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I was recruited as a marketing assistant. I was the assistant to the assistant product manager. We helped the product manager research, write and defend marketing plans designed to sell more of our portfolio of products. We worked on frozen foods, Swanson and Pepperidge Farm Dessert brands.

Our focus was on selling product. We were measured on sales and market share gains. Perhaps we inherently knew we were building brands but that was not our focus. Our focus was on selling stuff. Brand value wasn’t discussed.

How the world has changed in the nearly 4 decades since. Lining my bookshelf today, next to the Campbell Soup mug, are some twenty-five books on brands. Over the course of my career product managers were replaced with brand managers.

By Bob Reaume, ACA It’s a question that all clients must ask themselves this summer as commercials are being readied for air in the fall. As of September 1st, 2014, all advertising commercials, sponsorship messages and promos broadcast on television stations in Canada must be aired with closed captioning for the hearing impaired.

By Tom Hendrikson, Chief Breakthrough Officer, Sixsense Strategy Group Inc. Here is a situation that may be familiar: You begin to experience frustration in your dealings with your MarCom agency. That frustration leads you to terminate the relationship with that agency. But, later, you find yourself in a similar situation with a new agency. The […]

By Ian MacLean, Vice President, Communications, Media Experts This article was reprinted with permission. The original article appeared on the Media Experts website. Canadian media industry veteran Ian MacLean offers up some compelling ideas about how to solve the current state of Canada’s Video-On-Demand (VOD) advertising. We Canadians love our TV and are clearly enamoured […]

By ACA Staff Five Ways Marketers Should Use Digital Big Data to Their Advantage It was just this past November at ACA’s Annual Conference that Gian Fulgoni, Founder of comScore’s Media Metrix, announced that his company’s multi-platform online measurement tool was coming to Canada. Marketers would soon have access to seemingly endless amounts of data […]

By Stephan Argent, CEO, The Argedia Group Let’s face it, an agency pitch can be a lot of work. It’s a lot of work for the agencies involved and it’s a time consuming exercise in logistics, exploration and evaluation for marketers, who need to determine the right questions to help find the best agencies for […]