2017 Jury

Wes Brown
Vice President Brand Marketing Retail
Loblaw Companies Limited

Wes Brown began his career with Loblaw over ten years ago and has held progressively senior roles in a variety of brand, communication, and marketing functional areas. His current responsibilities include managing the integration of control and national brand content in all national, seasonal, strategic, and experiential customer programs.

Shirley Mukerjea
Director of Marketing
Pepsico Foods Canada

Shirley Mukerjea is the Director of Marketing for Portfolio & Shopper Marketing at PepsiCo Foods Canada. Shirley has been with PepsiCo Canada for over seven years in increasingly progressive roles and has led several of the Company’s iconic brands like Tropicana and Gatorade. In her current role, Shirley leads a team of passionate marketers who create successful channel strategies, leverage the power of the PepsiCo portfolio across Foods and Beverage divisions, activate sports properties and partnerships, and drive strong shopper marketing programming across various retailers.

Shirley’s 12-plus years of CPG experience spans across all aspects of consumer marketing including brand strategy, advertising and communications, sports marketing, innovation & new business strategy, consumer and shopper insights, P&L management, and cross functional team leadership. Shirley is known for delivering insight-driven, breakthrough consumer programs that drive growth and build brands. As an accomplished Marketer, Shirley has been recognized with several industry accolades including a Cannes Gold Lion, Cassies, Bessies, and Sports Marketing Clios.

When Shirley takes a break from Marketing, you can find her with family and friends, discovering new parts of Toronto or the world. She has a huge passion for travel and discovering new cultures, having visited 27 countries so far. Shirley is also invested in building the future of marketing talent in Canada, having guest lectured at the Schulich School of Business, York University.

Carman Allison
VP, Consumer Insights
Nielsen

Carman Allison serves as VP of Consumer Insights for Nielsen Canada.  Carman has his finger on the pulse of the CPG landscape and is relied on by manufacturers and retailers to provide them with the consumer insights they need to make strategic and impactful business decisions. With 25 years of experience he shares his insights on consumer shopping, industry trends and buying and media consumption behaviours and attitudes through thought leadership reports, industry presentations and his two monthly columns in Canadian Grocer and Grocery Business magazine

Chantal Butler
Vice President, Marketing & Masterbrands
Maple Leaf Consumer Foods

Chantal Butler has been in the consumer packaged goods industry for over 20 years, holding progressive position in both sales and marketing.  She has a strong passion for developing best in class campaigns and innovation. Currently as the Vice-President of Marketing & Masterbrands at Maple Leaf Foods, she is responsible for leading the way for brand growth for a highly dynamic business.  Prior to Maple Leaf Foods, she spent 14 years at General Mills leading brand growth on iconic brands like Green Giant, Old El Paso, Cheerios and Pillsbury.

Rico DiGiovanni
President & Partner
Spider Marketing Solutions

For over 25 years, Rico DiGiovanni has made a major impact on the marketing services community, developing innovative marketing solutions that continuously drive record sales results and build brand equity.

Having cut his teeth in promotional marketing, he quickly progressed to presidential assignments at Marketing Drive and Capital C, where he honed his expertise in creating award-winning, integrated promotion, experiential and digital campaigns. In 2004, Spider Marketing Solutions was born, and his dream to build his own agency along with his partner, Christine Ross, was fulfilled.

In addition to his involvement on the executive boards of the Marketing Agencies Association Worldwide, and the National Advertising Benevolent Society, Rico is also a founding member and past president of CAPMA and a juror for the Cannes Lions (Promo Awards).
Through the years, Rico has assisted multiple blue-chip companies in exceeding their marketing goals, including: Energizer, OLG, Mattel, Clorox, Glaxo SmithKline, Maple Leaf, Nestle, Kraft, Coca-Cola, Levi’s, Microsoft, IBM, Molson, Frito Lay, Reckitt Benckiser, Silk and Kellogg’s.

Jennifer Hayes
Director, Ad Media & Partnership Marketing
Walmart Canada Corp.

Jennifer Hayes is a Marketing Communications executive with over 15 years’ experience in Retail, Entertainment, CPG, Digital and Public Relations.  Her experience from companies such as NBC Universal and Canadian Tire includes brand management, category advertising, media strategy, planning and eCommerce.  Jennifer is currently Director, Ad Media & Partnership Marketing with Walmart Canada.

Peter Ignazi
Chief Creative Officer
Cossette Communication Inc.

Peter is one of the most successful creative directors and copywriters in Canada. In his tenure as creative director of BBDO, they had been named Canadian Agency of the Year by both Strategy Magazine and the Advertising and Design Club of Canada. Both firsts for the company. In 2013, Peter was ranked #1 creative director in Canada by Strategy Magazine.
A native of Hamilton, Ontario, Peter earned a B.Sc. in Chemistry from McMaster University before enjoying a successful career as a research chemist with Dow Chemical in Germany. He also has an MBA from McGill University.
Peter has worked as a Copywriter and Creative Director for such agencies as TAXI, Saatchi & Saatchi, MacLaren McCann and Downtown Partners DDB on accounts such as General Motors, Sony and Anheuser-Busch. From 2004 to 2006, Peter was Creative Director and Partner at Amalgamated in New York working on Ben & Jerry’s and Cablevision.
He has twice been included in the top ten list of most awarded copywriters in the world by Boards magazine and The Gunn Report.
In 2015, Peter brought his skills to Cossette where he runs a variety of blue chip accounts, including General Mills, McDonald's, TD and Sick Kids.

Derek Joynt
EVP & GM
The Mars Agency

Derek is a senior marketing executive with a proven track record of outstanding business results. His unique point of difference is a powerful combination of Tier 1 consumer packaged goods, agency and retail experience. His notable accomplishments include consecutive years of double-digit growth, award-winning promotional campaigns that increased profitability and sales, turning around declining businesses and developing private brands.

Derek has the advantage of having spent the first part of his career on the agency side, which provided him with an exceptional range of relevant business knowledge in shopper marketing, sales, joint business planning, insights and strategic planning. As the Director of Marketing at Walmart Canada, he was responsible for leveraging shopper and category insights to develop go-to-market strategies designed to influence merchandise planning, seasonal advertising and in-store experience. Derek’s considerable breadth of experience enhances The Mars Agency’s ability to seamlessly champion integrated shopper and promotional marketing campaigns.

Outside of the office, Derek enjoys spending time cycling, hiking and skiing with his family. He is also an avid sailor having just completed the 50th Anniversary Newport to Bermuda race!

Frederick Lecoq
VP, Marketing and E-Commerce
Golf Town Canada Inc

As SVP Marketing and eCommerce, Frederick leads the brand journey and digital innovation from coast-to-coast for corporate and franchisee banners at Canada’s number one sporting goods retailer – FGL Sports. With over 15 years of strategic marketing experience, Frederick specializes in eCommerce, digital media and brand management. He has re-launched and elevated FGL Sports brands including Sport Chek, Atmosphere and Sport Experts bringing them to the forefront of digital change with the launch of Canada’s first digital flyer program, the rollout of several ecommerce sites, and the implementation of a content marketing strategy. As a digital disruptor, Frederick has held titles with several world-class organizations including: Vice President for Global Brand Marketing & Digital Strategy at LG Electronics Global, Marketing Director for Microsoft Europe, and Marketing Director at Nokia.

Nancy Marcus
Corporate VP Marketing
Kruger Products L.P.

Nancy began her marketing career at companies like Phillip Morris and RJR MacDonald, and quickly became one of the few female VP’s to have a seat at the executive level. Now Corporate Vice President of Marketing at KPLP, she has been the only female on the KPLP Management Team for more than a decade.

Her unique ability to create brands in commoditized categories, and her refusal to forsake long-term brand equity and profitability for the sake of short-term discounting, has made her both highly successful and widely admired. Her management of the transition of Cottonelle to Cashmere is a textbook example of how to transition a brand’s name without losing customers or sales. That she actually grew the brand over that period is one reason she won the industry’s highest marketing honour at the 2008 Cassie Awards that acknowledges the most effective marketing campaigns of the year.

A passionate and open-minded marketer, Nancy has embraced experiential marketing, design partnerships, CSR and corporate sponsorship long before it became de riguer. Her pioneering support of the The White Cashmere Collection – a fashion show that features dresses designed using only Cashmere Bathroom Tissue – would be remarkable today. That it is now in its 12th year, and has raised over $2 Million for Breast Cancer Research, is proof of her vision, bravery and compassion. These instincts have quite literally made brands like Cashmere, SpongeTowels and Scotties household names, and KPLC a powerhouse and market leader in the consumer tissue industry.

A recipient of the 2014 WXN Top 100 Award and the Star Women in Grocery 2014 Award, Nancy has been an active and dedicated participant in community, particularly those focused on the advancement of women in the workplace. She actively nurtures and mentors young women in the CPG professional and is a member of the WXN Wisdom Top 100 Mentoring program.

Cheryl Matheson
Senior Marketing Manager - Reese, Oh Henry!, and Chocolate Innovation
Hershey Canada

Cheryl Matheson is currently Senior Marketing Manager, Chocolate at The Hershey Company. Cheryl has been with the company for 6 years and has worked on many of their iconic brands – including Reese, Hershey’s, Kisses, and Oh Henry!. In her current role, she leads a team of passionate marketers to create best in class advertising, integrated communications programs, and sports marketing. She also leads the overall 3-year chocolate innovation pipeline and gets to sample delicious treats on a near daily basis!

Cheryl is a pure marketer who has spent over 10 years in the industry. Prior to joining Hershey’s, she worked at Johnson & Johnson and Bayer on iconic brands including Listerine and Aspirin. She has an MBA in marketing from Schulich School of Business and loves to be continuously involved in the marketing community through events such as the Shopper Innovation Awards.

Kris Matheson
Director of Shopper Innovation
Traffik

Jo-Ann Munro
Creative Director
Marketel Communications Inc.

Jo-Ann has been a fixture on the Montreal advertising scene for over 25 years as both an Art Director and a Creative Director. She grew up at Cossette, where she spent 17 years, before moving on to JWT, followed by Sid Lee; she currently leads a new generation at Marketel where she co-founded MarketELLE, a marketing to women division.

Working in both English and French, she has worked on integrated campaigns in just about every category: from fast food to cars, fashion to pharma and airlines to circuses. Jo-Ann’s work has been awarded locally and internationally by the Créa awards, Boomerangs, Marketing, the Extras, the New York Festival and the London International Advertising and Design Awards. Before judging the SIA’s, her coolest judging experience was Communication Arts.

Dave Watson
Creative Director Design North America

If it seems like Dave has a feeling for the rhythms of visual communication, it comes to him naturally. A born lover of music, his dreams of playing drums for the Rolling Stones were crushed at an early age. However he quickly rebounded and turned his attention to design.

Simply put, Dave is an idea man. He believes that although visual and tech trends come and go, good ideas are timeless. He has used this way of thinking to help brands grow their business and win creative awards on the international stage.

Dave he enjoys preaching the philosophy of holistic branding to clients in Canada and the US, unless of course he gets a call from the Stones.