Small agencies take center stage at AMA Toronto’s year-end panel
Annual event showcases industry leaders making a big impact on Canada’s marketing scene
TORONTO, December 10, 2024 – Artificial intelligence, multiculturalism and more are creating new challenges and exciting opportunities for marketers.
The spotlight was on small agencies at AMA Toronto’s 9th annual year-end panel on the theme of “Small Agency, Big Impact.”
Panellists included Neil McOstrich, Co-founder & Chief Storytelling Officer, Cleansheet Communications; Jeffrey Almeida, Managing Director, Balmoral Multicultural Marketing; Karla Congson, CEO & CTO, Agentiiv; and Alana Lees, Managing Partner & Chief Strategy Officer, Boom InterTribal. Sean Stanleigh, Content Studio Head, Globe Media Group moderated.
The group engaged in a wide-ranging discussion on everything from emerging technology and brand strength to ethnic and Indigenous marketing.
“The Agency Panel event serves as an essential year-end gathering for Toronto’s marketing community,” said Stanleigh. “The candid discussion delivers valuable insights around challenges and opportunities from the past year, and a glimpse of what’s ahead for the industry in 2024.”
Steady growth the way forward for multicultural marketing
At Balmoral, Almeida leads a multi-ethnic team helping brands such as OLG, Nestle and Sobeys connect with Canada’s growing multicultural communities.
“In the multicultural marketing business, the passion that we put into our work is to raise the industry standards. The biggest challenge is that we see the industry leveling out. But, as an agency, we at Balmoral have grown steadily,” he told the audience.
He added that educating brands on the opportunities ethnic groups represent plays a big role in sustaining multicultural marketing.
“If the industry lifts itself, the business will live. Consistently, we’ve been seeing that lift year after year. If more brands embrace a multicultural approach, that would overcome a big challenge for us,” he added.
Indigenous marketing means more than symbolic gestures
At Boom InterTribal, Lees helps brands bridge the gap between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous worlds. When it comes to communicating to an Indigenous audience, she said, it is essential to do so with humility.
“That corporations want to help elevate and move the conversation forward is incredible; but making sure they do it in the right way is critical, because you have one chance to make an impression as an organization and you don’t want to mess that up,” she said.
While mentions of truth and reconciliation are great, she added, brands need insights and commitment to ensure they are doing more than just making symbolic gestures.
“There are a lot of people out there who want to just get it done and check a box. We see clients out there that want to do that, and we’re here to help eliminate it, to stop it from happening, and to explain why it’s important to go beyond the stereotypical things,” she said.
New technology means new challenges, and new opportunities
As the head of Canada’s first fully hybrid AI-human consultancy, Congson stated that while disruption is nothing new, a perfect clash of headwinds is now producing both pressures and opportunities.
“I see tools that can help us move faster, do interesting things, do more innovative things. What AI brings, I believe, is the democratization of expertise. You don’t need to be a big company with a million dollars to capture the expertise at hand,” she said.
Congson added that technology will profoundly impact client relations, with some agencies moving to a more transactional approach, looking to ride the wave of faster and cheaper.
“Other agencies will redefine themselves and create new value; that’s what clients are looking for. They’re not looking to you to answer the mail. They want you to look at their problems, bring fresh perspectives, but to bring it faster and better than your competition,” she said.
Is brand marketing set to make a comeback?
A storyteller at heart, McOstrich stated that, while conversions and short-term returns have dominated much of the discussion since the pandemic, clients have started to realize their brands are not as strong as they were before.
“I always say, make sure your brand is in order. A great definition of a brand is, ‘A brand is the difference between what something is worth and what someone is willing to pay.’ And the greater the delta, the stronger your brand,” he said.
He added that, with technology making it easier for competitors to close the gap and copy what others are doing, the importance of brand is set to return to the forefront.
“With AI, with all the technologies that everybody has at their disposal, we’re creating a faster world of parity. Parity happens in nanoseconds now,” he added. “So, if you don’t have a strong brand, your future is going to be one of discounting, sales, all those tactics to get rid of products. Why would you want to do that?”
To succeed, you need insight and know-how
Over the past two decades, Lees said she has seen both missteps as well as successes when it comes to brands engaging with Indigenous communities.
“One of the biggest things that I hear is, ‘We consulted with an elder,’ or ‘We consulted with a member from X community or Y community.’ That’s great. That is a tiny sliver of what needs to be done for engagement when speaking to an Indigenous audience,” she said.
While it is important to ensure Indigenous voices are present at the table, she added, it is also important to involve those who can speak not only to culture and experience, but also to marketing strategy and storytelling.
“I see very good intentions. People want to commit to reconciliation. I see that people want to move the needle, but there is a level of guidance that needs to be there from an Indigenous person who understands marketing, not just your local elder or community member,” she said.
In a multicultural world, not all KPIs are equal
Another challenge multicultural marketers face, Almeida explained, is that brands often want to benchmark key performance indicators against mainstream indexes.
“The average Canadian family size is 2.2, whereas the multicultural family size is 4.2. Automatically, there are more people brushing their teeth, there are more people eating food. So, there are certain KPIs that we will always over index, and there are certain KPIs that we will always under index.”
He adds that, while multicultural KPIs, like mainstream ones, are based on media channels, on sales and research, how those KPIs are set up is of key importance.
“Multicultural and mainstream are not twins. Today, an ethnic consumer doesn’t have the brand salience, the affinity, the equity of what a mainstream consumer has,” he said. “So, when KPIs are allocated to us, we need to use certain control groups, which pick up variables that allow us to forecast those KPIs.”
The little guys can win big, too (if you know how)
Having worked with household names such as Nike, Caramilk and Canadian Tire, McOstrich knows the challenges small agencies face when trying to win big clients.
“I realized early in my career that there was a bias towards big, and if we didn’t change the rules, we’d lose. The first question on the RFP was, how big is your agency? How many people do you have? How many offices do you have? But, it really only takes about six people to crack a great campaign. You put them in a room, give them a project, they can crack it,” he said.
To counter this, McOstrich decided to lead with his heart and create inclusive ideas that would motivate not just customers, but employees, too.
“I’d go to corporations and say, ‘You’ve got enough people in this organization who see your business with their heads. Let me see your company with my heart. Let me look at it through a lens you’ve never seen before,’” he said.
It’s a good time to be small
In a period of transformation, Congson told the audience, the nature of change can create opportunities for those that are best positioned to take advantage of it.
“Technology is changing exponentially. It’s as if iPhone launched a new model every day or every two days. That’s the degree to which things are changing. But, organizations, particularly larger ones, change at a linear rate. So, the delta between those two things is what gives smaller agencies room for disruption,” she said.
She added that many bigger organizations are chasing the obvious when it comes to new technology, resulting in a race where everyone is doing the same thing.
“If you’re using AI to write an email or to summarize a meeting, it’s like someone gave you a supersonic jet and you used it to wheel yourself to the corner store to pick up milk. It got you there a little faster, but did you really use it to the full extent?” she said.
About the Agency Panel
Launched in 2015, the Agency Panel is one of AMA Toronto’s longest running and most popular annual events for marketers of all levels in our community. The panel is a forum to explore the opinions and experiences of bellwether marketers from the Canadian agency sector in order to predict and discuss emerging or ongoing trends, as well as challenges and opportunities facing our industry in the upcoming year. It features a diverse and different panel of progressive agency leaders each year to keep the content and perspectives fresh. Set in a popular downtown bar, the event offers a neutral, non-corporate environment for agency leaders, and a fitting stage for some of the industry’s biggest personalities.
About AMA Toronto
The Toronto Chapter of the American Marketing Association (AMA Toronto) is a not-for-profit community of volunteer marketers who have been empowering leadership and business growth for more than 70 years in Canada. With more than 30,000 members and 70 chapters across North America, the AMA is the largest not-for-profit marketing association in the world serving organizations and individuals who practice, teach and study marketing. Learn more here.
About the author
Michael Thede is a PR manager with AMA Toronto. Prior to relocating to Toronto, he lived and worked in Shanghai, where he led international marketing communications for one of the top business schools in Asia. He has also worked with brands such as Education First, Disney and Porsche. Michael is currently pursuing a master’s degree in marketing at Schulich School of Business (York University). Connect with him on LinkedIn here.
About the photographer
Duo Ma is the director of volunteer onboarding and a photographer for AMA Toronto. Outside of AMA, she works as a Marketing and Trade Show Coordinator at Top Grade Molds. She has a master’s in marketing from Schulich School of Business. Her passion for photography has been a lifelong pursuit, stemming from her early years, and she takes joy in capturing cherished moments through her lens. Connect with her on LinkedIn here.
