Cavai brings conversational advertising to the Canadian market

Cavai, the leader in conversational advertising cloud technology, is continuing its rapid expansion with the opening of an office in Canada. Cavai recently unveiled offices in Singapore and Spain, with these markets joining its operations in London, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Oslo and Stockholm. 

Kenneth Maehlum has been appointed general manager at Cavai, Canada and will head up the office out of Montreal. An entrepreneurial marketing, advertising and ecommerce executive with hands-on B2B and B2C experience globally, he is a native Norwegian but has worked in the US and Canada for many years.

Maehlum was most recently head of Marketing and ecommerce at Jack Victor Ltd, one of Canada’s largest manufacturers and distributors of menswear. Amongst other roles, he was also Brand and Marketing director at Time Inc, the US largest entertainment company in the world and where he had 120 brands under his management. Prior to that, Maehlum was sales director for Schibsted, and handled subscriptions and sales for the largest newspaper in Norway. He has run marketing and ad budgets as well as developing insights for a large variety of brands and consumer publications. He is a data expert and infrastructure specialist, who has pioneered website builds, ecommerce operations and mobile apps.

Maehlum comments: “For too long, marketers have taken a ‘broadcast’ approach. Now, the tide is changing. Brand teams are starting to appreciate the importance of consumers feeling empowered in communications. Conversational advertising is a game-changer and has proven its worth throughout the pandemic. During challenging times like these, conversational interaction lets brands communicate at scale, elevating the customer experience and enabling brands to truly listen.  I am excited to work with brands and agencies to  find the sweet spots between scalability and effectiveness in marketing and technology. I know how important it is to achieve ROI and target at scale to get the best return on marketing dollars. ”

Cavai, with its client roster including household names such as Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, McDonalds and BMW, works closely with publishers, brands and agencies to enable conversational experiences thanks to its ad cloud content creation and delivery platform.

Conversational advertising allows advertisers to reach customers and prospects via two-way interactions, maximising engagement and interaction in display ad units, and allowing advertisers to qualify the degree to which someone is interested in their product or service.

Thanks to Cavai’s technology, marketers are also able to deliver conversations in programmatic buys in the same way as they would normally deliver banners and video ads. The creative execution changes in real time, allowing for genuinely personalised ad experiences and ultimately leading to a vastly improved customer experience.

Steffen Svartberg, co-founder and CEO of Cavai, adds: “Kenneth is a visionary marketing leader with a breadth of hands-on experience. His experience across a number of brands in a variety of industries stands him in great stead to communicate the power of conversational marketing to clients across Canada. He is the perfect person to lead us into this important and innovative market, thanks to his thorough and strategic approach and his deep industry knowledge. He speaks six languages fluently, and he knows just how important it is for brands to communicate effectively and to listen to their audiences.”