Burlington entrepreneur recognized as one of the brightest under 30's in Canada.

By Staff

October 17, 2016

BURLINGTON, ON

A Burlington entrepreneur, 27-year-old Eric Rodgers, Co-Founder of a Burlington Digital Marketing Agency has been chosen as one of the best and brightest young Canadians under 30 by Canada’s Marketing Magazine.

I didn’t know how to dress,” says Rodgers, 27. (That’s changed: with a lightly polka-dotted shirt, Hugo Boss jeans and loafers, he has the Silicon Valley uniform down cold.) “Once we got going, I got used to speaking at higher and higher levels (of executives). I’m more open now among clients.”

At 21, Rodgers and industry veteran Don McNeil identified a gap in the market for precise digital marketing based almost solely on measurable data. With a focus on full user journeys instead of last-click attribution modeling, they went on to form Direct Access Digital in 2011. Both were keen to adopt new analytics models, participating in all available marketing platform betas with an interest to drive new business at the lowest cost per acquisition for clients like BMO, Lowe’s, Rona, and Enercare.

Eric Rodgers is no stranger to receiving awards, he was the first Canadian to win Google’s prestigious Google Search Excellence Award in 2014. The award is only given out to two Canadian’s a Year – amazingly, Rodgers won it again in 2015.

BMO’s CMO of Canadian Banking and Wealth Management, Betsy Chung says, “Whenever I have an issue or literally a business problem to face, he’s one of the few I would pick up the phone and ask, ‘How do consumers behave from what we know of how they purchase?’”

Rodgers’ says, “The early days were stressful, I was literally one of two guys sitting on either side of a desk. We focused on optimizing every marketing dollar spent just as we do today, that’s been our winning model. The model that, like Google, continues to change at a rapid rate and includes more tactics and platforms like Programmatic, Rich Media and SEO.”

With a father who worked in IT, Rodgers says he was attracted to technology at an early age, building his first computer at the age of 10. At Geosign, he essentially turned a summer job into an apprenticeship in selling and buying traffic from Google. By 19 he was managing a team of seven who in some cases were twice his age. After meeting McNeil at another job post-Geosign, the two believed there was a gap in the market for an agency built around what it calls “math men (and women” rather than Mad Men.)

Direct Access Digital’s team has grown to 30 brilliant digital marketers and is always looking for more engaged talent.

Rodgers shares the award with the Schulich School of Business, Assistant Professor of Marketing, Ela Veresiu, SnapChat’s Senior Account Manager, Alanna Glicksman, Facebook’s Client Services Manager, eCommerce, Vino Jeyapalan, McDonald’s Digital Social Engagement Manager, Rashel Hariri and 25 other young Canadians.

What was equally interesting is that among the 30under30 that were recognized as some of the brightest – there were more women than men.  The times they are a changing.