MOY 23: Valerie Sapin engineers Desjardins to last

This story was originally published in the 2024 Winter issue of strategy magazine

Photo by Bénédicte Brocard

Written by Will Novosedlik

Valérie Sapin couldn’t have engineered her career with greater finesse. Maybe that’s because she was trained as an engineer – an unusual background for a marketer, but one that prepared her for her current role as VP of the marketing expertise center at Desjardins Group. 

She came to the position in late 2022 with a mix of tech, agency-side strategic planning and corporate brand management skills. Her career began in technology, where she spent the first four years of her professional life moving up the marketing ladder at Softkit and then Autodesk. She followed that with 11 years as head of strategic planning at Cossette, where she earned her agency-side cred. And that was followed by 12 years on the client-side as CMO at Énergir (formerly Gas Métro), Québec’s pre-eminent natural gas provider.

When it’s pointed out to her that, in the marketing world, such tenures are an eternity, her response is: “I approached my career as a marathon, not as a sprint.”

Desjardins promotes itself as a brand with heart in ads that focus on its community-led values.

Before joining Desjardins, Sapin helped rebrand Gas Métro to become Énergir, which, in Québec, was a “love” brand. But even a love brand can be transformed. “We were actually able to elevate the love by changing the brand. It was a success, often held up as an example of how to do it right in a sector as complex as energy,” says Sapin. 

After 12 years, Sapin made the move into the world of finance. Her role was to run Desjardins’ in-house marketing agency, applying her learnings from both the agency and brand sides of the business. “I felt I was putting together the best of two worlds and two jobs that I deeply loved, so it was the perfect match for me,” says Sapin. “And [Desjardins is] another ‘love’ brand, in another complex sector.”

The size of the department is around 320 people, including media planning, media buying, content strategy, social media, creative, mass and personalized communications experts, as well as sponsorship and events. The team is dedicated to the Desjardins brand and its different lines of business (i.e., personal and business financial service, wealth management, life and health insurance, property and casualty insurance). And, during the last 12 months, Sapin reorganized the team into multidisciplinary units to maximise synergies.

She also introduced new ways of working by taking inspiration from the “agile” method, an approach developed in the world of product and service innovation. “We started with pilot projects at the beginning of the year and the results were impressive, sometimes cutting time-to-market needed to launch campaigns by half. We are now extending that throughout the team,” explains Sapin.

The insurance provider channeled giants helping out regular folk in creative that celebrated its 125 years of being a “caregiver.”

Desjardins still works with external agencies, including its AOR the Humanise Collective, comprised of Bleublancrouge for creative and Glassroom for media. “As we internalized the different functions, we were looking for an outside agency ready to work differently and focus on the concept of ‘one team’ rather than a traditional client-agency relationship.”

“I need to feel that I’m working for the greater good,” Sapin says on why she joined Desjardins. “Being a co-operative so focused on the community, checked all the boxes for me.” Which leads to her biggest challenge: growing the brand outside of la belle province. 

In October 2023, the brand’s insurance arm looked to make a big impression in English Canada, and so Sapin’s team launched the “Giant” campaign, developed in collaboration with Bleublancrouge Toronto and Glassroom. Shopping intent research highlighted the importance for people to have an insurer that is truly caring and people-focused, which is in line with Desjardins DNA, says Sapin. 

The creative showcases the brand’s caregiver persona as an “insurance company with a heart so big, it shows” and “the spot features a large and caring guardian that personifies the brand of Desjardins Insurance, assisting Canadians with stalled vehicles, road safety and property protection. Just another day at the office for an insurer who truly cares about its customers,” she explains. 

Community focus is supported by the brand’s sponsorship of Sportnet’s Monday Night Hockey, which shines a light on the people who make community hockey happen – the parents, organizers, Zamboni drivers, referees. “Just as we know small businesses are the heart of communities, we know those people are the heart of the hockey community,” says Sapin.

As the brand ventures further outside of Quebec, Sapin has been focusing efforts on shining a light on the community behind hockey via sports sponsorships.

Another way it’s demonstrating community involvement outside of Québec is through the Desjardins GoodSpark Grants program, which offers $20,000 to small businesses and began in 2021. 

“With the GoodSpark Grants we are shining a light on small businesses and their importance to their communities,” asserts Sapin. “We’ve supported it with a campaign and with media sponsorship of The Amazing Race Canada. For that we created a segment called ‘The Amazing Small Business Tour’ in which series host Jon Montgomery travelled the country meeting GoodSpark Grants recipients and sharing their stories.” 

There are two waves to the marketing campaign for the GoodSpark Grants. The first is an initial call for businesses to apply for the grant in the fall, and in the spring grant recipients are celebrated for the good work they do for their customers and neighbours. Both waves include a mix of TV, digital, radio and social media placements.

As a result of these efforts, research is showing that, outside of Québec, the co-operative model is strongly associated with caring. That brand link is getting stronger, shares Sapin. 

Now the challenge is to change the brand’s perception from being seen mostly as a home and auto insurance provider to being understood as a full-service bank, with a wide range of products. At the end of 2023, the brand started testing the addition of a signature highlighting the breadth of its products and services in select communications. It has included a closing panel featuring its different services in campaigns for programs such as GoodSpark Grants, but also in several of its sponsorships (e.g., Cavalcade of Lights, Sportsnet’s Monday Night Hockey).  

Sapin has also looked to spotlight entrepreneurs behind small businesses and Desjardins’ GoodSpark Grants program.

“In parallel with, and for the first time outside Québec, we launched in September a campaign to position Desjardins in Ontario as a credible and experienced player for businesses of all sizes, offering them a complete range of financial products and services,” says Sapin. The campaign – “We speak the same language. Business.” – used mass media and contextual placements to reach a large potential of entrepreneurs.

As a long-time marketer working on brands of such high esteem, we asked Sapin a bit about her marketing philosophy. “I try to embrace change rather than fight it. I have constantly in the back of my mind the importance of being on the move, of staying curious.”

She also places great stock in remaining humble. “I learned in the energy sector that what was true yesterday will not necessarily be true tomorrow. As a marketer, that means I have to make sure we stay relevant in terms of expertise, and we have to make sure that we are putting in place the right conditions for the team to respond to change, as rapidly as possible,” she says. 

That means that, in order to build its reputation as a caring brand, she’ll need to bring her team up to speed on personalization. “That’s the next frontier. It’s going to be the ultimate test of how to remain customer focused and relevant.”