Speakers

Luc Dumont is a senior member of Leger’s consulting team, providing strategic advice and client services.  His quantitative and qualitative research experience includes new product development and market assessment, corporate branding and marketing strategy development, customer satisfaction, stakeholder research, communications, advertising research, and usability testing. In addition to overall project administration and research design, implementation of discussion guides and questionnaires, ensuring timeliness of deliverables, presentation of the results, and insights  Luc also plays an important role as a strategic advisor for his clients.

With over 15 years of experience in operations, survey design and project management with some of Canada’s largest and most highly reputed market research firms, Luc is known for his dedication and deep understanding of research needs and outcomes. An experienced moderator who can undertake projects of any scope in English and French, Luc has moderated a multitude of focus groups, one-on-one in-depth interviews, telephone interviews, and ideation sessions across Canada and the United States. His experience spans many sectors including technology (usability testing, usage and attitudes, concept testing), consumer packaged goods (taste tests, packaging, creative testing), and services (service offerings tests, concept tests, creative testing).

In recent years Luc has focused his energies on helping some of the world’s largest home and personal electronics firms develop new products and applications through innovative research techniques. As many of his peers believe – Luc believes that innovation happens when science, art and emotion intersect in ways that respond to a previously unrecognized need in consumers. This requires research techniques where observation primes over questioning and where seemingly unrelated activities, needs, and habits are considered in the final analysis.

Luc was instrumental in helping a global beauty products manufacturer bridge the gap between their product engineering/scientist teams and market insights teams to optimize communication and research methods. This iniatied a renewed drive to innovate from the inside out and created a clear, concise path for upstream product development that incorporates the voice of the consumer.

As the consumer journey continues to change (rapidly) Luc is now looking to the future by helping manufacturers or service providers not only better understand their customer but to also better manage the relationship between maker/provider and consumer. This is all made possible by a new research paradigm that marries traditional qualitative, quantitative, and ethnographic methods with new techniques; these techniques involve creating, maintaining, and participating in consumer “communities” which ultimately change research from a ‘point-in-time’ tool (i.e. trackers) to one which can best be described as a ‘river’ of information that is used to drive engagement, loyalty, advocacy – and above all – innovation.

Eric Morris is the Director of Google’s Retail practice in Canada, where since 2002, he has worked alongside the country’s top marketers and advertising agencies.

Eric has held several leadership roles at Google Canada, leading sales, operations, research, strategy and analytics for Google’s advertising business. Most recently, he led Google Canada’s search and performance advertising business.

In 2016 Eric was named inventor and issued a patent in the United States for identifying rising search queries and trends at scale for advertisers worldwide.

Eric was elected to the Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada’s board of directors in 2009, and elected Chair of the board in 2015.

Michael is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience and has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. He has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions with C-level executives and participated on thought leadership panels worldwide.

Michael is also the producer and host of a network of leading podcasts, including Canada’s top retail industry podcast, The Voice of Retail, plus the Remarkable Retail with author Steve Dennis, Global E-Commerce Tech Talks and The Food Professor with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, all available on Apple, Spotify, Amazon and all major podcast platforms.

Diane J. Brisebois, CAE, is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Retail Council of Canada (RCC). She oversees the largest retail association in Canada serving over 45,000 retail establishments including independent merchants, chain stores, mass merchants, big box and online retailers. RCC’s membership covers all segments of the retail market including general merchandise, grocery and pharmacy.

Diane joined RCC as its President and CEO in January 1995. Diane has held CEO positions in the not-for-profit sector representing various industries for the past 35 years.
Diane has and continues to serve on a variety of Boards across North America.
Ms. Brisebois is Immediate Past Chair of the Fair Factory Clearinghouse (FFC), an organization established to enable collaboration between vendors and retailers in assessing and improving workplace conditions globally.

Ms. Brisebois is also the Immediate Past Chair and a member of the Executive Committee of the Forum of International Retail Association Executives (FIRAE) which represents retail associations from more than 30 countries brought together to collaborate on issues affecting the retail sector globally.

Ms. Brisebois also served for many years on the Board of Covenant House Toronto, on the Board and as Chairman of the Traffic Injury Research Foundation and on the Board and as Chairman of the Canadian Society of Association Executives.

She currently serves on:
• The Ted Rogers School of Retail Management Advisory Council
• The Advisory Board of the University of Alberta’s School of Retailing
• The Board of the Toronto Region Board of Trade, and
• The Board of Stewardship Ontario (Ontario Blue Box Program)

Ms. Brisebois is a native of Montreal, Quebec and now resides in Toronto, Ontario.