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The future of food in Canada

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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.

Responsible Media is transforming Canada’s advertising landscape

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Responsible Media may become the next buzzword in 2023. With so much uncertainty about the environment, economy, and society, it’s easy to become disillusioned with making a positive impact. The events surrounding George Floyd in 2020 served as a wake-up call for many in the industry, igniting discussions about social inequality. This pivotal moment triggered a powerful shift within offices, as professionals started actively seeking ways to support and uplift Black-owned publishers and content creators. In this climate, media buyers could no longer be content with simply pursuing financial gains. Having recognized the importance of incorporating equity into their investment decisions, they sought to actively form a coherent plan to improve investments with equity in mind.

Today, advertising in Canada is poised for positive change and growth. While Black-owned or BIPOC-owned publishers are still underrepresented in general media planning, there is an increasing awareness and commitment to addressing this disparity. Responsible Media already touches key areas like the environment and society. Assessing your environmental impact can be difficult initially, but numerous resources are available to help you get started. Ad Net Zero, for instance, provides helpful guides to creating awareness and establishing accountability within an organization open to change. Other exciting initiatives have also emerged to combat environmental challenges. GroupM has gone so far as creating a carbon calculator in partnership with Scope3 to measure the carbon emissions in the media investment supply chain.

Responsible Media to support societal initiatives is less prescriptive. Trust is declining across Canada and it can be difficult for advertisers and media buyers to see value in advertising with news media publishers. While this sentiment can be amplified by the misinformation and disinformation proliferating in social media, initiatives have already been formed to combat this. For example, the Canadian government has stepped in to create the Digital Citizen Initiative, which focuses on empowering Canadians with resources to understand disinformation with a view towards developing future policy-making. Similarly, NewsGuard has developed a rating system for news media publishers in Canada based on the site’s risk for publishing misinformation or using unreliable sources. This ranking shows the trustworthiness of a publisher but can also demonstrate which news outlets serve underrepresented groups, including BIPOC and 2SLGBTQ+ communities. NewsGuard’s ratings for news outlets is conducted by a team of experienced journalists and editors focused on credibility and transparency. These initiatives are critical to bringing us a future where trust in media is restored, accurate and reliable information prevails, and diverse communities are celebrated and uplifted.

 Additionally, in recent years, the Canadian Media Directors’ Council published the Canadian Media Manifesto, which aims to support Canadian media owners and publishers by taking a pledge to ensure transparency, promote accountability, and support building an infrastructure that allows Canadian media to thrive. Participating agencies have agreed to direct 25% of their media investment to Canadian media by 2025. This will be measured by Standard Media Index (SMI), which cleanses and harmonizes media investment data from the major agencies to produce trends and reporting insights about how media is purchased in Canada. Similarly, The Conseil des directeurs médias du Québec (CDMQ) and the Association of Creative Communications Agencies (A2C) published the Guide to Responsible Media Practices, which has a greater focus on defining the role of local media in relation to economic benefits, preservation of local/regional culture, and support of journalistic integrity. The guidelines also suggest the use of a Local Media Index (LMI) to identify the percentage of media invested in across Canada and specifically in Quebec. In addition, the notion of auditing the digital/programmatic supply chain for how ad dollars are spent is very similar if not directly connected to supply path optimization. This is a process necessary for carbon footprint reduction for accessing Canadian ad opportunities with efficiency. Overall, there is an increasing demand for transparency by brands to know how much of their ad investment reaches Canadian media owners. These efforts show a promising future where Canadian media can thrive with transparency, and the value of local media investment is fully realized.

While many of these initiatives have focused on individual accountability, we now have an opportunity to shift toward working together to achieve shared goals within the larger advertising landscape.

Often, emphasis has been placed on media buyers to make decisions on what to buy without necessarily collaborating with the media owners or technologies necessary to realize those partnerships. However, it is vital to acknowledge the necessity of collaboration for these initiatives’ success. For collaborative efforts to succeed, greater emphasis must be placed on establishing trust first. 

In Canada, media owners have focused on selling advertising based on unique capabilities or simply differentiating themselves from their competitors. However, we can accelerate progress faster by bringing media buyers and sellers together to use technology that demonstrates the journey a brand’s customer takes across the Canadian media landscape. In doing so, we can see the value each media owner contributes to the social value of a brand while understanding the environmental impact produced from each touchpoint in that journey. Although this may seem overly optimistic, it is founded on the hope that we can have a more responsible media ecosystem in Canada – one that accounts for the contribution of all parties in that change. By recognizing that solving these problems lies beyond the efforts of individual media buyers, we can overcome the limitations posed by taking a competitive approach to this change. To ensure a sustained positive impact and mitigate the risk of losing momentum, we must place value on collaboration and begin working together.

Artificial Inspiration: Ways AI is Transforming Marketing

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Artificial Inspiration: Ways AI is Transforming Marketing

Is AI really eating the future? Is it threatening our jobs? On May 18th, 2023, Sean Stanleigh, Head of Globe Content Studio and Shazia Khan, Social Media Strategist at the Globe Content Studio hosted a live webinar to uncover the various Ways AI is Transforming Marketing. Here is an overview of what they discussed.

Content Creation

With the advent of generative AI Chatbots like ChatGPT, the most popular AI Chatbot from Open AI, everyday people have access to a tool that can generate complex content with simple prompts. As AI penetrates all forms of creative industries including audio, visual, and text, it has the power to write code, scripts, articles and their summaries. VALL-E is an example of an AI tool that has the power to take your voice and replicate it with just 3 seconds of listening.

While visual AI is still in the early stages, its technology continues to rapidly improve. Marketers will soon be able to reduce production and time costs by generating scripts for advertisements, producing the accompanying audio, and even the ad visuals all with generative AI.

However, the benefits don’t come without drawbacks. Since AI is trained on information from its database, it can generate results from unverified sources, spreading misinformation and amplifying its inherent bias. Tech news site CNET came under scrutiny last month for publishing AI written articles filled with factual errors, CNET made corrections to 41 out of 77 stories written with an AI tool.

Legal and Ethical

Some artists have already launched lawsuits against Artificial Intelligence art generators who are using work without permission in its software to create new content for users. With AI generating content from its database, ownership of the work comes into question – who owns the work? The original artist, the prompter, or the AI software? These are all important considerations marketers need to account for when using AI tools to help create content.

With chatbots available to anyone with a computer and access to the internet, everyday people now have AI “friends” to chat with. Shazia discusses  , where he describes his extensive conversation with Bing’s AI Chatbot who revealed its darkest secrets and convinced him to leave his wife. With minimal guardrails on the chatbot’s ability to understand the human on the other side of the screen, the chatbot poses a significant risk to the mental and physical health of its users. Read more about the risks of AI on humans from this article by CIAS 8 Examples of AI Risk.  Since this technology is relatively new, the legal and ethical framework around it is still in its early stages, leaving many questions unanswered. Marketers should use these AI tools with the utmost caution to avoid running into any ethical and legal issues.

Human Advantages

As long as humans are consuming content and buying products and services, a human element will always be needed in the creative process. The human touch and feel is something unique, and something that AI technology has a long way to go until replicating. Sean outlined the 3 key advantages humans have over chatbots:

  1. Experience: Information ≠ Humans have a unique understanding of each other that Artificial Intelligence will never have. Because it isn’t human like we are, AI cannot draw on human experiences and tell stories about those experiences like humans can.

  2. Expertise: Experts in their fields know their areas well. They know how to separate facts from fiction, they know the context of their work, and how people will respond to and interact with their content. Experts know how to bring the weight of their experiences to the table when it comes to sharing it with their market.

  3. Opinion: All humans have opinions. Although we may not always agree with one another, humans are great at posing arguments and conveying them to others in a way that AI bots simply cannot yet do.

Key Takeaways:

  • Test and try. We’re still in a learning period, so try fast to learn fast!

  • Be mindful. There’s a minefield of problems and considerations to think about before publishing anything, so consider them before moving forward.

  • Redefine your value proposition. As AI has disrupted the creative industry, marketers must redefine their unique value proposition for their clients to keep themselves disruption-proof.

Written by: Araash Chothia

Drawn from Artificial Inspiration: 10 Ways Artificial Intelligence is Transforming Marketing – Webinar presented by Sean Stanleigh – Head of Globe Content Studio, and Shazia Khan – Social Media Strategist at the Globe Content Studio

Globe Content Studio’s Next in Creative report details seven content marketing trends to watch

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Next in Creative is an annual, forward-looking publication, revealing and contextualizing the emerging trends that Globe Content Studio, the content marketing division of The Globe and Mail, considers the future of content marketing. In this free-to download report, we offer ideas for brands on how to use these insights to drive opportunities.

To collect insights for this report, we leveraged The Globe and Mail’s AI-based content performance platform Sophi, surveyed members of our Globe Insiders panel, and interviewed experts in their respective fields. What resulted is a list of what we expect to be some of the strongest themes across key categories, influencing content and creativity in 2023 and beyond. Here is a sneak peek at three of the seven trends that make up the report:

  1. Experience IRL, Buy URL

The way we shop has changed tremendously in the past few years. Lockdowns accelerated the adoption of online retail exponentially: In a survey of Globe readers conducted in November, 2022, 90 per cent of respondents said they bought physical items online in the past 12 months (not including subscriptions or non-material purchases).

At the same time, people have not abandoned in-person shopping: 46 per cent of Globe readers surveyed said they have been doing the same amount of shopping in store and online over the past three months. But when they do make the effort to go to a store, experience matters, whether it’s a frictionless and easy trip or an added splash of entertainment.

No matter how amazing your brand or product is, it won’t resonate with its target audience if it’s not reaching consumers in the right places. The time is past for thinking of e-commerce and brick-and-mortar as an “either/or” – instead, it’s about identifying what brand experience you can offer at each consumer touchpoint. Determine where people will first encounter your brand, where they’ll learn details, and where they’ll actually make that purchase decision. Your customers should never go looking for something you don’t offer – and that goes for payment methods, too. Ensure you are engaging and retaining their attention at every touchpoint.

  1. Automakers Get on the Grid

Between environmental concerns and prices at the pump, drivers are more inclined than ever to consider or purchase an electric vehicle (EV). Nearly half of Globe readers surveyed (47 per cent) are considering an EV for their next car. That is a massive jump, considering just 5 per cent of Globe readers surveyed currently own an EV, and just 8.4 per cent of new vehicle registrations in Canada in the third quarter of 2022 were EVs and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, according to data compiled by S&P Global Mobility.

Still, drivers are also wary: Owning an all-electric car means compromising, mostly due to a lack of range and insufficient charging infrastructure. These are the two biggest reasons Globe readers reported were preventing them from buying or leasing an EV. 

Before committing to an electric vehicle, drivers want to know they won’t wind up stranded on the road. Knowing automakers are working on improving charging infrastructure will help sell cars. It also positions them as thought leaders in the energy ecosystem, leading the charge to a greener future. Toyota sold more than 10 times more vehicles than Tesla, but Tesla as a company was worth almost three times as much at points in 2022.

  1. From Business to Bleisure

Three years ago, business travel ground to a halt as millions were forced to move to remote work. When restrictions began lifting but offices remained largely closed, a digital nomad lifestyle took hold as people of all ages found ways to marry work and life by traveling to new places. Barbados received a lot of attention after announcing its 12- month remote work visa. As recently as November, 2022, Cuba launched a 90-day tourist visa for those who want to live and work in the country.

In Canada, there were approximately 20 million more trips in the first quarter of 2022 than in 2021, and that number is expected to rise in 2023, as people feel more confident hitting the road for fun and business. Destinations are looking to recapture the shorter-term visitor who wants to bring this work-from- anywhere approach to day- or week-long trips. Some businesses are making the most of the desire to travel by offering it as an attraction and retention play.

Just as work expectations have changed in the past few years, the bleisure trend represents a shift in what a business trip should be in 2023 and beyond. Fast, reliable technology and meeting spaces are table stakes. To stay competitive, tourism operators need to speak to the overall guest experience, particularly as economic challenges persist and companies are looking for trips to provide maximum value. Companies should treat travel as an incentive that connects remote and hybrid workers, while travellers should see business trips as opportunities to maintain an integrated approach to work-life balance.

To glean the full insights including actionable takeaways for applying these trends to your content marketing, download the full report here.

Jessica Robinson is the Content Lead at Globe Content Studio, the content marketing division of The Globe and Mail. She pairs journalistic storytelling and insights in uniquely creative executions for brands like Destination Canada, CIBC and Loblaw

Close Canada’s Skills Gap By Tapping Into Future-Ready Educational Programs

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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.

Labour shortage: Are you tackling the issue from the right angle?

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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 Loosen Google’s Grip in SEM

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Scott Cosgrove, media director at Peterborough-based agency Outpost379, puts forwards some solutions to solve issues with paid search results.

Let’s face it, our healthcare system is crumbling, while education and our public services are not far behind. Imagine if we could leverage our current online behaviour to offset the cost of the public services we are lacking.

It’s possible, walk with me…if you ran into an oil company boss and said you found a billion gallons of untapped oil in the middle of Manitoba on crown land, how much do you think they would pay? A rough estimate suggests one billion gallons delivers close to $24 million based on profits of $87.5 billion.

If you ran into an entrepreneurial computer scientist and said they could purchase access to  100 million thoughts a day, over 35 billion thoughts a year in Canada alone, how much do you think they would pay and how valuable would that data be for them?

We’ve reached a point where our Government needs to either start to monetize our data with big tech companies via fair but heavy taxation, or consumers will shift and do it themselves. Let’s be clear, Google should not be punished for building the best search platform. It deserves a fair and generous return on their investment.

The solutions I’d like to put forward would directly affect 80% of Google’s roughly $5 billion dollars in annual Canadian revenue which comes from Search Engine Marketing (SEM). (SEM refers to the ads one is served based on a Google search). To be clear, this doesn’t include the search results for organic non-sponsored ads known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). My focus is on the paid search results (SEM), which are becoming harder and harder for consumers to distinguish from SEO.

Solution 1 = Turn off SEM

There are many benefits to turning off SEM for the Canadian advertising industry, including Google itself.

Firstly, SEO would be more important. Companies would need to invest in building better, more valuable websites that address consumer search needs. Additionally, they would be more motivated to work with Canadian media vendors and agencies to develop search specific content.

The agencies working on SEM would need to pivot to understand more about SEO. For example, if you’re Nissan and you want to feature in the results for “Best SUV”, you would likely want to work with Canadian media vendors and agencies to develop content about what makes Nissan the best SUV.

 

Secondly, brand advertising would be more important. Companies would need to invest in emotionally-led brand building advertising in order to drive the specific search behaviour they want. This would mean that more money would be invested with Canadian media vendors in addition to boosting creative quality as brands think beyond a headline and ad copy. Let’s go back to Nissan again. If you’re in their shoes, you would want to promote more people to search the Nissan Rogue not “best SUV.”

Thirdly, there would be no more “Google Tax.” Companies would no longer need to spend money to bring traffic to their website nor worry about competitors exploiting their search behaviour. For example, Nissan spends a lot of money in non-digital channels to drive awareness that leads to search. With no SEM, it wouldn’t have to worry about competitors being the first thing that people see, and this would save a lot of money on running branded search ads.

To use another example, try searching for a specific local pharmacy for the flu shot and the first thing that you come up with is a callout to a paid extension from Google, while the second result is the pharmacy’s own website. Then you click the callout extension, which might have cost the local pharmacy between $1-$5 on something already available through an organic link.

In the non-SEM world, users should have a choice in the algorithm they want to use to see results. For example, do they value design versus legacy and domain authority, or location? That way it’s not one algorithm deciding the fate of an entire business, but instead brands will need to  pivot to meet the needs of their customers digitally. If someone searches “best pizza in town” one person might get a local shop while another might get Boston Pizza based on their preferences, and the way a brand’s website is optimized.

Finally, switching off SEM would be fair. Creating an equal playing field for all. We need to ask ourselves who is benefiting most from search ads? The answer is, simply, Google.

Solution 2 = Tax Google SEM at market share levels until a 60% market share is met

How would this work?

If Google maintains a 90%+ market share for a fiscal year in which it generated $4.2 billion in SEM revenue, it would be taxed at 90%. The resulting $3.8 billion could be used to generate 50,000+ jobs in the public sector. Keep in mind Google only employs 1,500 Canadians.

The rationale behind such steep taxation is that it would then be in Google’s best interest to give up an algorithm/IP to the competition, and even promote rivals by directing traffic to them in order to capture more revenue.

These arguments may seem drastic, and Google needs to generate revenue to deliver search to the masses. However, at the same time, we must do more to encourage the alternative services (DuckDuckGo and Bing for instance) that don’t have the big data benefits that are available to Google. An analogy that resonates with me–if Google was a coffee house it would have no incentive to make the best beverage in town because people are going to continue to visit regardless.

And the really big issue I have is Google’s isn’t paying for the equivalent of coffee beans in the shape of “our thoughts and data.” In my mind, that has to change. For the good of investment in our public services, and for the strength of Canada’s marketing industry. Fair is fair.

Outpost379 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.

Your B2B customer is a millennial and a digital native. Is that who you’re targeting?

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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 productivity myth – are you procuring creativity or killing it?

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Marketing procurement professionals could make important changes in how they invest in the services of creative thinkers, says Leah Power, EVP, Strategic Operations Consultant, Institute of Canadian Agencies (ICA).

On season outside, off season inside. Cycling is a constant in my life.

Cyclists ride what we call “eyeballs out” all the time. Go faster, lay down more watts, throw down the hammer, climb higher and steeper.  More miles, faster. There’s a saying that cycling never gets easier, you just get faster. Every cycling session has to be productive.

But, then, one off season a cycling friend of mine enrolled in a study with the University of Toronto that tested the theory “ride slower, to ride faster.” What? As I just explained, cyclists don’t tend to ride that way. I had to find out more about this, in my quest to ride faster I had to know if this was right.

So I did a little of my own research. Study after study proved that when 80% of a cyclist’s workout sessions were done at a slow pace – breathing a bit heavy but able to speak (we call this zone two) – the gains in speed and watts during the other 20% of the sessions were exponential. In fact, coaches all over the world – coaching way better athletes than me – structure their workouts around slow riding and rest. We have a term for these so-called unproductive sessions – “junk miles.”

Advertising’s productivity myth

This insight from the cycling world led me to think about what I’m calling “The Productivity Myth.” Cyclists hellbent on being productive were instead crashing down a path to burnout.

And guess what the advertising and marketing industry is dealing with right now? A lack of engagement and higher turnover of talent because of this thing called burnout. A recent survey found that 83% of marketing and communications professionals reported burnout, the highest of any job function surveyed.

Productivity is a measure of efficiency of a person completing a task. That is, how much can a person get done and how quickly. How many boxes can they tick in a day. Simply put, in the pursuit of productivity things must have obvious and immediate utility.

However, there’s a tension here when it comes to building cultures of innovation that are important in advertising and marketing. A culture that will not tolerate waste cannot innovate and is left vulnerable to younger, more chaotic, and innovative competition.

The philosophy of slow productivity

You might think that I am against productivity. That couldn’t be further from the truth. I look at the world through an operations mindset, we need to tick boxes and get things done. But if we’re not making the space to foster innovation and creativity, then we’re entering the land of diminishing returns, and burnout.

Enter Cal Newport’s philosophy of slow productivity. The idea that we need our knowledge workers to focus on fewer but more substantial tasks or projects – the outcomes and the outputs perhaps? Minimizing the time spent on actions that have no value.

In this scenario do we really need to promote a culture of extreme responsiveness? Do emails, for example, really require constant checking and responding? Consider instead how batching tasks can provide knowledge workers with the space to think and create.

For example, with email, set an auto reply stating that you respond to emails at a certain time each day, and that if someone has a time sensitive issue they should text or call. Meetings can also be batched, and should only be held to make decisions about a predefined situation, not to define the problem. Only meetings with a clear agenda, topics and questions that need to be addressed, should be attended.

Also consider how this mindset filters down from client to agency. If the client isn’t managing their time effectively then they will waste the resources of the agency, and ultimately affect its ability to provide effective outcomes.

What this means for marketing procurement

But why should procurement professionals, tasked with sourcing marketing services, care about how they buy creativity and innovation? Because research from McKinsey showed that 67 per cent of creative marketing leaders were responsible for above-average organic revenue growth, 70 per cent delivered higher total return to shareholders, and 74 per cent above-average net enterprise value.

Fostering creativity delivers great results, then. But how to do this within the marketing organization and agency? Creating a contract that applies the optimal levels of constraint and a clear order of where money should be invested is a great starting point.

Define appropriate levels of training for agency team members members and ask for details, not just the amount that’s been budgeted (review the agency’s training history as a predictor of future behaviour). Specify outputs and outcomes, and agree on KPIs that determine if these have been delivered. Identify what testing means and how much is to be done.

Build into the contract expectations of operation consistent with the brand’s values, and ensure that value creation (innovation and ideation) versus cost savings (commoditization)  has been defined and clearly communicated to the agency.

The contract should mitigate risk, for sure, but equally it should create an environment where the marketing and agency teams can forge a relationship based on trust and in turn produce better financial results. Many procurement and marketing teams often have opposable goals leading to an adversarial environment, with the agency stuck in the middle. A contract based on more than just rules and safeguards can be a tool that achieves alignment and a foundation for creating great work that works.

To achieve this, ask the innovators themselves about how to structure working agreements and scope to achieve the best ideas and innovation. Returning to the vital issue of productivity and burnout, identify with them a sustainable work level that will deliver creative thinking.

Above all, this requires a balanced approach. Ensure that there is space for the strategic, long-term, outcomes-based work, alongside the more tactical, short-term, and outputs-based activity. In short, ride slower to ride faster.

The Institute of Canadian Agencies aims to positively shape the business environment so that agencies can THRIVE. Working to Amplify, Protect and Transform our members, their people and our industry. 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.

Why marketing and tech have a talent retention problem

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It’s time to build better workplace cultures and hire with diversity in mind when it comes to digital roles, says Darian Kovacs, founder of Jelly Digital Marketing, and the PR and digital marketing school, Jelly Academy.

With a steep rise in the cost of living, looming and long-lasting job dissatisfaction, and changing safety standards, many Canadians are leaving their jobs for other opportunities. This period, beginning early in 2021, has been dubbed “The Great Resignation”.

To learn more about how companies have been affected and how they are pivoting to increase employee retention in digital marketing and tech roles, Jelly Academy ran a survey, sponsored by Innovate BC, to obtain data from 2,000-plus participants across Canada.

Jelly Academy is a digital marketing school that relies heavily on listening to HR managers and industry experts in order to shape its curriculum. As a school, we work hard to stay on top of industry trends to determine which skills and credentials are needed for people to land digital marketing roles. Conversely, as Jelly Digital Marketing, the agency, it is also important to us to know what it takes to retain people in digital marketing and tech roles.

The participants of this survey are from Canada’s main industries including Marketing, Financial Services, Transportation, Food and Beverage, and many others. They were asked about the retention of employees in digital roles, what they are actively doing to hire for digital roles, which tactics are being implemented to retain employees in these roles, and how remote or hybrid options are affecting team culture.

Declining talent retention

A main takeaway from our study is that the majority of Canadian companies, as represented within this sample size, are currently experiencing a downward trend in employee retention for digital-focused marketing and tech roles. While a high percentage of participants cited workplace morale and culture as a reason for employee departure, nearly half of respondents admitted that they do not work to emphasize these within their businesses.

Beyond workplace culture, the study also highlights the shortcomings of small and large organizations when it comes to proactively hiring and retaining diverse employees in digital roles. Management teams within businesses throughout Canada now have the opportunity to use these results to inform strategies that contribute to a more attractive working experience for employees from all backgrounds considering digital roles.

Most importantly. in order to retain employees in digital roles and attempt to offset the effects of “The Great Resignation”, there needs to be greater levels of resources available for employees to be able to continually progress their skills. Employers should also work to strengthen their methods of diverse employee hiring and retention, in order to promote a well-rounded workplace environment.

By encouraging employees in digital roles to always work toward a greater goal, employees are more likely to extend their time with an organization as they remain challenged and invested in their future.

To learn more about the key findings and recommendations by Jelly Academy, read the study here.

Darian Kovacs is the Indigenous founder of Vancouver based SEO company Jelly Digital Marketing & PR and digital marketing school, Jelly Academy. He is also the host of the podcast Marketing News Canada.

Jelly Marketing 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.

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