Syd Kessler
Syd Kessler began as a writer for Chuck Blore Creative Services. During the 1960s and 1970s, this company was considered to be the number one creative radio commercial production company in the U.S. In 1970-71, Hatus/Hall–the producers of the legendary game show "Let's Make a Deal" – hired him to develop a game show ("The Crosswits") styled after a crossword puzzle. This show ran on ABC for six seasons. Kessler then started his own business and was president of Kessler Productions between 1974–78, producing and writing creative radio commercials exclusively for the Canadian marketplace. The  company continued to grow and Kessler took in other partners. The company changed its name to Kessler Music Inc. and Kessler served as president until 1981, when he merged with the two top audio production companies in Canada and became the dominant player in the marketplace. This new company was called The Air Company, and Kessler was its president from 1981 to 1988. In this period, the company won Canadian and International awards such as the I.B.A.s, The Bessies, The One Show, etc. In 1988, John Labatt Ltd., a multinational Canadian corporation, with over $3 billion CAD in revenue , joint ventured with Kessler Music to create a new entity called Supercorp. Starting revenues of this company was $10 million. In four years the revenues rose to $150 million. Supercorp dominated the commercial production business, this time in all aspects of advertising production. Supercorp owned the following premiere enterprises: HYP&N, The Partners Film Company and all its subsidiaries, The Animation House, Sounds Interchange Recording Studios, and The Air Company. Supercorp controlled 68 percent of all advertising production in Canada and 2% of the television commercial production business in the U.S. Aside from his senior management responsibilities as President  and CEO, Syd also consulted in the retail sector of advertising. He became known as a respected specialist/problem solver, working with such clients as Saffer Advertising, Black's Photography, Esso, Carson Pirie, Towers, etc. During this time, Kessler was the creative marketing force behind the new positioning of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Their “GO PUBLIC” campaign was conceived and produced by him. Following a change in corporate direction at Labatt's in 1994, Kessler sold his shares in Supercorp and started a new company called The Kessler Group. The Kessler Group was created to address a growing need in  the advertising community to move away from the broadcast advertising model, with its inherent inability to deliver measurable results, to a new advertising model called narrowcasting; narrowcasting takes advantage of new digital technologies’ ability to cost-effectively tailor advertising messages to individuals, producing improved and fully measurable results. As digital technologies further penetrated traditional markets, the need to understand and take advantage of them created opportunities at the strategic level of major corporations. To meet this need, Kessler became co-director of KPMG e-commerce practice in 1997. Its core focus was on issues such as branding, online marketing, customer  experience and digital business extension. Having recently been inducted into The Marketing Hall of Legends, Kessler now spends his time identifying, investing and then mentoring new businesses and organizations. He is an investor in Brand Voice Inc., Rocket Boys Inc., Radio Free Canada Inc., Mystery Box Media, Wunderkind Inc., Scientific Intelligence Inc., L'Institut Idée, and Niche (Niche). He is a founding member of NABS, the National Advertising Benevolent Society, which looks after the well-being of advertising professionals, and founding member of Kids Help Phone. Kessler is also a published author, having written four books, including "The Perfect System" (Stoddart  Publishing), which describes his unique personal story and business philosophy, his follow-up, "The Perfect System of Parenting" (Bastian Books), "The Master Builder", co-written with Michael Berg, and "Vibes", co-written with David Morrison, on the topic of consciousness and behaviour.