March 2025 President's Note

Happy March.

I’m writing from Tokyo where I kicked off the month by running the Tokyo Marathon yesterday. It was far from my fastest time but it was an amazing way to see the city. I hope your month is off to a fun start too.

On a more serious note, we’re all facing a landscape of uncertainty, shaped by political changes and economic instability. The threat of new U.S. tariffs has added another layer of complexity to our profession and the CMA is committed to supporting our community as we navigate our way through. On that note, the CMA has urged the government to take decisive action to strengthen Canada’s economic resilience and global leadership role.

In this environment, there’s renewed patriotism and the 'buy Canadian' movement is gaining traction. An Ipsos study found that 76% of Canadians took action in February, including buying more Canadian-made products, stopping travel to the US, and reducing their purchase and use of U.S. products and services. With this shift, brands are eager to showcase their Canadian roots and ties. It’s crucial to ensure any Canadian marketing claims are accurate. We published this blog to help you manage the important nuances.

The CMA is dedicated to helping futureproof and support marketers and building Canada’s next generation of marketing talent. We hosted our first CMA Marketing Talent Forum last week to a sold-out crowd. It was a valuable opportunity for our community to come together to learn, network and connect highly skilled marketers with great employers.

Embracing continual learning is key to growing your career, which is why we introduced significant savings of 50% for CMA members off our Learning programs this year. We continue to evolve our courses to help you stay on top of the constantly changing marketing landscape. Some upcoming sessions include:

1. A new Marketer’s Introduction to AI Agents Training session, which is taking place this Wednesday.
2. Our new Marketing in Canada Certificate course, which launches this week.
3. Our new training session focused on the Emotionally Intelligent Marketer: Elevate Your Career and Drive Team Success – the first of our training to be held in person at our new office on March 19.
4. Our Chartered Marketer (CM) program, which is Canada’s only professional marketing designation, is now available on-demand and members benefit from 50% savings.

We welcomed hundreds of new CMs to our community last year and they’re all benefiting from a powerful differentiator in a highly competitive market.

We’re also helping futureproof your career by providing compelling thought leadership and forums like our CMA Café series to fuel healthy debates with colleagues from across our community. You can read our latest articles and senior marketers can join one of our March CMA Cafés for free.

Diversity continues to be a priority and can deliver tangible business benefits to our profession. Our latest EDI survey is now in field. Strategy is our lead partner on this important work and 15 other organizations are distribution partners this year, so it will be our largest ever. 

Your participation helps our profession better understand how to cultivate workplace environments that are inclusive, respectful and supportive of all. 

We’re kicking off spring with CMA Marketing Week starting May 5. Last year’s inaugural week brought together close to 2,000 marketers across Canada, and we’re excited to build on that success this year.

• The week will start with a live CMA Connect podcast and an event in Vancouver.
• Members will benefit from free access to several of our CMA AI training sessions on Training Tuesday.
• Our signature event, CMAfutureproof will take place on May 7.
• We’re hosting our first social for junior marketers during CMA Marketing Week as well.

We’ll have more details on CMA Marketing Week soon. And as the year unfolds, I’ll share more new benefits and innovations that you can enjoy as part of your CMA membership. 

Saturday is International Women’s Day. This year’s theme ‘Accelerate Action’ emphasizes the importance of taking swift and decisive steps to achieve gender equality. The CMA is proud to be a leader in this area: 56% of our Board Directors are women and I’m the CMA’s first female CEO. We’ll be celebrating on Friday with our event Women in Business: Harnessing AI, Captivate Exclusive. It’s free for members and almost sold out.

I want to end by thanking you for participating in our CMA member and marketer satisfaction survey. Your voice is key to helping us continue to evolve and support your career and our profession.

It was rewarding to see positive growth across every satisfaction score, including an overall member satisfaction score of 88% and a score of 87% for how the CMA is futureproofing the profession.

If you’re taking time off for March Break later this month, I wish you a memory-rich time with family and friends. 

Warm regards,

Alison Simpson
President & CEO

P.S. Our CMA Connect podcast is another way we help futureproof the marketing profession. Our latest episode is an insightful conversation about futureproofing marketing with Alan Depencier, our CMA Board Chair. I invite you to tune in.