Profile of Olivier J. Bergeron – Vice President of Performance Marketing and Data Science

An accountant by training, an entrepreneur at heart, and a passionate advocate for marketing innovation, Olivier J. Bergeron co-founded Click & Mortar in 2016 to unlock the full digital potential of local businesses. In just under a decade, the firm—born in a Saint-Michel condo—rose to become one of Quebec's leading names in performance marketing, before merging with Tink in 2025 to offer a complete, consolidated digital solution to our flagship companies.

We sat down with him to learn more about his journey, his ambitions, and his vision for digital marketing in the coming years.

First off, can you tell us what sparked your passion for performance marketing? What made you want to get into this field and build a career out of it?

It's a pretty unorthodox story, actually. I was an accountant who left the profession to sell croissants online and deliver them to people's doors, kind of like a milkman. That was my first business right out of school; it was marketing genius, but a logistical nightmare. It was through that venture that I ran my first online ads and realized just how powerful and important that component was for a business. That's really what got me hooked.

So if I understand correctly, it was entrepreneurship that first drew you in, before performance marketing?

Exactly, and digital marketing came along after that, because it's such a crucial part of entrepreneurship. It helps bring ideas to life and grow them.

And how did Click & Mortar come into the picture? How do you go from a croissant delivery business to a digital firm?

I racked up a bunch of small e-commerce projects, which I wouldn’t necessarily call businesses because they were pretty short-lived.

The real spark for Click was when I sat next to Gabriel (Tassé) in an online retail class at HEC Montréal. He was working on a Shopify site, while I was running ads on Meta… we looked at each other, and it was pretty much instant chemistry (professionally speaking, of course). At the time, we were the only two people in the class who were switched-on enough to be playing in that space.

Within a week, we'd already teamed up informally, and we started landing clients while still taking classes. Five months later, we were a team of six working full-time from Gabriel's condo in Saint-Michel. What started as a business plan scribbled on a napkin turned into a real, full-fledged company.

Obviously, I'd imagine the vision you and Gabriel had for Click & Mortar back then wasn't the same as the one you have today—it must have evolved a lot over time. What was your vision at the start, and how has it changed since the merger between Click and Tink?

At the beginning, we were just two young guys who had never sold a service in our lives, challenging each other to sell expertise we'd picked up watching YouTube videos. We had a more short-term, "simplistic" vision of selling it to business owners in our circles.

Gradually, once we saw it was working with small SMEs in our network, we thought, "Why not expand this by working with Quebec's leading companies?" That vision became our north star, so to speak. We wanted to reach the top of our local industry and support major players in our economy on everything related to customer acquisition through their various digital channels. It took several years to get there, and since we're sometimes quite impatient, it took longer than we would've liked, but we've still made a lot of progress. After four or five years, we were working with organizations like Sobeys, Raymond Chabot, and the Fonds de solidarité FTQ—really great companies that made us realize we were on the right track.

The merger with Tink marks the continuation of this vision, because we're joining a more established company that works with the same type of clients and shares that same desire to make a real digital impact in our little Quebec and Canadian world. For us, as for Tink, quality always comes first: quality of processes, quality of the people on your team, and so on. That's always been our approach; we’ve never seen ourselves as a sausage factory trying to juggle 500 clients at once, and I think we find that same DNA at Tink as well.

So is that more or less what convinced you and Gabriel that joining forces with Tink was the right move going forward?

That was definitely one of the factors, but there were others too, notably the AI transition our industry is currently undergoing. For us, it made perfect sense to surround ourselves with more technical talent and development teams to bring our AI-in-marketing vision to life. And Tink had the expertise to take us to that level. We'd built a fantastic company of about fifty people with amazing clients, and we saw the merger with Tink as a way to further strengthen our leadership.

There's also the "repreneurship" aspect, which is really interesting for young entrepreneurs like us. After making our mark on our own, we had an opportunity to go play in a bigger sandbox, steer a bigger ship, and potentially have a bigger impact. The merger with Tink is a way for us to leap several years ahead in our development plan.

On that note, what can you now bring to your teams or your long-standing clients that you couldn't before the merger?

For our teams, this means first and foremost adding a new portfolio of clients who align with our vision and our approach. Working with companies like Desjardins, for example, brings all kinds of new digital marketing projects to the table that we're able to deliver using our pre-existing processes. We now bring together all digital disciplines under one roof, which creates a really interesting synergy for our different client bases. We can work hand in hand with Tink to audit, implement, and execute—every stage of a digital project is covered, and that's a huge plus for everyone.

Absolutely! And since the merger, how would you describe a typical day in your role as Vice President of Performance Marketing and Data Science? What excites you most about it?

What motivates me is creating the best possible match in terms of team dynamics, attitude, desire to learn, and passion for our field. I also try to nurture these talents with the most interesting projects possible. So my role is as much about mobilizing the team in place as it is about recruiting the right people and doing sales to bring them exciting projects that live up to their ambitions.

Beyond the services themselves, we’re selling a team first and foremost, and when you know that team is hungry and driven, the selling comes a lot easier.

Would you say your leadership style follows that same thread? How would you describe your management approach?

I'm a big believer in MBA (Management By Absence), in the sense that I'm very trust-oriented, and I'd rather you make decisions — even if they turn out to be the wrong ones — than stick with the status quo. Of course, I'm always available to provide support, give advice, answer questions, or brainstorm ideas, but ultimately, what I want is to build teams of intrapreneurs who can move forward on their own. Micromanagement? Not my thing!

On a different note, what are the main challenges you see coming up most often within the organizations you work with day to day?

Keeping up with the pace of change in the industry, which often moves far too quickly. There's a lot of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) in the digital marketing world, and that's been even more true in recent years.

Our clients wonder if they're on the right channels, if they're leveraging every possible new feature, or if they're being innovative enough in their marketing. That kind of questioning, while perfectly normal, can generate a lot of "noise" or distraction. Our job is to cut through that noise and focus strictly on what brings real added value. Because, obviously, we can’t pursue every opportunity at once.

The digital world has changed a lot since you launched Click & Mortar with Gabriel 10 years ago. What's changed the most in this industry?

The biggest change I'd point to is that before, we were very much into micro-targeting or laser targeting. A company like Couche-Tard, for instance, would target sports fans within a 500-metre radius of its stores to remind them to grab a case of beer and a bag of chips on hockey game nights.

Now, the algorithms used by platforms like Meta have gotten so good at identifying a company's potential customer base that there’s almost no need for human input when setting up these platforms. That's a real game-changer, because we're letting the machine do most of the work—and that was true even before the advent of generative AI. After all, Meta's targeting, or search engines like Google, are already AI in themselves.

At the end of the day, as I mentioned earlier, you need to separate the noise from genuine marketing opportunities and use critical thinking to determine whether investments in this or that platform were worthwhile, and make the necessary adjustments.

You said it yourself—AI has been in the picture for a while, but the meteoric rise of generative AI is still changing a lot of things. How is it concretely transforming your work, and what opportunities should organizations be seizing right now?

I'd say that generative AI is bringing transformation on two major fronts.

1. First, it gives us opportunities to optimize and accelerate our work processes—without forgetting, of course, the human factor throughout all of it, to make sure we stay unique and relevant.
2. Second, it's directly influencing the decisions and purchasing behaviours of consumers, who are increasingly using it to do research and seek advice. That opens up a whole range of new communication and information distribution channels where businesses need to be listed and present.

Ultimately, it creates a ton of opportunities within our service offering, but also—once again—a lot of FOMO. It's more important than ever to pick your battles.

We talked about digital marketing 10 years ago; now, how do you see digital marketing evolving 10 years from now (in 2036)?

My answer might not age well, but I'll go out on a limb: I think low-emotion online purchases involving small amounts will be overwhelmingly handled by AI agents who will shop on our behalf. Conversely, purchases considered more significant will retain a very human, hedonistic, and experiential dimension, with a greater focus on storytelling. We'll therefore see a dichotomy between marketing made for AI agents and marketing made for human beings.

Also, in 10 years, I dare to hope that Canada's National Artificial Intelligence Strategy, put in place by the federal government, will have been solidly implemented, and that we'll have built a sovereign AI ecosystem that will have allowed us to integrate these technologies into our flagship companies. I think that's going to create a really exciting playing field for Tink in the coming years, and it motivates me a lot for what's ahead.

On a more personal note, are there any new skills you’d like to add to your professional toolbox in the coming years? Do you see opportunities to grow in your career since the Click–Tink merger?

Without turning this into a therapy session, I thrive in environments where ambitions are huge, even outsized. And the merger with Tink has dramatically expanded the resources at my disposal, whether human, financial, or professional. It lets me think even bigger and multiply my ambitions.

In my view, there's a problem in Canada when it comes to commercializing innovation: our university programs and research teams are among the best in the world, yet that's not reflected in our startups and our companies. I want to put my energy and my marketing brain to work so we can be a positive force on that front.

To wrap up, what's the best piece of advice you could give someone who wants to build a career in performance marketing and data science?

Before trying to cover too much ground, start by specializing in a niche and mastering it. Don't be afraid to launch personal projects to test the expertise you're developing, because there's nothing like putting your own credit card into an ad platform to make you want to get a return on every dollar invested.

And above all, keep in mind that being young doesn't mean you can't be credible. Lean into what makes you unique in the market, and don't be afraid to go off the beaten path to stand out; that's how you'll truly set yourself apart.