Doing Good and Making Good

Doing Good and Making Good: Creativity, Celebrity, and "Purpose-Driven" Advertising

The role of creativity in cutting through the noise for celebrity platforms, corporate brands, and government initiatives aiming to do "good."

Speakers:

Marni Van Dyk is a Screenwriter, Director, and Producer. She has served as Head Writer for event specials focused on community impact work and causes for ABC, CBS, CTV, and CBC, with talent including Jennifer Aniston, Will Ferrell, Neil Patrick Harris, Natalie Portman, The Muppets and many more. For the past two years she has written Selena Gomez’s Rare Impact Fund Benefit, her annual event in Los Angeles in support of youth mental health in conjunction with The Rare Impact Fund and Rare Beauty.

Her first feature-length film Learn to Swim, written with Director Thyrone Tommy, had its World Premiere at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival and is distributed by Ava DuVernay’s ARRAY on Netflix in the US/UK/Aus/NZ. Her latest film, a short entitled This is Not About Swimming, also had its World Premiere at TIFF (’23) and is now available to stream on CBC Gem. Marni is the Series Director for Made for TV with Boman Martinez-Reid (CRAVE), and has served as a writer, producer, and story editor on many award winning television series.

Marni is an alumna of Queen's University, the Corus Writer’s Apprenticeship at the Banff World Media Festival, and the Writer's Lab at Norman Jewison's Canadian Film Centre.

Julie Markle spent the last five years as Executive Creative Director, leading the team at Canadian independent creative agency, Bleublancrouge (Toronto). Prior to that, she left her indelible mark at Ogilvy, producing creative work that often stretched well beyond Canada's borders because of its brand building ability.

For decades, Julie has been giving brands the unique trifecta of meaning, purpose and talk value, turning consumers into followers, and often ardent fans. Whether her work championed women’s and girls’ self-esteem (Dove), reinforced the importance of skin-to-skin hugs for babies (Huggies), or advocated for eating real, unadulterated food (Hellmann’s), there is nothing Julie loves more than creative ideas that effect change. And build businesses.

By putting creative ideas to work in big, unimaginable ways, delighting her clients and their audiences, her work has often been picked up globally, and has been recognized both nationally and internationally with numerous awards, including the Cannes Glass Lion for Change.

Professor Sunil Johal is the David and Ann Wilson Professor in Public Policy and Society. Professor Johal is a policy expert with a track record of executive-level experience addressing challenging policy issues. He is also the Vice President, Public Policy at the CSA Group where he leads a team developing innovative solutions to thorny problems.

In 2022, he was named to expert panels advising the Ontario government on the development of a portable benefits scheme for non-standard workers and the City of Toronto on its Long-Term Financial Plan. In 2021, Professor Johal led the medium-term planning and transition activities for Employment and Social Development Canada in an Assistant Deputy Minister-level role.

He was Policy Director at the University of Toronto’s Mowat Centre from 2012 to 2019, where he led the Centre’s research activities and established himself as a thought leader on issues such as the future of work and the implications of disruptive technologies. In 2019 he was named Chair of the Expert Panel on Modern Labour Standards by the federal Minister of Labour.