June 9, 2026
If you had told me back in 2010 that I would be running one of North Americaβs top social media agencies, I would have laughed. I was a flight attendant at the time, and I loved that life. I travelled the world, experienced new cultures, and met amazing people. I had built a life I loved far away from the corporate ladder.Β
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Fast forward to 2026: Marr Media Group has experienced a wild, beautiful, award-winning run. We won Top Social Media Agency in North America, and I was recently recognized as 'Most Influential CEO'. π₯Ή
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After all the (proverbial) blood, sweat, and tears, the title Iβm most proud of, the one that made me cry the most, was our official certification as a Great Place to Work. My team knows I tear up in our meetings at least once a week because I care so much. What boss doesnβt? π€·ββοΈπ
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88% of our team says Marr Media Group is a great place to work. This warms my heart, especially when the average company scores 62%. Agency life is famous for its fast pace and massive burnout, so we built Marr to prove there's a better way. And that 88%? It tells me it's working. It proves my decade-long experiment worked. You can build a highly profitable agency and still treat your people like human beings.
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I brought that exact flight attendant lifestyle of freedom and flexibility straight into the DNA of this Marr Media Group. It is exactly why two of our absolute core values are #WorkFreely and #WeGiveADamn!
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Let me take you back to a Saturday morning in 2012. I was having a Caesar on a patio with a girlfriend, trying to find a place to go that night. I opened Twitter and just started asking the Calgary twitterverse where we should go, and even tagged eight local pubs.
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One pub wrote back in minutes. They told us to come in and offered us free champagne to start our night.
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We went straight there. We spent a lot of money and posted photos of our night. That single, simple interaction won our loyalty and our wallets for years. I sat there and realized the massive financial power of real human connection through social.
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Yet, most business owners back then ignored digital back then. One owner even asked me why anyone would invest in digital when print existed! I saw a huge gap and a bigger opportunity.
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I didn't have a social media marketing degree. Back in 2012, there was no such thing. (It still isnβt.) We just figured it out as we went. I wanted to see if I could build an organic community from scratch. I had recently gone gluten-free, so I started a Twitter account called Gluten-Free Calgary. It was my sandbox to learn how digital growth worked.
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The account blew up π It grew into a community of 30,000 highly engaged people and turned into a subscription box business that I sold a few years later.
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That first win gave me real confidence, and it taught me something nobody liked to admit. Nobody on social media really knew what they were doing back then. The space was brand new, constantly shifting, everyone just figuring it out on the fly as the algorithms changed, new features dropped, and the rules rewrote themselves every few months. The term 'social media expert' was a total myth. (It still is in my opinionβit changes too fast to ever stay an expert for long.)Β
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When I officially launched Marr Media Group (Mad Media at the time, but thatβs another story in itself) in 2014, I knew our services alone werenβt unique. Anyone can post a photo to a feed. How we chose to run the business became our real differentiator. Meaningful growth with great people.
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From day one, I built a 100% virtual, remote agency. I did this long before the pandemic made it normal. Why? Because my own energy ebbs and flows. I like to work out in the mid-morning. I like to take my time waking up. Sometimes I work late with a glass of wine. I don't believe humans naturally thrive in a rigid 9-to-5 box, so why force creative talent into one?
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People look at our remote team and ask the same question constantly. We live in different cities and provinces. Many of our team members have never even met face-to-face.
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How do you drive real accountability without micromanaging? π€·ββοΈ
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The answer is simple: Systems create true freedom.
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Marr Media Group runs entirely on EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System. We brought it in back in 2019, and it gave us the exact container we needed to scale without losing our soul. Every person tracks their weekly metrics on a scorecard and owns their quarterly Rocks. But those aren't just isolated goals. Every single metric and Rock is reverse-engineered to reach the bigger business vision. Our team takes absolute accountability for how their specific seat moves the needle for the entire company, giving everyone a real stake in our collective success. π―ππ
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Our systems aren't here to restrict us. They give us the structure to ensure we consistently move the needle while staying flexible enough to handle the whirlwind of business and real life.
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That structure is exactly how we fiercely protect our core value: #WorkFreely.
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Our team designs their own flexible schedules around their actual lives, not the other way around. And when you treat people like whole humans instead of worker bees, the magic happens.
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Just recently, one of our team members relocated to a new country. Her coworkers voluntarily flew across provinces just to host an in-person send-off party for her.
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A few months later, two team members realized they were both vacationing in Greece at the exact same time. They had never met in person before. They made time to meet up, connected instantly, and posted it to our company stories.
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That isn't forced corporate culture. Thatβs real human connection, backed by a system that works. π₯οΈβ€οΈπΈ
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Our human philosophy shapes our work for the standout direct-to-consumer DTC brands we manage across Canada and the US. We tell our clients the exact same thing we tell our team: Perfection doesnβt convert. Relatability does.
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Many DTC founders fear the camera. They worry their hair is messy or their lighting is bad. They spend thousands of dollars on perfect studio shots and polished product carousels, only for those ads to fall flat. Why? Because highly polished content just feels like an ad. Consumers automatically scroll past it. Especially in the age of AI, people are craving messy, real-life human context.
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Instead, raw user-generated content UGC shot on an iPhone in a real kitchen with slightly chaotic energy outperforms it by a lot. People do not want to just look at a cold product shot, they want to see a real human using it. Stop asking how to make content look better. Start asking if it feels real enough to trust. That is a massive difference.
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The reality of online marketing right now is that human beings officially have a shorter attention span than a goldfish, which is about 8 seconds. It is terrifying, but as marketers, we have to understand it. If you do not hook your audience immediately in the first few seconds with a scroll-stopping creative, you are just throwing money away.
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We build real social communities. We choose long-term buying behavior over empty vanity shortcuts and quick trends. We look at the same data as everyone else, but we train our team to find the unique angle that everyone else walked past. We are here to bring the humanity back to brands in the age of AI. πβ€οΈβ¨
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Our scaling model works like a simple wheel:
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When you care about people over profit, the profit follows. When you treat people well, their creative energy shoots up. Our clients get the direct benefit of that energy.
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During our Monday huddles, my favorite moments are our work brags. Team members often share that their industry friends are jealous of our culture. That is my ultimate metric of success. It means our environment works.
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We are growing fast. We are tracking over 50% growth this year. We are adding high-converting email marketing systems to grow our clients' ROI. As we grow internationally, we protect our culture fiercely. We are very picky about who joins this team because our people actually give a damn about the work and each other. We look for self-led, trend-obsessed specialists who love cultural moments and want creative autonomy.
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Our core focus is simple: Meaningful Growth with Great People. π«Ά
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We have a clear purpose, a sharp niche, and a big goal:
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We hit our goals by living our six core values every day:
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If you're a high-performing creative or strategist tired of the agency grind, micromanagement, and empty corporate talk, join us.Β
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If you are a standout DTC brand tired of transactional agencies, click here and let's build a real digital community together.
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Watch our Careers page, follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram, and reach out when you are ready to work with us. Come see what this Marr Magic is all about β¨
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Click here to see our Great Place To Work Award
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