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RANKING THE BEST THE FUTURE LOOKS MARCIA MOFFAT YOUR EMPLOYEES BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS BRIGHT FOR OLD-SCHOOL ON BLACKROCK’S BIG LOVE MESSAGING APPS— BRANDS IN CANADA NEWSLETTERS CLIMATE PUSH WHY DON’T YOU? DEATH-DEFYING FEATS OF FINANCIALFINANCIAL ACRO∂BATICS! MIND-BOGGLING LOGISTICAL∑ LEAPS! CLOWNS, PPOLOLAR BEARS AND AN UNLIKELY NEW RINGMASTER INSIDE THE YEAR THAT NEARLY KILLED CIRQUE DU SOLEIL AND ITS PLAN FOR A POST-PANDEMIC COMEBACK JUNE 2021 VISIONARIES Fancygoggles aside, the reality before our eyesisthat Calgary is an opportunity-rich city.Weare home to innovators, dreamers and problem solvers whose signatureentrepreneurial spirit allowthem to see opportunity whereothers might not. These visionaries are turning heads across all of our sectors each and every day. They embody the vision forour city and arehelping put Calgary and our innovation ecosystem on the global map as aplace wherepeople come to solvesome of the world’sgreatest challenges. With the breadth of our talented people and thestrength of our community,the opportunities in Calgary arelimitless. Take acloser look at Calgary’svisionaries at livetechlovelife.com/stories Calgary: Canada’smostadventurous tech city.TM Contents 2 EDITOR’S NOTE THE SHOW WILL GO ON When the world shut down, so did Cirque du Soleil. We followed it 4 SEVEN THINGS 16 through the logistical nightmare the followed, its filing for creditor Want to save the planet? protection, the dramatic battle for ownership and how it’s preparing Get a mascot. Plus, why to return to the stage. /By Jason Kirby banking jobs still rule and professional wrestling rocks STRIKE UP THE BRANDS Our first annual ranking of 25 companies that define what business- 7 NEED TO KNOW 30 Researchers are working on to-business excellence looks like right now. /By Aaliyah Dasoo how to encourage consumers to embrace public health measures. Corporate leaders “There’s just need to pay attention no way you’re going to make a 10 ASK AN EXPERT wildly successful Why managers can’t afford independent to slack off when it comes to company and not have Twitter new technology, and how to and Facebook entice your employees back trying to copy to the office post-pandemic Substack” appy hour 12 THE EXCHANGE BlackRock Canada head GLIA Marcia Moffat on why FO COVID-19 has been good CAS for sustainability and why LU Canada makes a good testing ground for new (RIGHT) investment products RNA; WA 52 WEALTH SK The road to investing in NIEL emerging markets is littered DA with potholes, but Matthew Strauss avoids the worst (LEFT) bumps. Plus, how suburban STACKED living is fuelling the real Canadian Chris Best is hoping to upend traditional media with his BEARD; estate boom TT newsletter platform, Substack. He’s faced down Facebook before— MA /By Joe Castaldo 56 TURNING POINT and lost. Will this time by any different? APH Vito Paladino took over GR AGAINST THE ODDS TO Audi Canada in the midst of the pandemic—and the When bond trader Paul Marcogliese’s two young sons were PHO 48 automaker’s push toward diagnosed with a fatal ultra-rare disease, he and his wife, Cheryl, VER electrification /By Tim Shufelt CO threw all their energy into finding a cure. JUNE 2021 / REPORT ON BUSINESS 1 Editor’s Note June 2021, Volume 37, No.6 Editorial Editor JAMES COWAN Assistant Editor DAWN CALLEJA Senior Editor JOHN DALY Copy Editors LISA FIELDING, SUSAN NERBERG Research CATHERINE DOWLING Art ArT Director DOMENIC MACRI Associate ArT Director BRENNAN HIGGINBOTHAM Director of Photography CLARE VANDER MEERSCH Contributors DEBORAH AARTS, LIZA AGRBA, JOE CASTALDO, TREVOR COLE, ROSEMARY COUNTER, TIM KILADZE, JASON KIRBY, ALEX MLYNEK, JOANNA PACHNER, JUDITH PEREIRA, KATIE UNDERWOOD Advertising Chief Revenue Officer ANDREW SAUNDERS Managing Director, Creative Studios and Ad Innovation TRACY DAY Senior Manager, Special Products ANDREA D’ANDRADE Brand on the run Product Manager RYAN HYSTEAD For most of its history, Shopify has made a virtue of anonymity. Production On most e-commerce platforms, individual retailers are less important than Vice President, Print Operations SALLY PIRRI their service provider. It’s painfully obvious at Amazon, where every mer- Production Co-ordinator chant competes for attention in a never-ending digital big-box store. Even on ISABELLE CABRAL an artisan-friendly site like Etsy, the branding of the tech giant is more promi- Publisher nent than the names of the individual sellers. PHILLIP CRAWLEY Editor-in-Chief, The Globe and Mail But ever since its founding, Shopify has positioned itself differently. It’s a DAVID WALMSLEY utility company, not a retailer. You aren’t aware of which electrician installed Managing Director, Business the cash register at a local boutique, so why care about which company facili- and Financial Products GARTH THOMAS tates its online transactions? The Ottawa-based tech firm exists to boost its cli- Editor, ReporT on Business ents’ profile, not the other way around. As president Harley Finkelstein once GARY SALEWICZ explained it: “Shopify is a brand to merchants—it’s not a brand to consumers.” Report on Business magazine is Through this quiet support of other brands, Shopify has built an over- published 7 times a year by The Globe whelmingly strong one of its own. Earlier this year, we partnered with the and Mail Inc., 351 King Street E., Toronto polling firm Ipsos to see which business-to-business brands Canadian execu- M5A 0N1. Telephone 416-585-5000. Letters to the Editor: tives hold in the highest regard. The goal was to understand which companies [email protected]. are seen as trustworthy, innovative and focused on their clients’ needs. Ipsos Copyright 2021, The Globe and Mail. surveyed more than 400 executives, asking—among other attributes—which Indexed in the Canadian Periodical Index. Advertising Offices companies are trailblazers, which are easy to work with and which best serve Head Office, The Globe and Mail, their communities. 351 King Street E., Toronto M5A 0N1 Shopify came out at No. 1 on our inaugural ranking. It frankly wasn’t even Telephone 416-585-5111 or toll-free 1-866-999-9237 close; the brand came first in 22 of 42 categories. For example, 81% of respon- Branch Offices dents agreed Shopify was ahead of others in leading the digital transforma- Montreal 514-982-3050 tion, a stunning 19 percentage points ahead of the second-place company, Vancouver 604-685-0308 Calgary 403-245-4987 Microsoft. On average, Shopify was eight percentage points ahead in all the Email: [email protected] areas where it took first place. United States and countries outside of These results suggest Shopify’s brand now rivals global leaders, such as North America: AJR Media Group, Google. The technology behemoth has come first on Ipsos’s ranking of the 212-426-5932, ajrmediagroup@ globeandmail.com most influential brands in Canada for the past nine years and landed in the top Publications mail registration No. 7418. spot this year in 13 out of 49 categories. Coincidentally, Google led second- The publisher accepts no responsibility place brands by an average of eight percentage points, just like Shopify. for unsolicited manuscripts, SHIRI KE The difference, of course, is Google has been widely known for nearly two transparencies or other material. H Printed in Canada by Transcontinental OS decades (it’s so established, its name isn’t just a brand but a verb). Shopify is Printing Inc. UR certainly better recognized by consumers than it once was—a year of pan- Report on Business magazine is electronically KO available through subscription to Factiva.com demic-driven growth in e-commerce helped, as did replacing RBC as Canada’s from Factiva, at factiva.com/factiva APH Send feedback to GR most valuable company. But it remains a resolutely business-to-business brand or 416-306-2003. robmagletters@ TO globeandmail.com that makes itself look good by keeping the spotlight on others. /James Cowan tgam.ca/r PHO 2 JUNE 2021 / REPORT ON BUSINESS Advisory Board Who killed Encana? either worked there or did business In our last issue, Tim Kiladze and Jeffrey Jones investigated how with it in some capacity. The common Canada’s top oil and gas company lost its way and its name, and themes in these comments were ended up moving its head office to Denver. We heard from a number the company was brought down by of former employees with their own thoughts on the company’s fall. greed, incompetent leadership and the fateful decision to “drink the Kool-Aid” I was an employee at Encana and I found the [online] reader comments proffered by the investment bankers one of its predecessors from 1997 to about the piece particularly interesting. to spin off Cenovus and become a 2004. Yo u guys nailed the story. You Many were hopelessly naive or ill- pure-play natural gas producer. From didn’t miss anything—on the business informed, placing the blame on the my perch in the company, I tend to or its personalities. policies of the Harper or Trudeau agree—the downfall of Encana was I think the largest business-class governments. But a significant number entirely attributable to self-inflicted lesson is the true value of leadership. appeared to be written by people whO wounds. —A former employee Murray Edwards is still a driving force at Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. and was from the beginning. We acknowledge the support of our acdemic advisory panel It’s surviving and thriving, all these years later. At Encana, leadership changes led to vast changes in focus and strategy, and gradual unravelling. I think you captured Yrjo Koskinen, Associate Dean, Research; Yolande Chan, Associate Dean, Haskayne School of Business Research at Smith School of Business that overarching lesson.