He may have just arrived in the city and in his new job as vice-president of marketing for the Ottawa Senators, but Peter Shier already has a good idea what he wants to accomplish. One of his main priorities will be strengthening relationships between the hockey team and Ottawa’s business community. In an interview with […]
He may have just arrived in the city and in his new job as vice-president of marketing for the Ottawa Senators, but Peter Shier already has a good idea what he wants to accomplish.
One of his main priorities will be strengthening relationships between the hockey team and Ottawa’s business community. In an interview with OBJ this week, Shier said that a new arena for the team at LeBreton Flats would definitely help strengthen those connections.
“(An arena at LeBreton) is going to change the dynamic of the business community. It’s going to be much more central,” he said. “We’re expecting to get some good traction out of that and I’ll be a part of that as we move forward. It’s still early days, but it’s not just exciting from a sports point of view, it’s more exciting for the whole city. I think it’s really going to make a statement in this city about how important hockey is.”
Shier will also be the point man on improving engagement with the francophone community, especially in Gatineau. Moves are already underway, with the Senators launching a French-language Instagram page earlier this week.
“It’s a recognition that Gatineau is very important and we need to do more,” Shier said. “One of my early focuses is to get the Gatineau community more engaged with what we’re doing. We’ll be doing a lot more French social strategy.”
Efforts to engage demographics such as the francophone and Indigenous communities are being advanced by Senators owner Michael Andlauer, Shier said. “We’ve got an owner who is heavily invested in the community. He’s not interested in paying lip service to stuff. He’s interested in actually doing stuff.”
Having been in Ottawa for less than a month, Shier said he is taking every opportunity to experience the city. “I’m trying to get a feel for the place. What makes people tick here? What do they like and what don’t they like?”
From pro hockey to building a business
Growing up in the GTA, Shier has a life-long love of hockey. He attended Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. in the 1970s and was one of the top-scoring defencemen on the All-American hockey team. He was inducted into the university’s Athletics Hall of Fame in 1990, and his name hangs under that of fellow Cornell alum and legendary Montreal Canadiens player Ken Dryden.
After finishing his degree in hotel management, Shier played professional hockey. “I hadn’t been drafted but I had a number of teams that were interested. I ended up playing two years with the Stars. In the minors, mostly in Oklahoma City, in the Central Hockey League.”
His hockey career eventually took him to Europe, where he played with pro teams in Austria, Finland and Switzerland throughout the early 1980s. “It was a broadening life experience to be able to play hockey for a living, especially living in the Swiss Alps,” he said.
But his time on the ice came to an end when he injured his knee, prompting him to look for another career.
“It was time to come home, as my friend said at the time, to get a real job,” Shier joked. “I started working in advertising, of all things, because one of the guys that I was playing with owned an ad agency and was looking for somebody to help him.”
Shier’s second career eventually led him to work for large companies such as Cossette and FCB Canada. Then, in 2007, he started his own advertising agency, Naked Creative Consultancy, in Toronto. Last year, his firm merged with Toronto-based Blackjet. “I merged my company with another company, thinking it was time to sit back and relax. I started writing a book, which was fun and I’m still doing that,” he said.
However, his time for relaxing was short-lived when he received a call asking if he was interested in joining the Ottawa Senators’ marketing team. It was not the first time he’d been approached by the Sens.
“It was sort of a full-circle moment,” Shier recalled. “In 2007, while I was in the ad business, I got a call from a headhunter in New Jersey who asked me if I’d be interested in working with the Senators as their CMO.”
With the Sens making the 2007 Stanley Cup finals, Shier decided to see where the opportunity would take him. But after going through the recruitment process, he decided the position wasn’t for him.
Eighteen years later, he was happy to accept his new role as vice-president of marketing with the Sens.
“I always knew I wanted to work in hockey in some capacity other than play. I like being around the arena. I like the environment. So for me to get this call asking if I was interested, it didn’t take me long to agree (to it),” he said.
Teamwork makes the dream work
Now about three weeks into the role, Shier said he’s in learning mode, getting to know the ins and outs of the Senators organization. “I came in with a very open mind and a blank book.”
Already, Shier said he wants to build the Sens into a “world-class brand.”
“In my career, I’ve been able to work on some incredibly strong and powerful brands. One of my jobs, before I was with Naked, was to work with an agency where we created the TD Bank green chair campaign, which is still running … I think the foundations are all here to be able to create something really memorable.”
Working with a sports team, especially one like the Senators, makes his job as a marketer a lot easier, Shier said.
“(Hockey) is a shared experience. Brands can capitalize on that. It’s emotional and successful brands are the ones that tap into people’s emotions … It’s gold in the marketing world,” he said.
Every decision at the Sens is made with a team-first approach, Shier said, noting that the people behind the team need to think, act and operate like the players do – something Shier has experience with.
“We just have to go out our (office) door and look onto the ice and see our role models. How they operate is the same way we need to operate. We just apply it to business … Because I started out in hockey, I think I’ve got the ability to work on both sides of that,” he said.
As the Sens’ regular season kicks off tonight with a game against the Tampa Bay Lightning, Shier believes the team is starting in a good place.
“It’s going to be about how we can build off of last year. Last year was phenomenal … Everybody loves an underdog. We were the underdog and still are. I don’t think that’s a bad place to be,” he said.
“I don’t think anybody here is satisfied with settling. It’s all about moving forward and getting better in every aspect of the organization, from the guys on the ice to all of us in the office. We’re pushing each other to be better every day. That’s a recipe for winning.”
