Born and raised in Mississauga, Ontario, Angie’s entrepreneurial inclinations were quickly revealed in her years studying commerce at Trent University. She balanced her academic pursuits with owning two small businesses and upon graduation, swiftly transitioned her efforts into her career. Her role as a small business owner led Angie to a position at The Mississauga Business Enterprise Centre, where she sparked the entrepreneurial spirit of other small business owners. In a consultant capacity, Angie mentored entrepreneurs by reviewing strategies, offering counsel and challenging them to take their plans to the next level. She also spearheaded a program targeting at-risk youth, helping to channel their energy towards fulfilling, productive entrepreneurial projects.

Angie segued into the agency side of the business, focusing on the electrical distribution, logistics and transportation sectors, before joining Starshot. She frequently draws upon these roots today.

In her current role, she focuses on driving meaningful engagement with her ever-growing Toronto and Chicago based team. Angie looks forward to what clients do after making initial contact, fostering ways to create and sustain demand for their products and services. Her insight into the dynamics of complex sales cycles, often a two year lead time, underpins her approach to consistently attract, retain and nurture customer relationships. She touts her proudest successes when clients can directly attribute a sales spike to her Demand Generation efforts.

When not reviewing data and translating it into smart client strategies, Angie is on the ice or on the golf course. A competitive curler (how she met her husband, she had him at “good curling”) and golfer. She’s travelled the world through her athlete pursuits and in Portugal, she represented Canada at an international level, as the top finishing women’s pair, in the top ten.

An avid cook, she is known for jamming her freezer full of meals, with preparation instructions clearly labelled. Yes, even this she does with her trademark gusto.

Attendees were treated to an eclectic selection of food stations and canapés catered by Parts & Labour and electric décor, including a floating art installation of neon technical devices.

Guests sipped glowing cocktails (tonic water glows in black light, as Starshot discovered) and danced to the sounds of Lucie Tick (who spun on an emulator) and Daniel Buckman. The night was rounded out by face painting stations, a surprise dance performance, and a healthy touch of neon.

Check out photos from the event here and a video of MSA Signature Event Technetronica here.

The stellar performance, hosted by award-winning CBC broadcaster Jian Ghomeshi, was hosted at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto with guests from across Canada’s art, culture, finance and philanthropic communities.

Starshot’s focus was bringing its signature design-focused event strategy to life for Hoping Rising!’s pre-event V.I.P. reception. The special fete set the tone for the evening for 350 extraordinary guests and doubled as a 75th birthday for the honourable Stephen Lewis. Starshot was charged with curating the night’s experience, encompassing every aspect of the reception: from conceptual planning and menu selection, through to a special kiosk where guests could leave a personal birthday wish for Stephen Lewis.

The objective of delivering a high-impact, convivial experience was coupled with a need for astute fiscal responsibility, given the charitable underpinnings of the event. Every possible opportunity to maximize budget was exhausted, with Starshot leading cost-saving initiatives across all areas and vendors, from the pre-event V.I.P. reception, the main event, through to the after party.

A hand-selected group of 80 executives were invited to attend the top secret launch, which kicked off with a private dinner at Blue Fin restaurant in the heart of Times Square. Guests were warmly welcomed by Microsoft’s senior leadership team and dinner was accompanied by a reception and presentation of technologies.

After dinner, celebrations kicked into high gear. From the R Lounge, guests were treated to a spectacular view of the Windows 8 hub, which had completely taken over Times Square. The massive scale of the retail experience included 39 digital boards, anchored by one colossal Windows 8 Start Screen, all displaying the latest Surface and Windows 8 advertisements.

The impressive display was a perfect backdrop to Microsoft chief operating officer Kevin Turner’s rousing speech, which was followed by an intimate unplugged concert by Adam Levine to kick off the festivities.

After the performance, attendees were encouraged to experience Windows 8 from the Microsoft retail store, in advance of the midnight consumer unveiling.

The following morning, all guests were transported to Pier 57 on the Hudson River by executive coaches, where they took in the immersive Microtropolis art installation, a literal city of Windows 8 showcasing the latest Windows 8 devices, over breakfast. Our executive group was one of the first in the world to experience this unique space, which doubled as the press kick-off before opening up to the public for several days following launch.

This fall we dive into a period that marks the end of the incubation of numerous transformative technologies, a point where mobility, cloud, post-pc consumerization, big data and ubiquitous business intelligence converge and in turn spawn new B2B products and services.  We are on the verge of what will be remembered as the genesis point of computing’s next era presenting tremendous marketing opportunity for those able to read the waters and respond quickly.

Having a seat at the planning table with many of these brands has been an incredible experience for Starshot.  It has given us an opportunity to collaborate with our clients on some really transformative strategies that take bold, aggressive action to connect and inspire people in new ways.

All of our strategies are rooted in our proprietary experiential design (XD) methodology that arms our entire team with transformative techniques for creating rich and engaging marketing programs. We have embraced design thinking that builds less obvious and yet more impactful approaches connecting events, digital marketing and demand generation.

Sacred cows are sent to pasture, corporate buzzwords smoked out, bureaucracy vanquished and traditional one-way marketing replaced with a more honest, customer-centric narrative. Success for us is measured not only by the analytics behind our programs, but in the level of truthism and integrity we can bring to the customer experience. Honest dialogue, honest connections and delivering honest value is our mandate.

XD is our battle standard and we are looking forward to a very scrappy season indeed.

We’ve moved to refresh the Starshot identity in a way that advances our type face as well as evolves (some say retires) our “Starman” figure. Our new word mark is serif face based and features ligatures linking the letter “s” with those that follow. We chose this approach to communicate strength, continuity and legacy. Ligatures in font design are actually historic attributes that saved medieval manuscript scribes and Gutenberg typesetters time and resources and enhanced their designs. We’ve also developed our asterisk logo to function as sort of a character and symbol to call attention and suggest growth, radiance and, as it turns out, many things to many people that we never even considered!

The new look has already generated lots of opinions. That’s the great thing about doing something new, discovering the unexpected differences you make and the discussion you create. You’ll see our new logo and word mark applied across the various channels we use to communicate.

So share your thoughts, friend and Linkin or better yet, buy us a drink and let us know what your thoughts are on the new Starshot identity!

Brad and Brad

The second quality is that of ‘independent thinking’

It requires that a marketer find and original voice for their brand that stands out from the other noise in the marketplace. This is a voice that is free of external influences or group thinking. A marketer can think of this as being original and having the interests of the customers at the center of this spirit of independent thinking. While this may sound obvious, originality in marketing is a rare commodity.

Lastly persuasive marketing is characterized by having a ‘common appeal’

Seth Godin coined the phrase “tribes” when describing how communities of interest will relate to the values of a brand. It means that your marketing ideas and brand positioning must be accessible to people that are formed into communities of interest. The great brands all have identifiable qualities around which people identify with as representative of their values.

When you bring the three characteristics of persuasion, as described by the ancient Greeks together, the end result is the basic formula for persuasive marketing.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself stolen from the processes of prolific creators that may help you steer away from the reproductive and speed down a whole new interstate of original thought:

• What’s my theory of relativity? What baggage do I bring that sets my view?  What other perspectives are there to role play and view this creative challenge from? Each new view will identify details that don’t fit the status quo and that will drive new ideas.
• How can I organize this visually? Sketch the problem and your creative approaches as typing is a an unnatural way to capture an idea. Refining the visual concept then typing out an explanation prepares an idea for communication through an approval process.
• What is my productivity plan? Great creative means being greatly creative: Thomas Edison registered 1,093 patents and held himself to a personal quota of one minor invention every 10 days; Bach wrote a cantata every week; Mozart produced more than six hundred pieces of music; Einstein is best known for his theory of relativity, but he published 248 other papers. Dean Kean Simonton of the University of California, in a study of 2,036 scientists throughout history, found that the most respected produced not only great works, but also many more “bad” ones. Out of their massive quantity of work came originality.
• Is there a unique combination – an amalgam of the previously unrelated? E=mc2 – Einstein did not invent the concepts of energy, mass, or speed of light but combined them in a new and highly unique way to see the universe differently.
• Am I allowing opposites to coexist? Microsoft licensed part of the Apple GUI for use in developing Windows 1.0. Physicist Niels Bohr believed that if you held opposites together, then you suspend your thought and your mind moves to a new level. Check for resemblances between two separate ideas and the opportunities to link them together.
• Do I have the tools I need? Chinese master painters believed genius only required the eye, the brush and the heart. They never mentioned the ink but what do I know.
• Am I allowing a creative accident? In developing an idea always keep your eyes open to the unexpected byproduct as they are often creative insight of the highest order.
• Blurt it out and populate the discussion – your first thoughts are often the most energetic so feed on that energy not just their content. Go back to them for a shot of creative juice if energy is at a low point.

Here are ten thoughts to ponder for every aspiring leader.…

Onwards.