Q&A: Toronto-Based Salt XC

What makes you unique and differentiates you from your competitors in the marketplace? We are a fully integrated agency anchored by world-class creative, media and connected teams. Our unique framework for designing actionable consumer and shopper experiences is driven by "connected creativity," which we define as meaningful cross-disciplinary collaboration that unlocks the power of different perspectives, delivering new and effective solutions.

Our approach to shopper marketing is grounded in consumer-centric omnichannel campaigns that drive sales by connecting with humans, and influencing shoppers online and offline through the path to purchase. Salt's shopper marketing campaigns are designed to connect on an emotional level with the shopper by tapping into cultural trends, human insights and motivations to drive behavior change and relevancy for brands.

What is one recent company win you can share with us? Adweek recently named Salt XC the second-fastest growing large agency in the world. This recognition of tremendous growth, since we started five years ago, is a testament of what we've been able to accomplish together with our client partners. 

Where do you see the greatest opportunity right now for growth (for you or your clients)? One of our greatest opportunities for growth is through the continual onboarding of new clients in diverse and emerging categories. By diversifying our client portfolio, we've expanded our revenue streams and gained valuable experience and expertise in different industries. This versatility has allowed us to stay ahead of industry trends, identify strategic partnerships, and cater to the evolving needs of our clients.

What is one challenge you (or your clients) are facing right now? It's no surprise that marketers find the increasingly complex marketing and retail landscape challenging to navigate. The intricacy of where, how, and when we reach shoppers has compounded and put more pressure on brands to perform in a progressively competitive landscape. This presents challenges and opportunities for agencies to develop impactful creative that will resonate with key retailers, their nuances and their shopper, while driving material impact for our client partners. 

AI is also playing a transformative role in marketing — with our proprietary tech products and processes, Salt is leveraging AI to enhance collaboration, productivity and value for our clients by enabling our teams to move faster and focus on what matters most: big thinking and connected strategies.

What solution are you trying or recommend to others facing the same challenge? Having a connected model is what sets us apart. The approach is a forward-thinking way to solve clients' business needs by combining collaborative cross-functional thinkers, planning tools and technologies designed to deliver results. Connections is not just about many channels that ladder seamlessly to support a big idea — it's about looking deeper at the relationships between channels, what a shopper needs to move through the path to purchase, and engineering creative designed to drive behavior change.

Which P2PI member benefit(s) do you value most and why? P2PI has been an incredible resource to support our shopper marketing team with keeping our finger on the pulse. Our clients praise our ability to be highly tuned in to the retail landscape in North America and P2PI plays a role in this with timely and relevant content, webinars and case studies of real-time executions in market across various categories and retailers.