can achieve outcome-defined integration and orchestration of tools and technology will gain a significant advantage, both in their organization and in ensuring their organization’s success.

How to take advantage of this evolved approach to B2B marketing

There are a few steps we can take as marketers to leverage this evolution. First, we must ensure a deep understanding and capability in data infrastructure, advanced analytics, and marketing-technology orchestration – on top of the marketing fundamentals of strategy and creativity. Furthermore, we must be the voice, and champion, for customers within the organization, uniting data, tech and content to facilitate a seamless buyer journey.

Next, to succeed, we’ll need strong, multi-disciplinary marketing teams with leadership that can connect vertical expertise behind a unified goal, growth-driven strategy, and a holistic measurement system. This means eliminating the silos and embracing holistic customer experience responsibility – whether it’s CRM/1P data connected to media, brand to demand, or Audience to Customer strategy.

Finally, we must bake agility into the ways of working; experimenting, testing and scaling as part of team mentality/ethos and process. And, of course, choose partners that can deliver the same breadth of services and deep expertise, fully integrated into a unified service offering, with the ability to scale quickly, and a shared accountability for business results.

EssenceMediacom is a member of the Institute of Canadian Agencies. Report on Marketing is where leading Canadian agencies showcase their insights, cutting-edge research and client successes. The Report on Marketing provides a valuable source of thought leadership for Canadian marketers to draw inspiration from. Find more articles like this at the Report on Marketing.

The Fairtrade coffee movement offered a premium product that reset expectations, and now has people convinced that they can’t live without a $5 latte. Advertising could learn from this, says Des Jones, the Chief Strategy Officer at Juniper Park\TBWA.

In the many discussions about the talent crisis faced by creative agencies, there is lots of talk of how employee values have changed. But this issue isn’t just about the gap between what agencies offer and what employees want, it also relates to the growing gap between what employees want and what clients want. At the heart of the crisis, people are rejecting the poor training, talent management, and lack of purpose that the agency operating model often delivers.

This hasn’t always been the case. When I came into advertising, it was full of creative spirit, optimism, and opportunity – not words widely associated with it today. Since the abolition of media commission, advertising has been on a steady march toward commoditization. Pricing is presented in hours, rates are blended across roles and seniority, “fat” has been trimmed, and the relationship between price and quality has been lost. Today we are a commoditized industry, and current and future employees are rejecting the environment this has created.

With 77% of agencies claiming there is “some” or “high” scarcity of talent in their organizations, we need to do something constructive – and coffee could be the answer.

Breaking out of commoditization

Long before today’s $5 latte market, coffee was a commodity with low price elasticity of demand. This put price pressure into the supply chain from retailers to manufacturers and eventually, to farmers. The result: some farms scaled up and mechanized for cost efficiencies, while smaller, quality-conscious farmers worked harder to break even. Remind you of anything?

In a similar vein, to give some clients the cheaper product they want, many advertising shops are automating, scaling up and reducing their reliance on creativity, while those that rely on human capital are finding it harder and harder to sustain environments where creativity and talent can thrive.

So, can what worked for the coffee industry work for us, can we break out of commoditization and lure a new generation of creative minds into advertising?

The first step in coffee’s journey from commodity to the valued product we know today, was the Fairtrade movement. Fairtrade gave people an option to buy coffee that didn’t exploit anyone in its production. From field to cup, you could be sure that everyone involved was treated properly. This transparency, honesty and awareness put a generation of coffee drinkers on the path to conscious consumption. Fairtrade was the start of real, meaningful differentiation and the beginning of a proper hierarchy of value.

So, could Fairtrade Advertising be our industry’s answer? I believe it could. For years, the industry has embraced demands for leaner pricing and processes while still promising to deliver high quality work. The human and financial pressure this creates has seen expectations and remuneration lose touch with the broader market, to the point where employees are now refusing to work in the system this has created.

Human creativity can prosper

By not standing up when procurement measures first started to put the industry under pressure, the ad industry finds itself where it is today: 57% of marketing procurement professionals and 59% of marketers believe their relationship is “extremely or very healthy” – but only 15% of agencies would agree. Industry-backed, tiered products could be the first step in being able to offer the working conditions and packages that help us to build businesses where human creativity prospers. The tiers could look like this:

Efficient investment tier – Focused on maintaining the status quo and meeting benchmarks. Uses the lowest cost talent, and existing systems and approaches.  Staff only work their contracted hours.

Effective investment tier – Focused on delivering incremental change by getting consumers to behave differently. Agencies invest in building a culture that inspires and nurtures, so talent bring a higher level of dedication and professionalism.

Disruptive investment tier – Focused on redefining commercial outcomes and putting brands into a category of their own. Staffed with inspirational, committed, market leading talent, that is consciously nurtured through growth opportunities, inspiration, and a truly creative culture.

If the industry is transparent about the quality of the talent they can offer, how talent is stimulated, supported, and treated, and the quality of the output that can be delivered, clients can make informed choices. By setting a hierarchy, we can be sure to deliver what we promise, and clients can choose to invest in their brands as the needs of their business and conscience dictate.

The talent crisis provides us with a chance to make a stand. If the industry takes a lesson from the coffee business, we can make talent and quality valued aspects of our offerings. But if commoditization is allowed to continue, the talent crisis will drive us out of business.

It’s time we woke up and smelled…

Juniper Park\TBWA is a member of the Institute of Canadian Agencies. Report on Marketing is where leading Canadian agencies showcase their insights, cutting-edge research and client successes. The Report on Marketing provides a valuable source of thought leadership for Canadian marketers to draw inspiration from. Find more articles like this at the Report on Marketing.

It’s not been an easy time for brands but Devon MacDonald, President at Cairns Oneil, the strategic planning and buying agency, has some solutions as we hit the fall

We’ve all been through another year of change with a realization that it will never be ‘normal’ again. Beyond our lives at home, this has left marketers with the very real sense that there are more questions ahead before they finish off the year and ready for the next.

With that in mind, and using our strategic knowledge of the media industry, there are three key trends that marketers can appreciate, embrace and capitalize on right now.

A big two years for TV

Are you kidding? You thought we’d say TikTok or the Metaverse. But, no, we see real opportunity in television in the next 24 months. While we have seen client metrics focus on lower funnel success, we have also witnessed renewed understanding and interest in building awareness, and the importance of this in terms of brand building. So, of course that means TV right? Yes, but it is different. Today “traditional TV” doesn’t need to be measured by reach and frequency.

We should instead chart outcomes. The deployment of targeted buying of traditional TV through products like Bell’s S.A.M. and Corus’s Cynch can give even the most modest spend a chance to deliver awareness and consideration at scale. Add Connected TV (CTV) to this and, in the next 24 months, new streaming access to audiences of Disney+ and more, can deliver real scale for cord-cutters and traditionalists alike.

For clients comfortable with broadcast television, CTV and OTT present opportunities to expand their current awareness programs to new consumer sets with existing creative assets. For clients who have shied away from television in the past that are attracted to the audience-based targeting and digital video performance metrics that CTV and OTT provide, this combination of OTT and traditional is a terrific recipe for success, at affordable investment levels. These opportunities are equally providing a demonstratable link to again showing how awareness can support performance

Making the most of fragmentation

There is a danger of diminishing audience performance within Demand-side Platforms (DSPs) as reach is impacted by privacy changes and content erosion. We continue to evaluate and onboard tech (including DSPs) for our internal trade desk CO2. This can also benefit brands with their own desk in terms of consultation on additional tech, target building and data activation.

Now it’s time for TikTok. The social platform’s initial audience size was partially fueled by the pandemic, but it continues to grow. Video formats on other social platforms are looking to replicate that success in building engagement so that they aren’t left behind. In relation to this, we have been talking fragmentation since the introduction of MuchMusic and TSN in Canada. The proliferation of content opportunities across OTT and CTV are also building on the increasing fragmentation of time across social. But can you name the platform where you last watched a hit show? Don’t worry, most people can’t either.

In both cases we are encouraging clients to continually explore options, but to ensure that strategically they remain focused on the platforms that best support their business objectives. That’s because there’s a real danger in chasing trends while not increasing budgets. Performance can be severely impacted if spend is spread too thinly across platforms, leading advertisers to wonder why certain KPIs look strong, but the outcomes disappoint.

Invest to grow

Study after study has shown that advertising, especially when it comes to brand advertising, aids in the long-term health of a brand. So, no problem, let’s keep spending, 2020-22 was a glitch right? But the budgeting process is the toughest of all right now, and whether clients have had a banner year or are still working out of the pandemic impacts, this budget season has been difficult for all. With uncertain economic times ahead of us and supply chain issues lingering globally, marketers now also have “economist” added to their job descriptions.

We know for certain though that the brands that paused marketing during the pandemic had the hardest time climbing out of it. Private companies might be more open to the idea of continuing to invest spend as supply chain challenges are solved and the fear of recession fades. The pain of reduced EBITDA for one or two years will be offset by a much healthier future. And what about the opportunity cost? Holding, delaying, are natural options but being proactive here can pay off in terms of preventing competitors from entering your category or solidifying a first-to-market position.

As a result, we believe consumers are looking for value and choice and will scrutinize each decision in the household. That presents an opportunity for both new and existing brands.

Where do we go now?

In terms of next steps, each of the three trends re-enforce the importance of goals-based planning. To encourage this, we’re integrating client web and sales data with media performance to level-up decision making because it’s clear that using data to make informed decisions and measure results is paramount to success.

More fundamentally, if you work back from business objectives to make informed decisions and create smart media opportunities then you will win in your category. And then do the same in 2023.

Cairns Oneil is a member of the Institute of Canadian Agencies. Report on Marketing is where leading Canadian agencies showcase their insights, cutting-edge research and client successes. The Report on Marketing provides a valuable source of thought leadership for Canadian marketers to draw inspiration from. Find more articles like this at the Report on Marketing.