Our opinion on... The future of the marketing industry in Canada Whether or not the communications business in Toronto is in deep trouble, is an open question. What is certain, however, is that with the hollowing out of branch plant brands, and the global focus on global marketing, the opportunities for applied creativity, both strategic and words and pictures, are diminishing by the day. And while this might be expected, in the short term, to result in better quality and greater creativity (more great minds focused on less work), this is obviously not what’s happening. In fact, what will probably happen is that great creative minds, starved of the opportunity to stretch and express themselves, will leave the industry and find opportunities elsewhere. This is sad, not only for those who choose to move on, but also for those who could have learned from them. In the end, if there is sudden, or gradual, flight of smart people, the industry as a whole will be diminished, a tipping point will be reached and Toronto, which could have/should have been known for its creative communications community, will become a marketing wasteland. As each issue of Marketing crosses my desk, as each week (or is it two weeks – I forget) flies by, I see this outcome as more and more inevitable. I search the pages to find the part where the industry leaders are having a conference on the future of business in Canada. I scour the artfully set type to find the words that tell me that a group of visionary leaders, the so-called Great and the Good of the marketing world, have forced the city and the province and the federal government to join together in a task force to determine how Toronto can become the most vibrant centre of creative thought in the Americas and beyond. None of this is happening. Articles are being written about the problems, about the dangers, about the barriers to progress, but nobody (except for Tony Chapman) appears to be giving this issue any real consideration. And nobody, including Tony Chapman, is doing anything about it. Through the unyielding pressure placed on the municipal and (to a lesser extent) provincial governments, the Toronto Summit Alliance is changing the direction of the city. Individual industries are working with various levels of government and public-private partnerships to change the international image of Toronto, not by sucking and blowing, but by changing the way they view their industries and the way their industries are viewed by others. It seems ironic that at a time when Toronto is being reborn as a creative city, as Richard Florida (probably by following the tenets of Rhonda Byrne’s “The Secret”) wills us into the 21st century,
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Protean Strategies is a Toronto based management consulting firm. Since 1997 we have been helping large and small companies convert brand value into higher margins and bottom line profits by understanding their stakeholders needs; building powerful strategies; and aligning business practices with marketing and sale to a common goal.