Calgary is building a world-class marketing community, not by copying standards set in Toronto or New York, but because the brilliant voices in our home deserve to be heard. Shortly aft er starting as the CMA President in April 2024, I began sharing our vision: “Make Calgary a world-class marketing city.” The glazed eyes told me our problem wasn’t the vision but connecting it to something that mattered.
As Calgarians, we have a proud legacy in building things that matter at world class standards. In the Blue Sky City, entrepreneurial grit isn’t a slogan, it’s muscle memory.
For a long time though, Calgary’s marketing community was less visible. Locally, we lived in the shadow of our resource industries. Nationally, the spotlight belonged to cities like Toronto and Montreal, shaped by advertising heavy sectors like financial services, Consumer Packaged Goods and telcos.
The Challenger Brand Advantage
Calgary’s marketing community is, effectively, a challenger brand. We’re not the market leader. As a challenger, the Calgary Marketing Association can’t compete by size, budget or bench marking features. Instead, we’re playing to win using the rigorous strategic framework championed by business strategist Roger Martin. We do this through our own rules, inventiveness, strategic clarity and creativity.
We don’t need permission to become world class. We’re using our advantages
and taking the Nike approach: Just Do It.
Calgary’s Undeniable Advantages
Once you’ve seen our strengths, you can’t unsee them:
- Head Office Concentration: Calgary is home to the highest head office concentration in Canada
- Growth Engine: Our Blue Sky City is the fastest growing tech hub in North America and has the fastest-growing labour force.
- Economic Clout: The Canadian ad industry employs over 138,000 people and adds $9.7 billion to the national GDP.
Just as we once imported engineering expertise, Calgary’s marketing community is now importing the world’s best marketing science and leading Canada.
We’re moving past the idea that marketing is about making things go viral and returning to something more durable: marketing as a discipline. As Peter Drucker, pioneer of modern management, put it, real marketing begins with understanding customers so well that the products sell themselves.
The CMA’s Action Plan
Over the last year, the CMA has been busy building the infrastructure a world-class community needs:
- Credible Research: Curating research that helps marketing leaders make better, bolder, more CFO-friendly budgeting decisions.
- Evidence-Based Training: Facilitating training to help teams stop debating opinions and start applying proven principles.
- Community Connection: Connecting people who struggle and solve similar problems so they learn faster together
We’re producing and importing ideas that solve our community’s most pressing challenges. As shown with our report on Trends Influencing ROI, we are now exporting our home-grown solutions to help the global marketing community.
The Moment Belief Became Tangible
If Calgary’s marketing community stays in the shadows, we’re missing economic growth. Every failed product launch or wasted ad dollar drags on the entire economy. The better question about the CMA’s vision is: what would have to be true* for the CMA to build something that actually changes outcomes?
We saw the answer at our Annual Trends Event last November. Many called it the best event in the CMA’s history. The energy in the room was unmistakable.
Marketers from B2B and B2C, agencies and brands, startups and enterprise were locked in to the same world-class evidence: dull media is expensive, AI isn’t the enemy and defending budgets means talking about business impact, not just marketing activity. That night, belief shifted. Not belief in an organization, but in Calgary’s capacity to build a marketing
community that belongs on the global stage.
The positive response made it clear; we’re no longer catching up. We’re stepping forward. Calgary has built pipelines, towers and economic engines that shaped the country. Now we are building a world-class marketing community to match the ambition of the Blue Sky City we call home.
Marketers translate ambition into action and, action into economic impact. In a city built by entrepreneurs, builders and risk-takers, Big-M Marketing is the discipline that turns ideas into industries. Calgary’s marketing community matters because it connects the ingenuity we’re known for with the future we’re trying to build.
SOURCES
Economic indicators: Statistics and facts: Calgary economic. Calgary Economic Development. (2025). https://www.calgaryeconomicdevelopment.com/insights/economic-snapshot/
Horn, J. (2025, August 28). New study reframes Canadian ad sector as a hidden GDP engine. Strategy. https://strategyonline.ca/2025/08/28/cmmb-study/
Drucker, P. Innovation and Entrepreneurship (New York: Harper & Row, 1985)
*A key strategic test from the Roger Martin framework https://rogerlmartin.com/
Marc is the founder of Quatical, a fractional marketing leadership practice specializing in evidence-based strategy and AI-augmented execution. He also serves as President of the Calgary Marketing Association and contributes regularly to WARC, the global authority on marketing effectiveness. Marc also co-hosts The Sleeping Barber Marketing Podcast, where he explores evidence-based marketing with the world’s leading business thinkers and marketing practitioners.
