Grow Your Brain

Samantha Francis: Emotionalizing the Product Truth

Samantha Francis is VP, Head of Strategy and Planning at Saatchi & Saatchi Canada in Toronto. Her career spans book publishing, digital and content marketing, professional services, client-side marketing, and agency strategy, with a focus on brand strategy, research, and effectiveness. Sam and Pedro discuss what brands actually are, and why building one ultimately comes down to creating and maintaining useful associations in people’s memories. They explore the difference between the positioning an organization wants and the brand image consumers actually carry around, why so much advertising drifts toward category sameness, and how brands can turn familiar product truths into more distinctive and emotionally resonant creative. Sam also unpacks the Toyota Canada "For What Matters Most" work and why good diagnosis requires knowing when to use quantitative research, when to go deeper with qualitative research, and when to acknowledge what you simply don’t know. Resources talked about in this episode: How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell MiniMBA with Mark Ritson Toyota Canada – For What Matters Most Volkswagen – Think Small and Lemon Volvo Trucks – The Epic Split Follow Samantha Francis: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samanthafrancis/ Follow Pedro Porto Alegre: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pedroportoalegre/ Join APG Canada to connect with, learn from, and support the country’s strategic planning community. Become a member at http://apgcanada.ca/join-us. Grow Your Brain is proudly sponsored by The Gathering, the award-winning yearly brand festival hosted in the Canadian Rockies. Learn more at http://thegatheringfestival.com. Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction to Grow Your Brain Podcast 00:53 Introduction to Samantha Francis 03:17 From Publishing to Strategy: A Unique Journey 05:53 The Importance of Strategy in Marketing 08:13 Understanding the Client Perspective 10:38 The Art of Making Strategic Choices 12:55 Brand Building: Creating Lasting Memories 15:21 The Role of Associations in Branding 17:39 Awareness vs. Salience in Brand Strategy 19:59 The Concept of Wastage in Marketing 20:20 The Importance of Mental Availability 23:58 Brand Image vs. Brand Positioning 28:24 Creative Approaches in Automotive Advertising 33:15 Emotional Storytelling in Brand Campaigns 38:22 Balancing Quantitative and Qualitative Insights

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Imogen Lee: Targeting Isn’t A Growth Strategy

Imogen Lee is a Senior Marketing Scientist at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, specializing in advertising effectiveness. Her work spans Category Entry Points, Distinctive Brand Assets, and advertising messaging. Imogen and Pedro discuss how brands grow by reaching more category buyers and building useful memory structures over time. They explore why narrow targeting can limit growth, why “wastage” is often misunderstood, and why clicks and engagement are poor substitutes for actual business outcomes. Imogen also unpacks how marketers can use Category Entry Points, Distinctive Brand Assets, and mental and physical availability to make advertising more effective, easier to process, and more likely to be remembered in buying situations. Resources talked about in this episode: How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp How Brands Grow Part 2 by Byron Sharp and Jenni Romaniuk Building Distinctive Brand Assets by Jenni Romaniuk Better Brand Health by Jenni Romaniuk Marketing: Theory, Evidence, Practice by Byron Sharp Missing the Target? Investigating Targeted Advertising by Imogen Lee Are Swede Dreams Made of This? IKEA, Wicker and the Art of Staying on Brand by Imogen Lee Nielsen NetEffect (CPG) meta analysis: “There is no correlation between CTR and ROI” (study) Engagement on Facebook: When it matters (report) Follow Imogen Lee: https://www.linkedin.com/in/imogen-lee/ Follow the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute: https://www.linkedin.com/school/ehrenbergbass/posts/?feedView=all Follow Pedro Porto Alegre: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pedroportoalegre/ Join APG Canada to connect with, learn from, and support the country’s strategic planning community. Become a member at http://apgcanada.ca/join-us. Grow Your Brain is proudly sponsored by The Gathering, the award-winning yearly brand festival hosted in the Canadian Rockies. Learn more at http://thegatheringfestival.com. Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction to Grow Your Brain Podcast 00:53 Introduction and Time Zones 02:20 Imogen's Journey into Marketing Science 04:21 Research Focus: Targeted Advertising 06:15 The Evolution of Targeting in Digital Media 09:09 The Importance of Reach for Brands 11:46 Distinctive Brand Assets and Category Entry Points 14:09 Mental and Physical Availability Framework 17:41 Bridging the Gap Between Academia and Practice 20:08 Understanding Loyalty in Marketing 22:08 Targeting Strategies in Marketing 25:59 Understanding Target Markets vs. Actual Buyers 28:21 Rethinking Wastage in Marketing 31:15 The Disconnect Between Clicks and Business Outcomes 34:49 Building Useful Memory Structures in Advertising 38:22 The Importance of Message Clarity in Advertising 40:33 Developing Effective Category Entry Points 43:24 Cultural Cues in Advertising 46:24 Embracing Marketing Science for Better Decisions

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Padmini Mangunta: Empathy As A Discipline

Padmini Mangunta is a strategist whose career spans senior roles at Interbrand, Barkley OKRP, Intouch Group, McCann New York, and McKinney. Padmini and Pedro discuss why strategists need to get more comfortable with human contradiction, tension, judgment, and emotional nuance. They unpack the limits of personas when they stand alone, the importance of asking better questions, and why great strategy often comes from understanding people as fluid, dynamic, and sometimes inconsistent human beings. Padmini will be teaching a class on the APG Canada School of Strategic Goodness on September 9, 2026 titled: “No more cliches: How to defy stereotypes and meaningfully connect with consumers”. Register here: https://www.apgcanada.ca/event-calendar/#id=198&cid=1396&wid=201 Resources talked about in this episode: The More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger Ted Lasso World Cup fan video: https://x.com/AllFutbolMX/status/2071719403331232091?lang=en Follow Padmini Mangunta: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/padminimangunta/ Follow Pedro Porto Alegre: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pedroportoalegre/ Join APG Canada to connect with, learn from, and support the country’s strategic planning community. Become a member at http://apgcanada.ca/join-us. Grow Your Brain is proudly sponsored by The Gathering, the award-winning yearly brand festival hosted in the Canadian Rockies. Learn more at http://thegatheringfestival.com. Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction to Grow Your Brain Podcast 00:53 Introduction and Background 05:28 Career Journey and Transition to Advertising 10:48 The Role of Journalism in Strategy 17:31 Understanding the Customer: Beyond Personas 22:20 Exploring Human Tension and Judgment 26:07 Balancing Nuance and Simplification in Strategy 31:15 The Importance of Empathy in Storytelling 38:29 Understanding Empathy and Human Connection

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Claudia Aguirre: Strategists Need to Leave Their Desks

Claudia Aguirre is a Calgary-based brand strategist, qualitative researcher, and consultant with more than 20 years of experience across Mexico, the US Hispanic market, Latin America, Canada, and Europe. She began her career in research and planning in Mexico, working with firms including Leo Burnett, JWT, FCB, and Research International, before eventually building her own consulting practice focused on research, branding, civic causes, not-for-profits, and sustainable brands. This conversation between Claudia Aguirre and Pedro Porto Alegre explores strategy through Claudia’s deeply human lens: getting out into the world, observing real behaviour, and turning it into insights that creatives can actually build from. Claudia reflects on her early days in planning in Latin America and why great strategists often come from unexpected paths, before diving into why leaving the desk is essential for good strategy. They also discuss vulnerability as a strategic skill, how culture and language shape what people are willing to share, and the role of AI in modern strategy—useful for the groundwork, but no substitute for real-world observation, perspective, and judgment. Resources talked about in this episode: The Jay Chiat Awards Balzac and La Comédie Humaine Generative AI enhances individual creativity but reduces the collective diversity of novel content by Anil R. Doshi and Oliver P. Hauser, Science Advances Poll: 62% of Americans Say They Have Political Views They’re Afraid to Share by Emily Ekins, Cato Institute / YouGov Follow Claudia Aguirre: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aguirreclaudia/ Follow Pedro Porto Alegre: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pedroportoalegre/ Listen to full episodes wherever you get your podcasts: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033uubqHEgCKhsEtBQzMwD Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/grow-your-brain/id1896893094 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsxF4y-bl38Gcdi1FSSVROMnK3Ct-QLYT Join APG Canada to connect with, learn from, and support the country’s strategic planning community. Become a member at http://apgcanada.ca/join-us. Grow Your Brain is proudly sponsored by The Gathering, the award-winning yearly brand festival hosted in the Canadian Rockies. Learn more at http://thegatheringfestival.com. Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction to Grow Your Brain Podcast 00:49 The Gathering Festival Overview 01:13 Claudia Aguirre’s Career Journey 04:17 Building the Planning Profession 10:43 Why Strategists Must Get Out Into the World 17:37 Research, Human Behavior, and Creative Collaboration 20:49 Observation, Insights, and the Brief 28:40 Vulnerability as a Strategic Skill 33:33 Culture, Language, and Connecting With People 41:07 AI, Originality, and Doing the Real Work

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Umar Ghumman: Digital Experiences Have a Brand Problem

Umar Ghumman is an experience strategist and founder of NewBrains, a website strategy studio built around the intersection of new technologies and enduring human behaviour. Over his career, Umar has worked across digital agencies, startups, Publicis, and VML, where he served as Chief Experience Strategy Officer. This conversation explores how brands should think about websites, customer experience, AI, positioning, and distinctiveness in digital environments. Umar Ghumman explains why websites should be treated as complete buying systems that build both physical and mental availability, and why generic digital experiences are becoming less effective as AI increasingly compares, summarizes, and filters brands. The episode also looks at the shift from social media to AI, the trade-offs between privacy and convenience, and how brand positioning should show up online. Pedro and Umar discuss how brands become habits, why consistency needs variation, and how developing taste and judgment in an AI-shaped world comes from experience, exposure, and feedback rather than aesthetics alone. Resources talked about in this episode: A New Operating System for Brand Building in the Age of AI by Umar Ghumman The Social Dilemma The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff Follow Umar Ghumman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/umarghumman/ Follow Pedro Porto Alegre: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pedroportoalegre/ Join APG Canada to connect with, learn from, and support the country’s strategic planning community. Become a member at http://apgcanada.ca/join-us. Grow Your Brain is proudly sponsored by The Gathering, the award-winning yearly brand festival hosted in the Canadian Rockies. Learn more at http://thegatheringfestival.com. Timestamps: 01:15 Umar’s Background and the NewBrains Perspective 02:58 From the Social Media Shift to AI 05:07 Privacy, Trust, and the Pull of Convenience 08:23 Websites as Complete Buying Systems 10:08 Websites, Physical Availability, and Mental Availability 13:49 Bringing Brand Positioning to Life Online 15:54 Balancing Immersive Experiences with Utility 18:38 How to Define Brand Positioning 23:14 How Positioning Drives Website Conversion 24:58 Measuring Website Success 27:46 Customer Journeys and Brand-Rooted Experiences 28:34 AI’s Role in Modern Brand Building 30:10 Consistency, Variation, and Distinctiveness 32:13 How Brands Become Habits 35:15 Customer Centricity Without Sameness 38:22 Developing Taste and Judgment

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Marc Binkley: Your Mental Model Might Be Wrong

Marc Binkley is an evidence-based marketing consultant, President of the Calgary Marketing Association, and co-host of the Sleeping Barber podcast. Through his consultancy, Quatical, he helps organizations apply marketing science to brand and business growth. This conversation explores how evidence-based thinking can improve marketing decisions, why digital measurement has distorted our understanding of effectiveness, and what marketers can learn from the scientific method. Marc and Pedro examine the limitations of the traditional marketing funnel, how people actually make buying decisions, and why better diagnosis often matters more than having more tactics. They also discuss mental and physical availability, the 95–5 Rule, the Theory of Constraints, and how marketers can build a stronger latticework of mental models without mistaking any single framework for reality. Resources talked about in this episode: A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp The Long and the Short of It by Les Binet and Peter Field The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt Future Demand by James Hurman Better Brand Health by Jenni Romaniuk Follow Marc Binkley: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbinkley/ https://sleepingbarber.ca/ https://calgarycma.com/ https://www.quatical.com/ Follow Pedro Porto Alegre: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pedroportoalegre/ Join APG Canada to connect with, learn from, and support the country’s strategic planning community. Become a member at http://apgcanada.ca/join-us. Grow Your Brain is proudly sponsored by The Gathering, the award-winning yearly brand festival hosted in the Canadian Rockies. Learn more at http://thegatheringfestival.com. Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction to Marc Binkley and His Work 03:31 The Importance of Evidence-Based Marketing 06:10 The Evolution of Marketing Measurement 08:32 The Impact of Digital Marketing 11:00 How Digital Changed Marketing Thinking 13:37 The Limits of Digital Measurement 16:18 Why Small Brands Default to Social Media 17:21 The Importance of Asking Better Questions 20:36 Can Scientific Thinking Scale Across Marketing Teams? 22:55 Why New Ideas Threaten Core Beliefs 23:16 The Origins of the Marketing Funnel 24:59 The Strongest Arguments For and Against the Funnel 27:10 How Consumers Actually Make Buying Decisions 28:32 Mental and Physical Availability 29:48 Satisficing and the Reality of Consumer Choice 31:19 The Role of Mental Models in Strategy 33:18 Understanding the Theory of Constraints 36:21 Why Diagnosis Matters More Than Tactics 37:25 The 95–5 Rule and Future Demand 40:29 Alternatives to the Traditional Funnel 41:23 The 95–5 Cash Flow Funnel 43:05 Measuring Mental Availability 45:11 Turning Marketing Research Into Action

Jon Crowley: Marketers Are Addicted to Certainty

Jon Crowley is a Toronto-based brand strategist, Partner, Head of Strategy, and SVP at FUSE Create. He is also the writer behind A Benign Conspiracy and a founding editor of Rebrief, an independent Canadian journal of advertising. This conversation explores the realities of modern strategy, agency culture, and the tension between creativity, business, data, and measurement. Jon Crowley shares his perspective on what strategists often misunderstand about their role, why agencies need to better understand how clients make money, and how the pursuit of certainty has shaped marketing’s obsession with attribution, funnels, and performance metrics. The episode also covers the importance of writing as a way of thinking, the value of intentional friction in creative work, the role of print in a digital world, and why individual success in advertising is largely a myth. Jon argues that strategy is ultimately an elevated form of educated guessing, where the strategist’s job is to increase the probability of success by understanding the business, the audience, the market, and the creative problem clearly enough to point teams toward better decisions. Resources talked about in this episode: A Benign Conspiracy by Jon Crowley Rebrief The Walrus Monocle Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan How Humans Decide (Oxford Saïd Business School / WPP research on brand preference) Shoresy A Big Life In Advertising by Mary Wells Lawrence Follow Jon Crowley: LinkedIn A Benign Conspiracy Follow Pedro Porto Alegre: LinkedIn Join APG Canada to connect with, learn from, and support the country’s strategic planning community. Become a member at apgcanada.ca/join-us. Grow Your Brain is proudly sponsored by The Gathering, the award-winning yearly brand festival hosted in the Canadian Rockies. Learn more at thegatheringfestival.com. Timestamps: 00:00 The Indie Agency Experience 06:25 The Importance of Team Culture 11:59 The Journey into Writing and Strategy 17:12 Launching Rebrief: A New Perspective on Advertising 22:34 The Value of Print in a Digital World 22:57 Understanding Marketing in Business Context 28:00 The Importance of Clear Objectives in Briefs 33:25 The Shift Towards Performance Marketing 38:49 The Role of Media Mix Modeling 44:14 The Challenge of Teaching Young Strategists

PK Lawton: Brands Are Social Systems

Paul "PK" Lawton is a sociologist, co-founder of Sister Merci, and an instructor at McMaster University. His work examines how culture shapes behaviour, belief, and decision-making. This conversation explores the intersection of sociology and marketing strategy, emphasizing the importance of understanding social actors, assemblages, and the limitations of traditional frameworks. PK Lawton shares insights on how brands are built in regulated industries, the influence of social sciences, and the need to adapt in an age of AI and rapid change. Resources talked about in this episode: After Method by John Law How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp Actor Network Theory (Bruno Latour) Retromania by Simon Reynolds Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher Shitification by Corey Doctorow Follow PK Lawton: LinkedIn Follow Pedro Porto Alegre: LinkedIn Join APG Canada to connect with, learn from, and support the country’s strategic planning community. Become a member at apgcanada.ca/join-us. Grow Your Brain is proudly sponsored by The Gathering, the award-winning yearly brand festival hosted in the Canadian Rockies. Learn more at thegatheringfestival.com. Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction to Paul Lawton's Journey 02:58 Teaching and Academia: A Return to Roots 05:46 The Evolution of Strategy in Marketing 09:02 Defining Brand Strategy in a Changing Landscape 11:48 Building Brands in Regulated Industries 15:08 The Role of AI in Modern Strategy 18:02 The Concept of Brand as Assemblage 21:01 Navigating the Messy World of Marketing 23:59 Frameworks and Their Limitations in Strategy 28:03 The Complexity of AI Operations and Marketing Funnels 29:30 Understanding Social Assemblages in Marketing 32:09 The Role of Frameworks in Strategy 33:01 Actor-Network Theory and Its Implications 36:21 The Need for Sociological Perspectives in Strategy 37:39 The Limitations of Predicting the Future 40:22 The Erosion of Future Visions in Society 43:33 Navigating the New Marketing Landscape 44:54 The Role of Marketing Science in Strategy 49:17 Understanding Brand Growth Beyond Advertising 52:08 The Importance of Recognizing All Actors in Strategy

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