CMA Marketing Week presents CMAfutureproof, presented by DoubleVerify - Virtual

As we boldly explore the new frontier in marketing, where the marriage of data and AI is becoming a catalyst for growth and innovation, we must consider the potential concerns about brand reputation, transparency and trust. However, with AI-powered solutions, marketers now have the ability to optimize towards their unique business objectives – driving the outcomes they want. In this panel discussion, DoubleVerify’s CCO, Julie Eddleman, will join other industry leaders to delve into how AI is reshaping marketing strategies today and how it will redefine them in years to come.

John Selvakumar
Senior Group Manager, Digital Performance Marketing – Direct Investing

John is a seasoned digital marketer with over 15 years of experience driving innovation and empowering teams to embrace new technology. Currently, he leads a team responsible for digital performance marketing and onsite content for TD's Direct Investing business. John also directs a marketing task force focused on testing and integrating AI tools to enhance TD's marketing strategies. Prior to his current role, John led TD's digital marketing strategy and platform team where he led the build out of TD's digital marketing tech stack, created a best-in-class programmatic model and evangelized digital marketing across the organization.  Outside of work, John maintains an active lifestyle which includes chasing around his two boys, playing softball and sneaking in some golf. He holds an MBA in Strategy and Marketing from the Schulich School of Business at York University.

Julie Eddleman
Global Chief Commercial Officer, DoubleVerify

Julie leads DV’s commercial organization worldwide. This includes driving integration and alignment between all revenue-related functions, including sales, customer support, pricing and revenue management. Prior to DV, Julie was most recently Global Client Partner at Google, where she spearheaded global partnership and growth strategy for some of Google’s largest global clients, including Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, General Motors, Ford and Fiat Chrysler. Prior to Google, Julie led all of the centralized marketing for North America at Procter & Gamble, including media planning and buying, sports marketing, branded entertainment and retailer marketing — leading over 400 employees and 1,000-plus agency personnel. Julie earned both her B.S. in Consumer Affairs and her M.S. in Consumer Behavior from Purdue University.

Sara Burke-Allen
Senior Marketing Manager, QuickBooks

Sara has worked in media for over ten years, with a focus on driving digital acquisition and brand building across channels for brands such as Torstar, The Weather Network, Fairfax and Quickbooks. As Senior Marketing Manager, Sara currently leads the campaign team at QuickBooks, where she is responsible for supporting acquisition, growing brand recognition and evaluating ad tech partners to set her team up with the most effective tools to lead them into the future. Previously, Sara taught Media Buying and Campaign Planning at Humber College.

Brands used to dictate customer behaviour. They would promote their products and services, provide information about them, and process orders. It was a technique built on the premise of the marketing funnel.

Younger generations, thanks to a combination of technological advances and societal shifts, have disrupted the path to purchase. The marketing funnel doesn’t conform to their habits and expectations. Brands have ceded control. They have to give the people what the people want, the brands can’t just tell them what they want.

What does that look like in the real world? What strategies can brands apply to adapt?

Top takeaways:

• How the path-to-purchase has changed
• How to produce engaging, human-centric content
• Content formats that work best, and why
• The role of content marketing in the ‘research’ phase
• What it means for a brand to ‘build community’

Sean Stanleigh
Head of Globe Content Studio, The Globe and Mail

Globe Content Studio is the content-marketing division of The Globe and Mail, a national media and technology company. Sean’s team blends audience data with journalistic intuition and experience to craft great storytelling on behalf of brands, positioning them as thought leaders with influential audiences across multiple platforms. Sean has held a number of senior editing roles at The Globe and the Toronto Star in disciplines that include international, national and local news, small business, and entertainment. His work includes a stint as host of the award-winning podcast Industry Interrupted. He regularly appears at events, live and virtually, as a host, speaker and moderator. Follow him @seanstanleigh on Twitter (sorry X fans) and @sstanleigh on Instagram. 

In this session we will turn the conventional wisdom about AI on its head. Rather than focusing on the technology behind AI, we will focus on people, and how they are incorporating AI into their lives. And rather than viewing AI as a cost-cutting efficiency tool, we will look at how AI might help marketers build stronger relationships with customers, and ultimately grow revenue. The session will include:

• A brief tour of our in-depth research with heavy generative AI users
• An intro to the Human+ Model, our map of how people will use AI in the future to work, play, learn and shop as enhanced versions of themselves
• Global examples of how generative AI is showing up as a transformative consumer technology
• Implications for brands and marketers

Shepherd Laughlin
Director and Future Lead, AI, Kantar

Shepherd Laughlin is Director and Futures Lead, AI with Kantar’s Futures Practice, where he draws on his passion for technology, culture, and human insight to help clients think strategically about the future and discover new growth opportunities. At Kantar, he led the development of a human-centered framework for the future of generative AI, which has been implemented at more than 20 large organizations representing technology, CPG, healthcare, and other industries. Prior to joining Kantar, Shepherd led research at the agency think tank J. Walter Thompson Intelligence. He holds an MBA from INSEAD, a Master of Science from the London School of Economics, and an AB from Brown University.

Join us for a panel discussion that explores how marketing is changing and the crucial role of risk. Our panelists will address important issues, sparking a dialogue about the cautious approach that's becoming common in today's marketing and advertising world. Topics of discussion will include: 

• Are marketers and advertisers more fearful in their decision-making today?
• What are the consequences of not taking chances for marketing, brands, and society?
• What impact will a trend towards less risk have on the marketing profession in the future?
• How might this cautiousness affect the way marketers and advertisers craft stories and experiences?
• What will the concept of taking risks look like going forward?
• Does being prepared for the future equate to eliminating risks?

Matt Jenkins
Founding Partner, Other

Matt Jenkins is one of the Founding Partners at the Toronto-based performance media and creative agency Other. Matt brings more than 10 years experience in performance media, and currently serves on the Executive team of Other. He is responsible for designing and optimizing service delivery, owning relationships with key industry partners, and building career paths for their team of 40 professionals. Matt also serves as a member of the Ethics and Standards Committee at the Canadian Marketing Association, and as a member of the Agency Council at the IAB Canada.

Mike Leon
Managing Director, Brand Heroes Inc.

Want to know what makes me a brander like no other? I’m tall and terrible at sports.

Seriously, when you grow up tall you start life believing you’re a star athlete until you actually try them. Your parents will tell you it builds character, but if I wanted to avoid being thrown in lockers, I knew I needed to tell my story a different way, which meant I had to see it differently too.

This might explain my over 25 year obsession with brands. I see the true story they’re not always able or prepared to see. Does this makes me a misfit? hell ya. Fifteen years ago I started an agency full of them and since then we’ve had the joy of helping brands big and small find their own truth by embracing their own bad athletes - in whatever ways apply to them. Overtime, my team @ Brand Heroes got tired of hearing my opinions, so I spread them to the airwaves as the brand expert on Global Radio and TV and in the classroom as an Adjunct Professor of Branding. 

Oh and I write musicals. Ask me about that sometime.

Josh Stein
Partner, Chief Creative Officer, LG2

Josh joined LG2 in 2023 as Partner, Chief Creative Officer and Co-Chair of the agency's National Creative Council, leading efforts out of the Toronto office. Well-recognized for his work, Josh has garnered both creative and effectiveness awards from every major international and national award show. In 2023 he was ranked 17th in Canada among CCOs on Strategy’s Creative Report Card. Prior to joining LG2, Josh was Chief Creative Officer at McCann Canada where he oversaw 40 creatives across offices in Toronto, Montreal, and Calgary. Under his direction, the agency rose from 34th place in 2017 to one of the top ten agencies on the Creative Report Card in three years, garnering Digital and Agency of the Year awards for the first time in over two decades for the long-standing agency. Prior to joining McCann, Josh was the ECD of Tribal Worldwide and Creative Director at Proximity BBDO where he helped those agencies win Digital Agency of the Year in Canada a total of three times. An entrepreneurial streak has run throughout his career - he founded and ran Blue Room Design Studio in 2000 for four years and opened SaaS company Stuzo’s Canadian office in 2010 until its acquisition by Dachis Group.

With the deprecation of third-party cookies front and center, addressing your total audience across the open internet is only the beginning of future-proofing your marketing.

The next evolution of digital marketing needs to drive measurable outcomes and connect the dots between your audience and your marketing efforts with measurement that is powered by real-time optimizations to drive efficient reach towards those considering your brand and away from those who never would.

Empower your measurement with methodologies and tools that will help to:

• Increase your brand lift with real-time optimization based on survey responses to drive brand performance.
• Connect the consumer journey from brand to demand by measuring the intersection of brand and direct response.
• Drive incremental sales to grow your paid and organic conversions.

Alicia Perrotta
Head of Sales, Canada 

Alicia is a sales leader and experienced adtech executive. She has 15 years of experience working in agency and sales roles in Toronto and is currently Head of Sales for Quantcast Canada. Alicia manages a team of seasoned Account Executives, who partner with agencies and marketers to deliver industry-leading digital performance and brand-focused initiatives. Alicia lives on the shores of Lake Simcoe, in Innisfil with her husband Andrew, and daughter Lila.

Franni Segal
Global Senior Lead measurement Strategist

As the Senior Measurement Lead at Quantcast, Franni leads the Measurement Team in strategy and thought leadership to assist clients in measuring the complex programmatic space across branding and performance initiatives. With over 25 years of experience in data, analytics, and measurement, she has worked on all sides of the business, including agency, publisher, direct client, and ad tech. She has been involved across various verticals in implementing measurement strategy on Display, Native, Mobile, and Connected TV.

The 360 degree view of the customer - the ability to accurately identify a person across every interaction and derive insights from the context and data relevant to that interaction - has lost credence due to technology, and organizational silos that undermine its potential.  However, the 360 is attainable with Customer Identity.  Customer Identity, is a means to collect, protect and activate omni-channel, compliant data across an organization’s tech ecosystem.

Michael Annett
Strategic Account Executive, Okta

Michael Annett has been a sales and marketing technology executive for over twenty five years working for great companies like IBM, DoubleClick acquired by Google, Salesforce and Adobe.Today he is consulting Fortune 500 executives on how to go Passwordless with Okta and has provided thought leadership as the Co-Chair of the MarTech council for the Canadian Marketing Association for the past five years.

Sabrina Geremia
VP & Country Managing Director, Google Canada

Champions digital and AI as a tool to drive productivity and growth for businesses and Canadians. 

Her team at Google leads the ads partnership with Canada’s most sophisticated businesses and she steers the cross functional strategic direction of Google in Canada.

A digital veteran & global leader, Sabrina has worked at Google UK, Procter & Gamble Italy, Reckitt Benckiser UK, Ask Jeeves UK & Ireland, and mobile start-up Incirco. She is a member of the Business Council of Canada and serves on the board of Definity Financial Corporation & advisory boards of Catalyst Canada & Rumie. Sabrina was recognized as one of Globe and Mail's Best Executives (2022), WCT Woman of the Year (2020), one of Canada’s WXN top 100 most powerful women (2015).

Barry Alexander
Chief Marketing and Diversity Officer, Canadian Marketing Association

Barry is a passionate, data-driven marketer who has served as a senior marketing and strategy leader on a diverse set of consumer brands. As Chief Marketing and Diversity Officer, Barry is responsible for all marketing, events, thought leadership and media efforts as well as spearheading our DEI impact initiatives and partnerships. Prior to the CMA, Barry held senior marketing roles with Knix, Iovate Health Sciences, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, Maple Leaf Foods and Molson and has served as a member of the Humber Business Program Advisory Committee and as a mentor with the Black Talent Initiative.