Julie Oden

Value Proposition

Julie is a strategic marketing executive with national, global, and multi-sector experience with a track record of successes in retail, financial services and many digital-first brands, including Manulife, The Home Depot, AOL and Yahoo!. She partners with senior leaders of mid to large-scale organizations who are purpose-led (or looking to find their purpose) to help accelerate their marketing transformation using a digital-first strategy. Julie helps enterprises reposition their brands, magnify their UVPs, build out plans of action to cement them into the DNA of their employees, and then extend and amplify them in the market. She also has a depth of experience building global community investment strategies, as well as not-for-profit strategic plans, and developing best in class Board governance.

Selected Achievements

Spearheaded global Brand relaunch in 18 countries, six languages, 35,000 employees and to over 20 million customers. Drove an 80% reduction in trademarks and built a single master brand system through a simplified brand architecture (strategic shift: house of brands – branded house).
Optimized the in-house agency by rebuilding and training a new workflow platform, streamlined and integrated across multiple business units (nearly 400 users) to drive efficiency and effectiveness in six months.
Modernized historic community investment strategy to provide C-Suite with visibility to spend, built governance, and helped align brand, CI and sponsorship under a larger sustainability umbrella.
Transformed annual advertising process with forecasted savings of $5 to $10 million and developed custom software to help manage internal capacity, budget use, streamlined marketing documentation and meetings, and managed external agencies. Objectives were to shrink meetings by 25%, shrink documents by 75%, and increase efficiency of agency spend.
Architected first Canadian brand bilingual multi-channel guidelines and designed refinements to the creative process in order to start to reclaim significant costs (approximately $1 million annually).
Successfully quarterbacked two complex customer-facing redesigns of THD.ca on time and to specifications, driving traffic up 15% year-over-year in the first year, and 30% the following two years.
Lead and effectively managed a significant change management plan supporting a second brand transformation for a global financial services company.
Founding Board member of Brave Beginnings; quarterbacked strategic planning process in order to prepare the business to scale and support the evolution of the Founder and her role in the organization.

Experience

Manulife: VP, Global Brand, Creative & Community Investments (2017 – 2021)
Brave Beginnings: Founding Board Member (2015 – Present)
The Home Depot Canada: Head of Brand, Creative & Production (2009 – 2017)
Various Previous Positions: MySpace Canada, Yahoo! Canada, AOL Canada

Qualifications

Bachelor of Fine Arts B.F.A – The University Of Western Ontario (1998)
Executive Program: Leadership Courses: Strategy & Innovation – Harvard Mentor Course (2011)

Volunteerism

Brave Beginnings: founding Board member
Various mentoring and coaching roles

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Articles Written By and Featuring Julie

Our Wishes for 2023

Traditions are synonymous with the holidays, so in keeping with ours, some of Osborne's Principals and Senior Advisors reflect on the outgoing year and what their hopes are for the incoming one. Whether your traditions are baking treats, decorating parties, or donning an ugly sweater, we hope it includes spending quality time with the ones [...]

The “Purpose” Equation

Business leaders: It’s time to re-evaluate your brand. Whether you’re ready to admit to it or not, the crazy realities of what we’ve lived through the past couple of years have forced some significant shifts in consumer purchasing behaviours. Now, these changes aren’t bad per se, …and in fact, taking the time to truly understand [...]

News Release: Osborne Welcomes Julie Oden, a Strategic Marketing Specialist, to the Team

Osborne Interim Management is pleased to welcome Julie Oden to the team as a Senior Advisor. Julie is a strategic marketing executive with national, global, and multi-sector experience with a track record of successes in retail, financial services and many digital-first brands, including Manulife, The Home Depot, AOL and Yahoo!. She partners with senior leaders [...]