The One Where SocialWest Turned 10
SocialWest 2026 wrapped on May 29th at the TELUS Convention Centre. Ten years in, and Canada's marketing community showed up the way it always does, curious, generous with each other, and hungry for ideas worth implementing on Monday morning.
The feedback said the rest.
“SocialWest 2026 is the kind of conference that reminds you why you love this industry. Every speaker brought something worth writing down, the energy in the room was genuinely electric, and the whole event ran so smoothly you could just focus on being present and soaking it in. As a marketing and communications professional, I'm always looking for the thing that shifts my thinking or fills my cup back up. This did both. Already counting down to next year."
The Sessions
Over half of all individual session ratings came back EXCELLENT, with another quarter rated VERY GOOD. Here is what stood out.
Dan Mangan, Fox Paw in the Snow: If Your Footprint Cannot Be Wide, Let It Be Deep
A surprising closer for day one, and a satisfying one. Bringing a musician to a marketing conference is a booking that could easily read as gimmick. This one did not. Mangan's argument, that depth of connection beats width of reach, is one most marketers know intellectually and do not always practice. Hearing it from someone who built a decade-long career on it, one text to a fan at a time, in rooms that did not always fill up, landed differently than it does from inside the industry.
Many attendees came in skeptical and left calling it the best session of the day. People said it made them reconsider how much they rely on industry voices for ideas that non-marketers might articulate better. A handful found the connection to their own work less obvious. That tension was part of what made it one of the most talked-about sessions of the three days.
Anniston Ward, Metricool: What 40M+ Posts Reveal About Social Media in 2026
Real data, confidently presented. Ward delivered the platform-by-platform breakdown without losing the room to spreadsheets. The TikTok versus Instagram performance findings surprised attendees who thought they already knew the landscape, and the session was consistently praised for giving people a clear, evidence-based view of where to actually put their time and budget.
Lauren Freund, Canva: Beyond the Scroll: Content That Connects
Freund opened the main conference days and set a tone. Sessions drawing on real brand experience at places like Taco Bell and Shutterfly tend to land differently than sessions built from frameworks. Hers did. Attendees called it one of the most informative and energising starts to a conference day they had experienced.
Karen Howe, The Township Group: Kill It With Creativity
Howe has spent decades helping brands find the creative instinct that outlasts trend cycles. Her session drew consistent praise for the quality of the examples, including a French insurance company campaign that moved several people in the room. For anyone who has ever had to make the case for creativity in a budget meeting, this session gave them language and examples to take back.
Akshay Sud, MasterClass: The Formula, Not the Fluke
His session on turning a winning ad into a repeatable creative testing system was among the highest-rated of the conference. He brought a workbook. Attendees mentioned the workbook specifically and repeatedly. People left with a concrete system they felt ready to apply the following week, which is not something you can say about most sessions on creative strategy.
Ameet Khabra, HopSkip Media: The Automation Trap
There is a version of a paid search session that is a vendor pitch with a slide deck. This was not that. Khabra's willingness to say plainly what platforms will not tell you about their own automation tools earned her some of the most enthusiastic responses in the whole survey. Attendees appreciated hearing from a Google Ads expert with no incentive to protect Google, and left with practical changes they could make immediately to stop budget going to waste.
Joe Teo and Jessica Lui, HeyOrca: Own the Attention
Their case for community-led marketing over reach-chasing resonated especially with social media managers handling multiple brands. Attendees said it made them rethink how they measure success across the accounts they manage, and the response also showed a clear appetite for more from Lui specifically.
Leilani Olynik, Everbrave: The Missing Layer in Your Marketing Strategy
Consistently named a favourite, particularly for the clarity of the examples and a framework that people described as immediately applicable. Multiple attendees flagged it as something they were taking directly back to their teams.
Sarah Micho, Greenpeace Canada: Marketing for Good
At a conference where AI dominated a lot of the programming, Micho's session stood out for going somewhere different. She balanced a strong success story with an honest look at what happens when social good marketing tips into inauthenticity, and the combination of both sides of that story was what people remembered most.
Charlie Grinnell, RightMetric: Mapping the Dark Market
Grinnell has become one of those SocialWest fixtures that returning attendees plan around. His session on mapping hidden social behaviour into strategic insight was sharp and well-paced, and the feedback from multi-year attendees carried a warmth you do not get from a first-time speaker. More than one person suggested he deserves his own extended format next year.
Krista Davey, Evans Hunt: From SEO to GEO
For attendees whose work touches search, this was frequently described as the session they came for without knowing they needed it. The shift from search engine optimization to generative engine optimization is moving faster than most teams are tracking, and Davey presented it with enough practical framing that people left with somewhere to start rather than just something to worry about.
“SocialWest never leaves you disappointed, you can always manage to get something out of it. Not all sessions are for everyone so be picky and then you'll get the most benefit."
Different sessions land differently for different people. That is not a criticism of the program, it is just what happens when 800 people with different jobs show up to the same three days.
Worth the Price of Admission
Conferences usually take the hit on value for money. Attendees are generous about content and brutal about whether it was worth the price. SocialWest scored high on both, which is the harder thing to pull off. The best thing that can happen at a conference is that you leave with something you did not have before, an idea, a contact, a different way of thinking about a problem you have been sitting with for months. Most attendees left with all three. The people who came back for their sixth or seventh year did not need a survey to tell them that. The people who came for the first time figured it out pretty quickly.
Ten Years
“Another great year at SocialWest. I think this was my 6th or 7th time attending, and there's a reason I keep coming back. The content is always high quality, practical, and actually useful. I've implemented so much of what I've learned over the years, and it's played a huge role in my growth as a marketer. Already looking forward to next year.”
“SocialWest was worth the trip from Vancouver. Came away informed, educated and connected with a ton of incredible people doing great work."
“If you want to make valuable connections in the marketing industry and keep up with current trends, SocialWest is the place to be every year. Plus it's just a whole lot of fun. And how often can you really say that a conference is fun?"
