Brand strategy firm Level 5 has invested in some senior-level talent including a beer guy, a sports guy and an academic.
The company yesterday announced the hiring of Tom Wright, former commissioner of the Canadian Football League and CEO of Adidas Canada, and Bruce Elliot, former president of Labatt Breweries and Second Cup, as managing directors, brand advisors. Both will work directly with clients.
Ken Wong, associate professor of business and marketing strategy at Queens University, was also brought on board as vice-president, knowledge development.
“It’s like applied R&D,” Wong said. “I’ve been doing a lot of work on marketing in a down economy, and the whole area of marketing productivity—not just the strategy, but managing the company to get to the strategy.”
While maintaining his teaching and public speaking schedules, Wong will now consult with Level 5 clients on how marketing should fit into their corporate structures as they evolve with the economic downturn.
“It’s general management with a marketing sensitivity,” he said. “This will replace some of the private consulting I’ve done. I’ll be producing white papers and won’t have specific account responsibilities,” but will play a role in account acquisition.
Having developed long-standing relationship with each of his new executives, David Kincaid, founder and CEO of Level 5, chose all three because their philosophies on branding matched his own.
“We believe that ‘brand’ is a business system, not a mar-com effort,” Kincaid said. “It’s developing a proposition in the market that creates a point of difference and delivers on a consumer need, but also aligning a business model and business system around delivering it.”
Of course, the trio’s collective experience with some of the country’s biggest brands didn’t hurt either.
“We have consciously built an organization where we can sit across the table from CEOs, CFOs and board members, look them in the eye and say ‘We’ve walked a mile in your shoes,’ ” Kincaid said.
“Tom saved Adidas here in Canada. In many ways he saved the CFL. Bruce was thrown a significant challenge [at Second Cup] to refocus the brand in light of what had become extremely strong competitive pressure from beneath with Tim Hortons and from above with Starbucks.”
The addition of such high-level talent is both an investment in future growth and a sign of financial growth at Level 5, said Kincaid. Despite the economic downturn, the company is experiencing double-digit growth from the same period last year, the best in its eight-year history.
“Business has been extremely positive,” said Kincaid.
