David Kincaid
L’Institut Idée, the strategy and design consultancy co-venture between Bleublancrouge, Wunderkind and Scientific Intelligence, has brought on its first business development lead to help it find more businesses in need of creative reinvention.
David Kincaid is a founder and managing partner at Level5 Strategy Group, a Canadian c-suite brand consulting firm. In the past, he was CMO of Corus Entertainment, and led Labatt Breweries’ expansion into Central America as senior vice-president of marketing and strategic planning. Like L’Institut Idée’s other partners, Kincaid will continue to manage his own business in addition to taking on this new part-time role.
“David is not only one of the most recognized and respected opinion leaders in the marketing industry, but has been a close ally to Scientific Intelligence since our inception,” said Syd Kessler, one of the founding partners at L’Institut and Scientific Intelligence. Kincaid has worked for several years with SI and its sister agency, Wunderkind.
L’Institut founder and president Wahn Yoon said that a complementary partnership between Level5 and L’Institut made a lot of sense, since L’Institut can provide a people-focused creative approach to complement Level5’s analytically focused brand consulting.
“David coming on board is a sign of the times,” Yoon said. “He always has his finger on the pulse, and he’s recognizing that there are some very large companies that really want their leadership teams to be directly involved in making change happen. They want something that is very intuitive, creative, and design-oriented. His coming on board is an indication of the growth of that segment.”
L’Institut was founded a year ago as a joint venture of Bleublancrouge and Scientific Intelligence/Wunderkind, led by Bleublancrouge CEO Sebastien Fauré and SI partners Yoon, Penelope Fridman Syd and Jacob Kessler. Since then Marketing 30 Under 30 alumnus Simon Cazelais has also come on board.
Through its first year, L’Institut has come to focus on two types of consulting projects, Yoon said. Some clients are looking for L’Institut to help them reinvent their organization, with a new strategic vision and a more modern way of managing their business. Others are looking to reinvent a product or line of products, to take advantage of new opportunies.
The Interprovincial Lottery Corporation, a trade association comprised of Canada’s three major provincial lotteries, was a recent client of the latter type, which hired L’Institut to design new lottery products that could appeal to Millennials.
L’Institut currently maintains three offices in Toronto, Montreal and Boston. Yoon said the team is considering further opportunities working with aggressive, design-focused businesses in California, as well as in the U.K. and Europe.
