About Strategy

Strategy

Strategy is a Toronto-based business-to-business magazine serving Canada's marketing, advertising and media industries. Published by Brunico Communications, it was launched in 1989 as a trade title for the people who plan, buy, create and measure advertising in Canada, and it has grown into a multi-platform brand that combines a print magazine, daily industry news, conferences and one of the country's most prominent portfolios of creative and media awards. Its editorial territory spans brand strategy, creative advertising, media planning and buying, shopper marketing, digital innovation and the business results behind the campaigns.

Overview

Strategy covers the Canadian advertising industry as an insider's beat. Its readers are agency executives, brand marketers, media planners and buyers, production companies and the suppliers that orbit them. The magazine reports on account wins and losses, agency leadership moves, notable campaigns and the commercial thinking behind them, alongside analysis of how global trends — from retail media networks to artificial intelligence — are landing in the Canadian market. Because it is published 18 times a year, it operates at a rhythm between the daily trade press and the slower monthly magazine cycle, giving it room for reported features while staying close to industry news.

The print edition carries the ISSN 0025-3642 and, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations figures cited in its reference material, had a total circulation of 7,872 as of December 2011. The brand's digital home, strategyonline.ca, anchors its daily news coverage, while a family of affiliated news sites and events extends its reach into adjacent corners of the media business.

History

Strategy began as a second act for its founder. Brunico Communications was established in 1986 by James Shenkman, who had just been turned down for a CRTC radio licence for a station in Mississauga. Spotting a gap in Canadian coverage of the media industries, he formed the company to launch Playback, a magazine covering Canadian film and television production. Strategy, an advertising and business magazine, followed in 1989, and Kidscreen, covering children's film and television, arrived in 1996. Later Brunico titles included Boards, devoted to advertising commercial production, Media in Canada, covering general media industry news, and RealScreen, devoted to documentary and non-fiction film and television.

The trade press landscape in Canada shifted decisively in 2016, when Brunico acquired Marketing — the heritage title that had competed with Strategy for decades — from Rogers Media. Marketing, first launched in 1908, came with a quarterly magazine, online daily news, annual conferences and events for the national advertising industry including the Media Innovation Awards and the Marketing Awards, plus the CARDonline and National List of Advertisers databases. Brunico merged Marketing with Strategy, combining the challenger brand with the century-old incumbent under one roof. The deal was announced as the end of a friendly rivalry: Brunico president and CEO Russell Goldstein said the two titles had long enjoyed competition that benefited the industry, and editorial leadership, including vice-president and editorial director Mary Maddever, who also served as publisher of Strategy, spoke of integrating the younger Strategy brand with the heritage Marketing brand to serve the marketing community.

Brunico itself continued to expand beyond publishing. In 2016 it also acquired the assets of Toronto-based Achilles Media, taking over operating rights to the Banff World Media Festival, and it already owned and operated events including the Realscreen Summit, the Kidscreen Summit and the Stream and Scripted conferences across North America, Europe and Asia. The company's entertainment-industry titles give a sense of its scale: Kidscreen publishes a quarterly print magazine and an industry news site and hosts the annual Kidscreen Summit and Kidscreen Awards for youth programming, while Realscreen serves the non-fiction film and television business with its own magazine, website and summit. Since 2016 Brunico has also owned and operated the Banff World Media Festival, one of the world's largest film and television industry conferences.

Content

The magazine's editorial mix is built around the business of creativity. Typical coverage includes profiles of agencies and the marketers behind notable work, analysis of campaign effectiveness, reports on media agency reviews and account moves, and features on emerging disciplines such as shopper marketing, branded content and data-driven media. Special issues and themed coverage track the industry calendar — the spring awards season, the fall planning season and the annual reckonings with where ad dollars are moving.

A significant share of Strategy's editorial energy goes into benchmarking the industry itself. Its Creative Report Card has become a widely watched ranking of agencies and creatives, while its conference and awards programming — Agency of the Year, the AToMiC Awards, the Shopper Marketing Forum and partner events such as the CASSIES — creates the occasions around which the industry gathers. The acquisition of Marketing added that title's conference and events business and its Media Innovation Awards to the portfolio. The Agency of the Year program illustrates how the brand operates as industry infrastructure. The 36th edition, held in October 2025 at Koerner Hall in Toronto before a crowd of more than 500, divided winners across six categories — Agency, Media, Digital, PR, Design and Small — and named Campaigns of the Year in each. Independent agency Rethink took its seventh consecutive Agency Gold at the 2025 show, while Starcom won Media Gold and Cossette won Design Gold. The 2026 Strategy Awards, meanwhile, handed out two Grand Prix honours, and Brunico's own Mary Maddever received the Association of Canadian Advertisers' Gold Medal — a sign of how deeply the brand is embedded in the industry it covers.

Coverage & Audience

Strategy is a national title in practice: while its newsroom and the bulk of the Canadian agency business sit in Toronto, its coverage and events serve agencies, marketers and media companies across the country, and its digital editions travel well beyond. The 2011 circulation figure of 7,872 reflects a controlled trade circulation aimed at industry professionals rather than a mass consumer audience — the value for advertisers is concentration, not scale.

The brand's audience proposition is influence within a defined professional community. Its awards programs function as industry infrastructure: being named to a Strategy shortlist or winning Agency of the Year carries weight in new-business pitches and recruitment, which in turn keeps the magazine's coverage closely read by the people it covers.

Ownership

Strategy is owned by Brunico Communications Ltd., the Toronto-based business-to-business publishing and events company founded by James Shenkman in 1986. The company describes itself as serving the Canadian marketing and media community and the global entertainment industry. Its leadership includes president and CEO Russell Goldstein, and on the editorial side Mary Maddever has served as vice-president and editorial director and as publisher of Strategy. Brunico's portfolio around Strategy includes the Strategy Daily online news site, Media in Canada and Stimulant, alongside its entertainment-industry titles Playback, Kidscreen and Realscreen and its conference and awards businesses. Brunico also took over operation of the Banff World Media Festival in 2016.

Digital Presence

The magazine's main digital home is strategyonline.ca, which carries daily industry news, features and information about the brand's awards and events. Brunico operates companion news sites for adjacent beats, including Media in Canada and Stimulant, and the events business maintains its own web presence for conferences such as the Shopper Marketing Forum and awards programs including Agency of the Year, the AToMiC Awards and the CASSIES partnership. Archived material, including full issues such as the June 2017 edition marking Canada's sesquicentennial with coverage of patriotic brand campaigns and the AToMiC Awards winners, circulates in public archives and illustrates the magazine's long-running blend of campaign analysis and industry celebration.