C2 Montreal: bubbles and brain dates, Want and need, Frank & Oak, Martha and more

Here’s the thing: there’s a lot going on in town. Last week, C2MTL overwhelmed with its brain dates, bubble baths, speakers, food trucks and buzzy energy.

This week, Monday was quiet. But Tuesday, there were some 10 events around town for fashion and beauty bloggers and the general beau monde.

Let’s start with C2, the conference on creativity and commerce that has been mushrooming in its three short years. It has now reached the pinnacle of Montreal trademarks – the jazz fest, Cirque du Soleil, the Grand Prix (Oh my god! That’s coming up!).

Martha Stewart was a headliner this year, along with a gaggle of business leaders, thinkers and even a Nobel Prize winner. Some folks just take it all in. Me, I am afraid of dates – and the thought of a brain date is downright terrifying. As is eating cod bladder chips, concocted by Newfoundland chef Jeremy Charles of Raymonds.  

I did plunge into the bubble bath (clear, hard plastic bubbles) and found it quite relaxing until I tried to get up – difficult with one hand clutching my cell phone and away from the walls. A Washington Post photographer found that amusing or interesting, and started snapping away. I have yet to see myself on the front page of the Post, quel (or is that quelle?) relief.

 

Resumés of several speakers.

Aldo’s Frisk

Patrik Frisk, appointed CEO of Aldo Group in October 2014, spoke of the changes and challenges in the retail world, and of Aldo in particular, which, as a retailer, online seller, wholesaler and franchiser, and with 2,000 stores worldwide, is undergoing a major transformation, he said. He  spoke of the “end consumer,’’ presumably meaning the target or simply the buyer.

What he knows about that person is that he or she is in charge today, he said, recalling all that has changed over the decades. The company used to pick great real estate, build nice stores and the customers would come. In the 1950s, the store was god, the ‘60s was the era of brands, and now it’s about the consumer journey, Frisk said.

On Monday mornings in the past, the team would look at what was needed for the stores and get it there by Tuesday.

Now, the insights come from multiple channels – CRM, social, digital, brand trackers, and wholesale.

And stores are more like service points and less about transactions, he added.

More insights from Frisk:

Clients are more informed, so better staff training is required.

People buy shoes as a reward, to mark a milestone and for occasions.

Clients want their shoes faster to market, long lasting and affordable.

Overall message: Mr. Frisk has his work cut out for him.

Vice’s Suroosh Alvi

The Vice story is so fascinating on so many counts. Suroosh Alvi was candid and amusing on how he started his global media empire in Montreal in 1994. “It was a dark year in Montreal,’’ he said, deadpan.

He had been in rehab, and his goal was to write for the weekly Hour or Mirror, he said in conversation with Adam Gollner. A job was not forthcoming.

“I was a magazine junkie. I was a real junkie,’’ he said. “I channelled all the energy I used to put into self-destructive behavior into this magazine.”

He wanted to create real content and “wrote embarrassing editorials about the search for authenticity,’’ he said, with no such thing as aspiring to objectivity.

They tried everything from a fashion division to music to Vice guide to travel DVDs, which is where Spike Jones came in  and “taught us how to make it work.”

The game changer came with an article and DVD on the gun markets of Pakistan, which made it on to the home page of CNN. Vice has since reported on Baghdad, Congo, Egypt, Cambodia, Saddam’s shadow and much more.

Now, there’s a deal with HBO, with a daily news show to come in a few months. And Viceland, a TV channel, is set to expand to 20 more countries, with a deal for Quebec in the works.

 

Byron and Dexter Peart of Want Les Essentiels

Twins Byron and Dexter have always had their act and their message together. Marking 10 years in the business, in which they have managed to build a global luxury brand from Montreal, they took to the main stage at C2 with a presentation as slick and minimal as their bags.

Their message is about want and need.

“This idea of wanting – we think it needs a counterbalance. That counterbalance is need,’’ Dexter said.

Added Byron: “Fashion is inherently built on newness and change. It’s a perfect balance of creativity and commerce.” But, he pointed out, it’s also a perfect recipe for making products not meant to last.

They talked a bit about the fashion cycle, saying it in in “extreme disalignment between what the consumer wants and needs.”

Their guiding principles “to navigate what is essential:” a thing must have purpose, be intelligent, beautiful and universal.

The cutest slide at the conference (with the exception perhaps of some of the robots in the artificial intelligence talks): a picture of the twins, age 5, on the tarmac by an Air Jamaica plane. On the ground, a cool vintage suitcase. As they said, they were early cool travellers.

 

Ethan Song and Hicham Ratnani of Frank & Oak

Another Montreal success duo, Ethan Song and Hicham Ratnani of Frank & Oak, the online store that is rapidly expanding in bricks and mortar, also took their story to the main stage.

Song spoke about his penchant for black jeans and Ratnani’s liking for white sneakers, then proceeded to scroll through the thousands of offerings on Asos.

 

There are so many options, Song said, so consumers can’t choose.

So if you’re a brand, how do you stand out? Stores are closing, e-comm struggling, but Song sees opportunities. His messages:

As a brand, you are builidng a relationship with a community.

The product and the experience are merging.

“Our purpose is to help a full generation of men not only to dress better but to live better,’’ he said.

For the future, the next wave of technology is when digital meets physical.

Concluding, Song said that there is no product that can stay differentiated for more than 24 months. So the ability to move fast will mean success.

Martha Stewart

The session opened with a “brain-off” between Martha Stewart and P.K. Subban, the hockey hero with heart and soul. Mindball, as the game was called, challenged the pair’s ability to stay stress-free. Subban won the first go; Stewart wanted another round and wound up winning two of three.

Whatever.

 

The talk lent little insight into the creative process of the doyenne of living and even though she alluded to her prison term, back in 2005 – “I am more fearless than I was before. Life goes on. You learn to cope.” – there was nothing on that either.

We learned she lives in the country, raises chickens, eats meat, will not eat dirty farmed salmon that eat their own poop, keeps and rides horses and the like.

On tips for aging well, she suggested a green juice and going to the gym in the morning.

“Then you go to work.”

In an article titled Martha Stewart’s Big, Fat Marketing Miss, Marketing Magazine editor Shane Schick summed it up well. “What was missing here was any sense of how she had built such a successful brand, one she personifies and that has weathered the kind of reputational damage that makes Volkwagen’s recent troubles look insignificant.”

As for P.K., he was simply inspiring as a human being, with heart, soul and apparently some great hockey skills.