ASC Annual General Meeting & Breakfast Program

Join us for our 2011 Annual General Meeting and Breakfast Program. Bruce Philp - author of the recently released Consumer Republic - will deliver a keynote presentation on what branding means today.

Brands are expensive to create, enormously valuable, requisites to make money, and fragile assets. The power to influence companies’ behaviour rests with consumers who leverage their control over brands, and have the power to make them priceless.

Consumers are increasingly pursuing socially conscious brands and exerting greater influence over companies. They are demanding more and making better choices. They are speaking up when they’re happy and voicing their displeasure when they are not. Similar to democratic elections, companies must strive harder to win over consumers – emphasizing not only the strengths of their brands, but the strength of their character. By better understanding consumers’ power, companies can embrace the institutional and strategic changes needed to survive.

With nearly 30 years of award-winning work, Bruce Philp holds perhaps the only truly agnostic point of view on what branding really is. Working in the ad agency world as a strategist for brands like Toyota and Tylenol, he quickly rose to become executive creative director at a major North American firm. In that role, he worked with 3M, Molson, McDonald's and Bank of Montreal, for whom he produced what Marketing Magazine called one of the landmark campaigns of the 20th century.

In 1996, Philp co-founded GWP Brand Engineering. His key clients have included major "new economy" brands like Expedia, GroceryGateway.com and ING Direct, as well as established brands like Air Miles, Delta Hotels, Novartis Consumer Health and Ferrero.

Bruce’s recently released book, Consumer Republic, illustrates how consumers hold companies and their brands accountable. Bruce writes about branding on his blog, www.brandcowboy.com, and contributes to newspaper and marketing-trade journals. In 2008, he co-authored, The Orange Code: How ING Direct Succeeded by Being a Rebel with a Cause, a story about how accountability doesn’t need to be the enemy of corporate success.