SocialPacific 2026
Marketers are losing the old ways of figuring out what customers want. Tracking is going away, attention is harder to win, and AI now filters and summarizes email before people even see it. To get read, your email has to actually be relevant, and you can't fake that by guessing. The better path is simple: stop guessing what people want and start asking them, then actually use what they tell you. Email is the best place to do this, because it's the one audience you own and that has chosen to hear from you. The talk shows why this matters now and gives practical ways to collect that information and put it to work.
Nihal Mandanna CPKeynoteToday's marketers have more data than ever before, yet many are still optimizing for clicks rather than attention. New Canadian research from Vistar Media and Angus Reid reveals that where consumers encounter a brand matters just as much as the message itself, and that trusted environments play a critical role in influencing awareness, consideration and action. Drawing on original Canadian consumer research—including findings that challenge assumptions about trust, attention and the role of physical media—Kevin will explore how marketers can build campaigns that reflect how purchase decisions are actually made.Attendees will leave with practical frameworks they can immediately apply to build stronger omnichannel campaigns that create attention, trust and measurable business outcomes.
- The path to purchase has shifted again. This time toward authentic conversation Marketing plans must keep up as consumers increasingly seek real humans they can trust. - Reddit is the world's platform for intentional, advice-seeking conversations. Communities share honest opinions and lived experience - fuelling high-intent consideration. - Reddit’s solutions for marketers sit at the center of the new purchase journey. Bring brands and consumers together to drive growth for your business
Girius CepinskasBreakout 1Visibility alone doesn’t drive results—trust does. This session explores how to move beyond algorithm driven content and build authority and community through authentic, audience first social media. Attendees will leave with practical strategies for creating content that connects, converts, and supports long-term growth.
Courtney MillerBreakout 1Most Canadian brands are still running influencer marketing like it's 2019, chasing follower counts and one-off campaigns with no clear ROI. Umair Tazeem, Founder and CEO of Embold, Canada's leading creator marketing platform, will share a practical framework for building an always-on creator strategy that drives real business results. From UGC as a content engine to paid amplification and AI search visibility, walk away with a playbook you can implement immediately.
Umair TazeemKeynotePaid reach can buy attention, but it isn’t the only way to build visibility, credibility and influence. Drawing on Pursuit’s work across the Canadian Rockies, Montana, Alaska and Iceland, this session explores how brands can use earned media and thoughtfully designed influencer programs to generate meaningful third-party attention without relying on ever-larger paid media budgets. Through real-world examples, you’ll see how Pursuit approaches creator relationships, identifies stories worth sharing and turns destinations and experiences into content people genuinely want to talk about. For senior marketers, the session offers a practical look at where earned and influencer strategies can complement, and sometimes replace, paid reach while building something media spend alone cannot buy: credible advocacy for your brand.
Rose ChaseKeynote
Felipe BarrientosBreakout 2Is Your Compliance Strategy Costing You Valuable Marketing Data? In 2026, compliance is no longer just a legal requirement. With PIPEDA, Consent Mode v2, and increasingly strict expectations from advertising platforms, many marketers are unknowingly losing a significant portion of their analytics and conversion data. The result? Less visibility into performance, weaker attribution, and missed opportunities to optimize campaigns and drive growth. Join us for a 25-minute session to learn how forward-thinking organizations are transforming consent management from a compliance obligation into a growth driver. Discover practical strategies to increase opt-in rates, recover valuable marketing data, improve measurement accuracy, and create user experiences that maximize conversions without compromising user trust.
Attention is the new currency, and the brands winning it aren’t buying more reach; they’re earning belonging. For years, marketers have been told to build bigger funnels, chase more impressions, and optimize for clicks — often running social, PR, and influencer efforts as separate initiatives with separate goals. But audiences don’t experience your brand in silos, and they don’t want to be funnelled; they want to belong to something. In this keynote, Kerrie Bernard, Sr. Director of Digital Strategy at Talk Shop Media, shows marketers how to stop treating these channels as disconnected line items and instead build one holistic strategy that turns followers into engaged members and members into vocal advocates across social media, media relations, and influencer partnerships alike. Kerrie will introduce Talk Shop’s framework of choice for making this real, Community-Led Marketing (CLM), and show you how to put it to work across the channels your audience touches.
Kerrie BernardKeynotePotential questions include: • How do you break through when audiences already have countless choices? • How do you turn initial curiosity into lasting loyalty? • What makes people feel like they belong to a brand or community? • How do you reach audiences who have previously felt overlooked? • How do you sustain engagement after a launch or major moment? • What have you tried that did not work, and what did you learn from it? The goal is to give attendees practical lessons they can apply to their own brands, whether or not they work in sports/entertainment. Panelists: Alicia Taggio, Rainer Kern, and more to be announced.
Alicia Taggio · Rainer KernBreakout 2In the world of identity design, clients almost always want to see three concepts. So that's what we tend to give them. But those concepts aren't simply different logos. They're different futures. Different strategic choices. Different answers to the question: "Who are we, and where are we going?" In this practical and interactive session, I will share real concept decks from a range of organizations and invite you to predict which direction was chosen, and why. Along the way, you'll discover why the 'strongest' creative work isn't always the work that wins, what clients are really buying when they invest in branding, and how trust, risk, culture, and organizational readiness shape the decisions we make. Because strategy is as much about what you choose NOT to do, and the most valuable lessons are often found in the other two concepts.
Jill DewesBreakout 1Most brands are evaluated on how they sound, how they look, and how they perform in-market. Far less often are they evaluated as a system. That gap is where things start to break. As organizations grow, expand, or absorb new ideas, brand clarity at the top often fails to translate into consistency across teams, channels, and decisions on the ground. In this session, we make the case that traditional brand frameworks weren't designed for the way modern organizations actually operate. Linear models hold up well in a deck, but tend to fall apart the moment a brand gets stretched across new audiences, new products, or new leadership. The result is brands that look aligned externally but operate inconsistently internally, and marketing teams left trying to fix problems that aren't actually marketing problems. We'll introduce a different way of thinking about brand: as an operating system. One built on alignment, interdependence, and resilience, rather than hierarchy or isolated statements. Attendees will leave with a sharper lens for diagnosing where their own brand may be misaligned, a clearer sense of when a deeper framework like the Brand Matrix is warranted, and a few specific questions to take into their next leadership conversation. Whether you're defining your brand for the first time or guiding it through growth, this session will help you see your brand differently and give you a starting point for fixing what's quietly broken.
Lindsay Smith · René ThomasBreakout 1Like product teams, any strategy-led team has to move fast, but real customer insight often lags behind. Research is often seen as heavy, expensive, or a tedious process that delivers too late to matter. This practitioner talk shows how to democratize lean qualitative research responsibly: delegate the right activities, apply minimum-viable guardrails to protect rigour, and avoid common pitfalls that turn “insight” into noise. The goal is simple: empower the people who need insight to go get it, without compromising on quality. Borrowing from user research in the digital space, marketers can run lightweight qualitative checks that reduce guesswork in campaigns, messaging, and key digital touchpoints—so research becomes a shared team practice, not a specialized service.
Areï RodelysKeynoteLearn how to create high-quality, engaging videos using just your smartphone. This session will cover essential production techniques, storytelling strategies, and practical tips to maximize impact on social media. Perfect for marketers looking to produce professional content on a budget.
Will YangBreakout 2
