World’s top brands honoured at Banff summit

Top cult-brand leaders gathered in the Alberta Rockies to celebrate achievements in marketing and share secrets of success

Katherine Scarrow

“You don’t have to be a person, but you’ve got to have personality.”

It’s a sentiment that was expressed throughout The Gathering, which brought more than 1,000 business leaders to the historic Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel. That exact statement came from Tony Hawk, who made a name for himself not only as the father of modern vertical skateboarding, but as a pioneer of successful entrepreneurial ventures such as the Boom Boom HuckJam tour, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater video-game series, amusement park rides, and the RIDE YouTube channel, among other things.

Hawk received the Personal Brand Lifetime Achievement Award, a new category added at this year’s summit. He’s also a pop-culture icon, appearing in countless films and TV shows, including The Simpsons, which he said was a personal highlight.

The appearance by the legendary skateboarder alongside brand leaders from the likes of The North Face, Yeti, Marvel, Cheetos, Vans, Molson, M&M’s, LA Lakers, LUSH and Porsche, was a sign of the prestige of the sixth-annual summit, which bills itself as the ‘best’ marketing event in North America.

Founded by Cult Collective’s Chris Kneeland and Ryan Gill in 2014, The Gathering has grown and evolved, adding categories to recognize emerging, small-but-mighty cult brands such as S’well and Orangetheory, as well as showcase rising Canadian talent. This year, attendees were treated to a music festival with Juno-award winners Dear Rouge and Yukon Blonde, and a series of forums examining the relationships between bands and brands. But The Gathering’s mission is steadfast: to identify and honour the world’s leading ‘cult brands.’

“The brands at The Gathering focused on what the customer needed, wanted and expected. And they didn’t just deliver on that, they earned their way into the share of customer mindset,” says Bradley Foster, the event’s managing director.

The Gathering receives more than 700 brand nominations every year. Award-winners are selected through a year-long proprietary process that includes in-depth surveys and one-on-one interviews. And for the first time, the selection committee leveraged the power of IBM Watson, one of the world’s most innovative AI capabilities.

“Watson improved the quality of our data, increased the capacity for data analysis so more brands could be included, and decreased the time and effort required to complete the cult-brand analysis,” Foster says. “We look forward to leveraging even more of Watson’s capabilities in 2020.”

The Gathering does not sell itself as a networking event, or even a place to exchange business cards. For attendees, it’s really about taking an up-close-and-personal look at how successful brands are doing what they’re doing during a time of “cataclysmic” change in the marketing industry.

“It’s about being exposed to playbooks and putting something into action on Monday morning, back at the office,” Foster says.

He also points to the “really interesting things” that happen when you put high-level decision makers, “with the scope of responsibility and mandates they have,” into the same room.

“We don’t promote business deals getting done here, but business deals get done here.”

Set against the backdrop of the vast Canadian Rockies, the event manages to remain intimate. It helps that attendees are devout followers who believe in the ability of brands to inspire and transform. Who among them could deny the importance of Douglas Atkin’s keynote on Airbnb’s mission of inclusivity? Or the weight of Tom Herbst’s presentation EQ at The North Face? Or the significance of Tim Harris’ talk on the LA Lakers’ ‘corner store culture?’

Organizers of The Gathering consistently outdo themselves: bigger brands and personalities, more content and dual-track sessions, and ramped up music and entertainment value. But as it grows, the level of access to the hearts and minds of the biggest brand leaders remains unchanged, keeping The Gathering on the calendar of smart marketers across North America year after year.

For more informations visit www.cultgathering.com