Since 1976, the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has attracted global crowds and is known universally as the ideal platform for filmmakers to launch their careers and to premiere their new work. As the world’s largest public film festival with dozens of premieres, hundreds of thousands of fans, and immense A-List star power, TIFF presents a great opportunity for sponsors to reach diverse audiences of movie lovers. This year, the #HumansOfMKTG took to King Street, also known as “Festival Street” to report back on some of our favourite brand and sponsor activations from the Festival.

The evolution of sports is being most recently driven by the rising emergence of the esports sector – a now billion-dollar industry, surpassing $135 billion in revenue worldwide, that is expected to climb to 1.69 billion USD by 2022. MKTG Canada’s Decoding research study explores the egamer fan segment, unearthing insights into the Canadian egamer (those Canadians who are fans/players of video games and esports), including media habits, attitudes towards sponsorship and statements about egaming in general

At MKTG, we’re thankful to have a diverse workforce that helps foster a community of learning and understanding within our organization. For this week’s blog, we sat down with Ben Scott, MKTG’s Creative Director, to learn more about drag, the drag community and its increasingly outspoken role in sponsorship today.

At MKTG, we’re thankful to have a diverse workforce that helps foster a community of learning and understanding within our organization. For this week’s blog, we sat down with Ben Scott, MKTG’s Creative Director, to learn more about drag, the drag community and its increasingly outspoken role in sponsorship today.

It’s an amazing time to be a Toronto Raptors fan. We defeated Joel Embiid and Philly to advance to the Eastern Conference Finals and conquered The Greek Freak for the Eastern Conference Championship crown. As of Today, the Raptors are up 3-1 and gearing up for game 5 tonight at home. For Raptors fans, this championship run means a whole lot more than just a championship ring – and the Raptors represent a whole lot more to Canada than just a basketball team – the Raptors are Canada’s basketball team.

Computer Generated Image (CGI) Influencers have been a growing influencer category in recent years – they are expected to become leading social media influencers, many of whom already boast millions of social media followers and millions in endorsement deals.

Puma dove back into the basketball category in 2018 with the launch of Puma Basketball, announcing its multiyear marketing partnership with the NBA just days before the start of All-Star Weekend.

While product seeding may seem like a turnkey process, there are many factors a brand must consider to effectively reach influencer communities in an authentic, measurable and impactful way.

When taking calculated risks, we often look for case studies and proof points to support decision making and/or use in brainstorms to spark ideas. In order to accumulate this best practice list, we brought together the #HumansOfMKTG at our Roundtable to bring forth their favorite example of a brand who has taken a calculated risk. 

MKTG provides insight and key learnings from a Toronto Gymshark pop-up, a UK-based fitness apparel company who executed three brand-relevant in-queue engagement tactics. To avoid consumer disappointment, brands should: be transparent with consumers and inform them about queue lines ahead of time, implement surprise and delight tactics and leverage live social platforms so that consumers can tune in while waiting. MKTG’s LIVE team also provides a variety of recommendations on how to keep consumers engaged while in queue.

Finding an authentic influencer is a challenge for many brands. Not only do sponsors want to work with influencers that have a real and engaged following, they want to have their product naturally align with their lifestyle. This may seem easy to pinpoint at first glance, but with the influx of paid followers, inactive accounts as followers, bots, and inauthentic content creation, a brand must complete extensive research in order to be strategic in picking which influencers will be the face of their brand.