Could experiential be the perfect move to mobilize one’s community? During the most recent edition of C2 Montreal, Harley Finkelstein from Shopify and Jimmy Knowles from Canva each told – in separate conferences – how becoming event hosts had allowed them to connect more quickly with their audience. A look back at a theme dear to the C2 Montreal team.
The first day of C2 Montreal was entirely dedicated to the subject, namely how brands could reclaim this powerful marketing tool in the post-pandemic era. In the conference “Experiential needs an image makeover,” Christine Renaud then recalled the basic ingredient that allows this strategy to operate.
To develop trust, you have to be intentional. It’s as if we took for granted that we are all powerful extroverts, when, in reality, simply entering a room and talking to a stranger is challenging for many people. However, if we create a context, meaningful connections can take place.
The Canva example
Among all the guests at C2 Montreal, it’s probably Jimmy Knowles who carried this aspiration the furthest, as Global Director of Experiential Marketing at Canva. Hired three years ago, his first mandate was to organize the annual Canva Create event, a fair of workshops and conferences on creativity that targets content producers, designers, educators and HR professionals.
It’s sort of our emblematic stronghold, he says to describe the event which is in its third edition in 2025 (Canva Create: Uncharted). The event is such a success for the company that it moved all performance indicators. It convinced us to double down and go all in, because we saw the value that [experiential] can have for building a community and bringing a brand to life. When we look at how we get buy-in and trust from our users, a large part comes from this strategy.
The director of experiential marketing acknowledges however the challenge of measuring its impact:
There are two aspects to consider: the tangible [what can be measured, like the number of views] and the transformational, that is where the magic happens. And unfortunately, as is well known, it’s also the most difficult aspect to measure. Did an event inspire creativity and did it have cultural resonance? I believe these are the two elements to look at to know what are the drivers to move the needle toward product adoption.
Canva firmly believes in this strategy, having also organized brand activations at the Cannes Lions festival and Sydney Mardi Gras – in support of the diversity cause, it created templates to express pride in identifying with the LGBTQ+ community.
The best activation experiences don’t just show what the product can do; they show what one can do oneself [as a user] with the product, he specifies.
Shopify and its recruitment “hack”
Proud resident of Montreal for more than a year now, Harley Finkelstein, president of Shopify, was back on the C2 Montreal stage, as enthusiastic as ever to talk about e-commerce and entrepreneurship. In the course of the conversation, he revealed what he calls his recruitment “hack” to hire talents who quickly buy into the company’s mission.
When we recruit, we mainly look for people who have entrepreneurial experience. It’s one of the first questions we ask. We discovered that it’s the type of DNA we need to develop our platform – these people understand our clientele and fall in love with our mission [which is to help entrepreneurs].
To reach this type of candidates, Shopify had the idea to organize a “bootcamp” in its offices, every Sunday, in Montreal and Toronto. The event is called Builder Sundays; entrepreneurs are invited to come do a work session, whether to advance a “side project,” a startup or an experimental product prototype.
So it’s by holding an “entrepreneurial” event that Shopify does its talent prospecting. “Experiential” thus finds its way into recruitment!
