Ones To Watch 2006

Michelle Bodnarchuk
Strategic Project Manager
BC Lottery Corporation, Richmond B.C.
Age: 29

Except for a year when Purdy’s Chocolates recruited her as marketing manager, Bodnarchuk has worked at BC Lottery Corporation since graduating from Simon Fraser University in 2001. At BCLC she has worked on high-profile pieces of business such as the rebranding of Lotto Super 7. At Purdy’s she helped expand the nearly 100-year-old brand into Ontario. She was behind one of the most successful store openings in the history of the company and developed a cross-promotion with Telus ADSL that resulted in a 10% lift in retail sales.

Ask Bodnarchuk her career highlight and she’ll tell you she’s experiencing it right now as project lead for SportsFunder, the first cause-related lottery product for the corporation that supports amateur sports and includes an instant-win ticket where winners get to spend the day with Wayne Gretzky.

“I have been an athlete, an official and a coach and I really do believe that sport brings an enormous amount of value to everyday life,” she says. “Being able to work on SportsFunder and what I hope will be a catalyst for sport in B.C. is an absolutely incredible experience.”

Susan de Stein, president of the Vancouver-based DDSM Partners Corporate Communications, Purdy’s PR firm, calls Bodnarchuk “smart, energetic and strategic.”

“She also gives back to her communities, spending hours a week coaching amateur sports, mentoring and teaching young people.”
-EVE LAZARUS

Helen Galanis
Strategy & Advertising Manager
Canadian Tire, Toronto
Age: 29

On the advice of a high-school English teacher, Helen Galanis decided to enter the advertising world. “He recommended that I be a copywriter,” she says. Galanis set out to do just that, studying English at York University, then advertising at Centennial College in Toronto. But as she learned about the business, she was “drawn more to the strategic planning end of it.” She landed her first agency job as a media planner at Starcom MediaVest Group, then made the jump to the marketer side by joining Canadian Tire three years later.

At Canadian Tire, Galanis is in charge of campaign planning and creative production. This year, she led the development of the retailer’s spring campaign, “which just happened to be the first campaign we developed with (new agency) Taxi,” she says. “It was exciting because it was the first one.”

Galanis worked on everything from developing the creative brief to media planning, and flew to Chile for three weeks in January to shoot the ads for the spring campaign (which needed nice weather). She also plays a key role in developing marketing and communication strategies for new products. This year, the “demo-mercial” couple, Ted and Gloria, were replaced with product spots with a lighthearted tone.

Galanis “has fantastic instincts and really understands what makes a great creative idea, as well as the power of a great creative idea,” says Taxi’s Cheryl Grishkewich, managing director on the Canadian Tire business.

Galanis manages a team of four and describes her leadership style as collaborative. “There’s no right answer when it comes to advertising and creative, so I like to let my team run with it.”
-REBECCA HARRIS

Chris Gostling
Art Director
Pareto Corp., Toronto
Age: 27

It’s no surprise that, at Toronto’s Pareto Corp.-a place that’s known for its workman-like approach to marketing services-you’ll find Chris Gostling.

The Grimsby, Ont.-native, who launched the below-the-line company’s in-house art department when he came aboard three years ago, deftly straddles the line between creativity and bottom-line business results.

For clients like BMO, he helped design a unique pyramid-shaped desk calendar that was so embraced by the marketer that it has become a mainstay internal marketing tool.

And when golf giant Callaway called on him to create a non-denominational holiday thank-you card for suppliers last December, he responded with an ingenious, on-brand DM piece that folded out into the shape of a candy-cane golf putter. “I’m a fan of the clean-line, contemporary look. But contemporary with a purpose- not just for the sake of it being ‘Wow it’s nice and clean,’ ” he says.

In December 2005, Gostling received his Registered Graphic Designer designation, and continues his commitment to the industry by lending his time to do portfolio reviews. An accomplished folk-rock musician, he stays in touch with his creative side with a monthly solo gig, playing unplugged for the crowd at Toronto’s Crown & Dragon pub. He also gives back with various performances in support of AIDS and breast cancer charities.

When it comes to his day job, he’s equally thoughtful. “I’m constantly thinking of the feasibility of stuff,” he says. “I want to have a great design, but can the client afford it? And does it make sense to have the client pay for it?”

With thinking like that, you know somewhere, someplace, a budget-conscious marketer is saying: “Get this man a mic.”
-PAUL-MARK RENDON

Alex Green
Vice-President, Marketing
Panago Pizza, Toronto
Age: 30

Alex Green says food has become an obsession since he started at Panago Pizza three-and-a-half years ago. That obsession has brought results. The 30-year-old vice-president of marketing helped to implement a restructured menu and pricing format in the past year, contrasting the discounts and product bundling of competitors with gourmet recipes and consistent prices. The strategy has paid off. For the past 13 months, single-store sales figures have grown by double-digit averages when compared to the same month in the previous year. Franchisees are biting, too, with Green recently relocating to Toronto from Panago’s headquarters in Vancouver to oversee an Ontario expansion that has produced some of Panago’s most successful new locations.

So what will Green, whose responsibilities range from product development to advertising communications, do for an encore? Christine Coughlan, account manager at Mercer Creative Group, Panago’s agency, doesn’t think Green will have any trouble. “He understands Panago as a brand and understands where he wants to take it.” Green himself shows no signs of backing down from the challenge. “There’s always pressure when you’ve had a good year to do that much better,” he says. “But I’d rather that than the pressure of turning around a declining business.” In the meantime, he’ll keep taking his work home with him.
-MATT SEMANSKY

Jaime Kalesnikoff
Marketing Manager
Yahoo Canada, Toronto
Age: 27

Jaime Kalesnikoff is always at the forefront. While working at Chum Interactive, she was involved in the network’s first mobile campaigns. At CanWest, she managed the development and launch of FPinfomart.ca’s mobile website, and she was an integral part of last year’s Canada.com relaunch, which she deems one of her most significant accomplishments.

She joined Yahoo Canada in December and, just two months after, was charged with marketing the Yahoo Music Unlimited program. Her campaign reached 67% of its year-end user targets and 43% of year-end subscription goals in the first quarter alone. Kalesnikoff also led Yahoo’s sponsorship of Junofest, a consumer event linked to the Juno Awards, which helped the company gain important clients.

“Jaime’s focus on objectives and her knack for challenging the status quo have won her accolades from colleagues globally, and recognition that she is a top-notch marketer who has only just started to make her mark at Yahoo,” says general manager Kerry Munro.

For her part, Kalesnikoff hopes the trailblazing is just beginning. “There are so many things that go on online, and there’s always something new,” she says. “I’m always trying to think of that need in the marketplace that no one’s identified, and to bring it to Canada through Yahoo and be the first in the marketplace with it.”
-MICHELLE HALPERN

Michael Kurtz
Marketing Director
Select Sandwich, Toronto
Age: 29

After watching the movie Dodgeball, Michael Kurtz decided he wanted to start a league of his own. Last spring, Toronto Dodgeball opened its doors and now has over 200 players. “It’s a lot of fun and it’s one of the most challenging sporting activities you will ever do,” he says.

Kurtz is always up for a challenge, especially when it comes to marketing. Brian Kahn, president of Select Sandwich, says Kurtz “has very innovative new ideas.” To build Select Sandwich’s catering business, Kurtz launched the “Lost” campaign last fall. “Lost and Found” ads were placed in Toronto newspapers, asking readers if they had found $1,000. Radio ads featured the money’s owner “Jay,” who misplaced the cash in a Select Sandwich brochure. He encouraged people to pick up a brochure and help find the money.

More recently, Kurtz created a campaign for “The Barbarian,” a 10 oz. marinated roast beef sandwich. Customers could enter a contest and receive a medal “for heroic completion” of the sandwich.

The Lost campaign helped boost same-store sales by 15% in Q4 of 2005, while the Barbarian promotion helped increase same-store sales by 9% in the first quarter of this year.

Kurtz’s top priority for Select Sandwich, which has 30 locations mainly in office buildings in the Greater Toronto Area, is to “just get people to be aware of us, who we are and where we are.”

A Toronto native, Kurtz studied marketing at the University of Western Ontario in London and graduated in 2000. After a stint as a European backpacker and “ski bum” in Banff, he held various marketing jobs before joining Select Sandwich in 2003. These days, Kurtz is busy planning his wedding to fiancée Calen and playing with their new dog Archer.
-REBECCA HARRIS

Rob Linden
Brand Manager, Pantene hair care
Procter & Gamble
Age: 28

When marketing a beauty product, image is everything.

Rob Linden, Procter & Gamble’s 28-year-old brand manager for Pantene hair care products, has changed Pantene’s image to position it as a beauty essential, upgrading point-of-sale display materials and packaging and introducing premium line extensions.

“It’s hard to sell a $10 product when you look like a $2 brand,” he says. It’s also hard to change the way a massive corporation handles its advertising. “P&G is like the Titanic of packaged goods, so if you’re going to turn it around you have to do it slowly,” he says. “We’re notorious for doing just TV and print, but we’re making steps.” Linden’s steps have helped Pantene grow by two percentage points in the past two years to a 14.9% market share, two and a half times larger than its closest competitor.

In addition to his duties with P&G, Linden regularly speaks to students and appears at industry functions. “I’ve sat with him on various panels and his depth of insight captures audiences like almost no one else I’ve seen,” says Shane Skillen, president of HotSpex Market Research and Innovation, which provides research services to P&G. Linden also established a New Hire Network at P&G that connects new employees with senior management. “My own experience inspired that,” he says. “When I first started it was a scary place.” As with Pantene, Linden hopes to change that image.
-MATT SEMANSKY

Sophie Maheo
Promotional Manager, Lipitor
Pfizer Canada, Kirkland, Que.
Age: 27

It’s safe to say that Sophie Maheo has enjoyed a clear path to success. After all, how many people fresh out of school become promotional manager for a brand that has almost $1 billion in annual Canadian sales- making Lipitor Pfizer’s biggest brand and Canada’s top-selling cholesterol-reducing drug.

Maheo, who joined Pfizer in June 2005 after finishing her MBA at McGill University, became Lipitor’s promotional manager last October. Since then she has worked on improving sales mainly by revamping direct-to-consumer campaigns. “Our compliance is about 60% at one year,” she says. But “when you’re talking about a brand that’s making that kind of money, the 40% that we could have is huge.”

Among other things, Maheo has put her stamp on new TV and radio ads for the cholesterol-awareness site MakingtheConnection.ca, as well as the patient website Lipitor.ca. Maheo says early research for the Making the Connection campaign shows the response to the call to action tops previous campaigns.

“She’s just proven herself while she’s been there,” says Karl Moore, an associate professor in the Faculty of Management at McGill University, who taught Maheo and hired her as his research assistant. “She’s driven to achieve and accomplish, but she’s charming and very good with people.” Not only that, but Maheo is a quick study, which “is very helpful in terms of being a good marketer. Being able to connect the dots quickly is important to keep ahead of the competition.”

Maheo, a native of France, did her undergrad in Paris in general business but came to Montreal for an internship at Yves Rocher cosmetics. She worked there for two years, developing a new position as marketing analyst before returning to school to complete her MBA.

Maheo, who will be responsible for a new diabetes product that Pfizer plans to launch next year, says her goal is to become a product manager. “I feel like I’m doing something good,” she says. “I won’t say I’m saving lives, but I’m contributing to something that does pretty good for society.”
-DANNY KUCHARSKY

Nizzi Karai Renaud
Vice-President
Sequentia Communications, Toronto
Age: 30

Originally from India and, most recently, Boston, Nizzi Karai Renaud says she “came to Toronto and fell in love with the diversity.”

She’s held positions at digital shops like Delvinia and Kalixo before landing at her current home, Sequentia Communications, an online marketing and PR firm.

Hired as a contractor in April 2005, Renaud was promoted four times within one year, eventually arriving at her current position of vice-president for the Toronto-based company. “Nizzi has fundamentally changed Sequentia from the ground up,” says agency president Jennifer Evans. “Her introduction of measurement processes and metrics has resulted in better pricing, more effective time management, and a better understanding of what we need to do to be successful.”

She’s also expanded Sequentia’s online marketing capabilities and worked with clients on search optimization, e-newsletters and other projects.

Renaud holds a bachelor’s degree in communication studies and a master’s degree in integrated marketing communications, both from Emerson College in Boston. And having worked both north and south of the border, she has much respect for the Canadian marketing industry. “We push a bit more to have risks taken here, and after the risk is taken, there’s a lot more follow-through,” she says. “So we learn from it, which is amazing.”
-MICHELLE HALPERN

Eli Singer
Marketing and Communications Strategist
Cundari SFP, Toronto
Age: 29

Even after he hired Eli Singer in May 2005, Peter Francey, president of Cundari SFP, admits he was unsure about how Singer’s new media expertise could be used by clients.

Since then, Singer has made Francey a believer, with clients following right behind.

While working pro bono with the public affairs committee at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Singer-a blogger himself (singer.to)- suggested bloggers get media invitations to the launch of a Frank Gehry exhibit. Several popular Toronto bloggers were also given the chance to interview Gehry and wrote about the exhibit. AGO exit interviews following the launch showed the Internet was the top attendance driver: 36% versus 15% for a another exhibit last year. Another blogger outreach program for the opening of the Canadian Opera Company was similarly successful.

Blogging, says Singer, is a “medium of conversations. Those conversations are taking place whether you like it or not; what are you going to do about it?”

Singer helped prove marketers can find new customers if they communicate with them through their preferred media, says Francey, who says Singer was instrumental in six wins for Cundari SFP this year including Moosehead and Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation. “Clients pay a little more attention and even if they don’t buy (blogging), they are really interested in it.” So much so that Cundari SFP is beginning to position “social media” (like blogging) as its own practice area within the firm, says Francey.

After graduating from the Richard Ivey School of Business in 2001 Singer worked with new media guru Don Tapscott and helped write the bestseller The Power of the 2×2 Matrix with authors Alex Lowy and Phil Hood. The Globe and Mail named it the top Canadian business title of 2004. In June, on his own time, Singer launched the first CaseCamp; a wiki-based marketing “unconference” where presenters share marketing case studies. More than 70 people turned up and its success spawned another CaseCamp in Montreal, with a second Toronto event in July and another one scheduled for later this fall.

Singer thrives on what he calls “disruptive innovation.” “It’s seeing what is underground at the point where it breaks into the mainstream,” he says.
-DAVID BROWN

Dan Strasser
Art Director
DDB Canada, Vancouver
Age: 25

Last fall Adweek called Dan Strasser “one of the best creatives you don’t know about.” The New York-based trade mag also ranked him a “must-have” young talent. Alan Russell, chief creative officer at DDB Canada agreed, because when Strasser left the agency’s Chicago office last year, Russell hired him in Vancouver.

Since graduating from the Miami Ad School in 2003, the Alberta-born Strasser has created ads at DDB Chicago for Capital One, Napster and Sea World, but says his career highlight so far was seeing his two commercials-the Bud Light “Skydiver” and the Budweiser “Superfan” (which featured a streaking sheep)-appear on Super Bowl broadcasts in 2005 and 2006, respectively.

Russell describes Strasser as a “really bright young guy.”

“He’s smart, he’s prolific and he works really hard,” says Russell. “He definitely comes at things from a different angle and sometimes that’s a slightly warped angle.”

Strasser’s work has been recognized at Cannes, the Clios, the Sharkies and on Adcritic.com. At DDB Vancouver, he’s worked on the Telus, B.C. Dairy Foundation and B.C. Hydro accounts. Ask him what account he’d most like to work on in the future and he’ll tell you it’s Sony Playstation. “It’s probably one of the funnest accounts, but I like this agency so I wish we had it here.”
-EVE LAZARUS

Stephen Yanofsky
Advertising Specialist
Canon Canada, Mississauga, Ont.
Age: 29

Stephen Yanofsky enjoys being swamped.

The advertising specialist for Canon Canada describes himself as a “one-man team,” responsible for the advertising of every product his employer develops. With Canon introducing more than 50 products a year, this one-man team is always playing ball. In the three years he’s been with Canon, the company’s campaigns have become more multifaceted. “When I started we were basically a print-heavy company,” he says. “We now have the most integrated advertising program we’ve had since I got here and I’m very proud of that.”

The York University graduate has added broadcast and out-of-home advertising to the mix, helping to maintain Canon’s position at or near the top of several product categories, including a record-high 33.7% market share for digital cameras (a 10% increase from 2004).

Associates, like Ron Telpner, president and founder of The Brainstorm Group, which handles advertising for Canon, says Yanofsky has taken on some of the qualities of his products. “I’ve always thought of him like a camera,” says Telpner. “He’s innovative, he’s focused and he has clarity.” Yanofsky’s role requires him to balance relationships with a complex network of agencies and partners, but he relishes every minute. “I could sit here and complain,” he says, “But I look at it as an awesome opportunity.
-MATT SEMANSKY

Borna Zlamalik
Account Supervisor
John St., Toronto
Age: 26

Don’t beat yourself up for thinking your life pales in comparison to John St.’s Borna Zlamalik’s.

Truth is, it probably does. But so what if he’s young (26), successful (in just two years on the account side at the Toronto agency, he’s amassed enough responsibility to fill out two jobs), and has more culture in his left thumb than most of us have in our entire bodies (he comes from an art collecting family and lives in a downtown loft that could double as a gallery)?

And really, should it even matter that his credits include attention-getting campaigns for brands like Bacardi, Tetley, Fuji, Moore’s, Scott Paper’s White Cloud, Harvey’s and Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment? Or that the “Welcome Back Leafs,” post-lockout campaign he helped develop for the venerable hockey team sparked dozens of online guerrilla versions created by fans of other teams who appropriated the original creative?

And while it’s nice, it can’t be that big a deal, either, that his bosses, John St. president Arthur Fleischmann and VP client services Jane Tucker, praise his “impeccable” time management skills, and cite Zlamalik’s charisma as instrumental to the shop’s recruiting efforts. Can it?

Okay, in the grand scheme of things, it really does matter. But while Zlamalik’s got a lot going for him, he also knows his role as a member of the team. “It’s the curse of every account guy,” he says, laughing. “I can’t say that I thought up the ideas, but I can say that I helped isolate and shape the insight.”
-PAUL-MARK RENDON