S4 Ep27: Imen Zitouni, Intact's CMO on on Building a Brand That Travels

When Imen Zitouni started out, there was no Google. She literally taught Canadian businesses how to use a mouse. Fast forward twenty-five years, and she’s the Chief Marketing Officer at Intact Insurance, leading one of the most ambitious rebrands in the industry from RSA Insurance to Intact and shaping how marketing, data and innovation work together in a company of 30,000 people.In this conversation, Imen joins Conor at Intact House in Dublin to talk about the twists and leaps that built her career. She tells the story of the seven PowerPoint slides that convinced CEO Charles Brindamour to start The Intact Lab, an experiment that began with seven people and now employs over a thousand specialists in data, AI and customer experience.She explains what innovation really looks like inside a business built on managing risk. how you protect teams so they can experiment, why “failing fast” only works if you decide fast, and what it takes to turn ideas into impact.You’ll also hear how she applies the same mindset to marketing and why “Technology gives you speed. Storytelling gives you meaning.” As well as how the global Intact rebrand was “not a marketing project, but a company-wide one.” and why she believes creativity in insurance starts with culture, not slogans.It’s an honest, practical conversation about leadership, experimentation, and brand building from one of Canada’s most respected marketing executives recorded on the day the Intact name officially launched in Ireland, the UK and Europe02:30 – Teaching people how to use a mouse (and falling in love with the internet)04:50 – Lessons from agency life at Cassette06:20 – The late-night call that brought her into insurance08:00 – Finding purpose in a data-driven industry09:45 – “I have an idea”: how The Intact Lab began10:50 – Protecting teams to innovate13:40 – The 30-day rule and rapid prototyping15:10 – “Fail fast” only works with fast decisions17:30 – Moving from Chief Digital Officer to CMO20:10 – Mentorship and learning from Anne Fortin23:00 – “Technology gives you speed. Storytelling gives you meaning.”24:40 – The founders’ story: building values before brand26:40 – Naming Intact and the red brackets27:30 – Rebranding RSA: “not a marketing project — a company-wide one”30:20 – Global consistency vs local freedom33:10 – When “witty” means different things in different markets37:00 – Building a household brand and resilient communities Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.