The old Yellow Pages carried a particular kind of authority. It was heavy, alphabetical and unavoidable. Then the internet made all three qualities look like liabilities. A directory that once arrived on every doorstep had to become a digital business while its customers were already learning to search elsewhere. Nicolas Gaudreau worked from the marketing helm during that shift. It is a useful place to begin his story, because the assignment contains nearly everything that followed: an established brand, a fast-moving customer, a new technical system and no option to wait for certainty.
Gaudreau is now senior vice-president of marketing and digital strategies at CAA-Québec. The role connects commercialization and digital business, business intelligence and member experience. Those responsibilities sit across a service organization that can enter a member’s life through a stalled car, an insurance decision, a vacation, a home project or an app. The products differ, but the strategic question is familiar: how do many interactions feel like one coherent relationship?
His answer has been shaped across telecommunications, agencies, local media, fashion and outdoor retail. The logos changed. The operating condition did not. In each business, physical habits and digital behavior had to coexist long enough for an organization to build what came next.
An engineer walks into marketing
Gaudreau studied electrical engineering at McGill University, then completed an MBA in international management at INSEAD. It is tempting to treat the engineering degree as an interesting detour. His later career makes it look more like a foundation. Digital marketing at scale is partly persuasion, but it is also systems work: interfaces, data, incentives, dependencies, handoffs and feedback. The customer sees a page or a promise. The operator sees everything that must line up behind it.
At Bell Canada, where he spent years in e-business and marketing, Gaudreau rose to vice-president of interactive marketing for Bell.ca. This was the period when a corporate website was becoming more than a brochure. It was turning into a storefront, service counter and media property at once. In 2008 he moved to Nurun, the digital agency founded in Montreal, as vice-president and general manager of the local office. He joined its North American leadership team, advised major clients and helped develop business for an office connected to a 13-city network.
“A clear vision, precise objectives and a well-thought-out execution plan.”Nicolas Gaudreau’s formula for keeping a team on track
The phrase came years later, in a 2020 leadership podcast, but it fits the earlier work. Digital transformation creates an abundance problem. There are always more platforms to test, customer journeys to redraw and capabilities to build than a company can sensibly fund. Clarity is not an inspirational extra. It is how a team decides which possible future gets resources today.
The directory learns to move
By the early 2010s, Gaudreau was chief marketing officer at Yellow Pages Group. Its predicament was sharper than the generic language of “going digital” suggests. Search had separated intent from the printed directory. Mobile had detached it from the desk. Local merchants needed measurable results, while consumers expected current information in seconds. The company had to preserve the value of local discovery while rebuilding the machinery that delivered it.
In a 2014 interview about the company’s transformation, Gaudreau discussed the adaptation as a journey rather than a campaign. That distinction matters. A campaign can tell people a business has changed. A transformation has to make the changed business work. At Yellow Pages, marketing sat close to product, traffic, merchant services and revenue. The brand promise was inseparable from whether a search produced a useful answer.
He also taught graduate-level ecommerce and digital marketing at Université de Sherbrooke. Teaching while operating is its own form of discipline. The classroom does not reward a vague success story. Students ask where the data came from, which lever moved and what failed. Explaining the work forces an executive to separate durable principles from the accident of one company.
Six fashion banners, one digital mandate
After Yellow Pages, Gaudreau became chief marketing officer at Groupe Dynamite. In September 2017, Reitmans Canada recruited him to oversee marketing and support growth across Reitmans, RW&CO., Addition Elle, Penningtons, Thyme Maternity and Hyba. Six banners meant six customer propositions, but only one company had to develop the underlying digital fluency.
Portfolio marketing is a constant argument between consistency and distinction. Shared ecommerce capabilities can create speed and efficiency. Flatten the brands too much, however, and the customer loses a reason to choose one over another. Gaudreau’s assignment placed him over marketing and ecommerce teams during a period when store-based retailers were learning that the website could not remain a side channel. Inventory, creative work, customer data and service all had to recognize the same shopper.
The sequence from Bell to Yellow Pages to fashion reveals a practical view of digital. It is not a department to be bolted onto a mature organization. It changes the route by which demand appears, the evidence available to managers and the speed at which customers punish inconsistency.
A second life for the tent
At SAIL, where Gaudreau served as vice-president of marketing from 2020 to 2024, responsible marketing became tangible. The outdoor retailer partnered with Earth Day Canada to measure its carbon footprint and guide an environmental strategy. Work on building performance reduced the abstraction further: better energy management could lower electricity use and emissions while improving store comfort.
Then came reSAIL, a marketplace for used outdoor equipment. The customer problem was recognizable. A tent for two no longer fits a family of five. A jacket, sleeping bag or backpack waits in a closet while another person needs it. The platform gave approved gear a route to its next owner, handled transactions electronically and kept buyers and sellers from having to contact each other directly.
The commercial design was as important as the environmental story. A seller could take cash or choose store credit, with the loyalty program able to increase the value of that credit. Used goods became a reason to return to the retailer. Sustainability, acquisition and loyalty were not separate initiatives competing for attention. They became parts of one loop.
The sharper version of responsible marketing is a mechanism the customer can use, not a pledge the customer is asked to admire.
Gaudreau also joined other Quebec marketing leaders in a public letter about greenwashing. The interesting connection is between the warning and the product. When environmental language is easy to overstate, operational proof matters more. A marketplace that extends the usable life of equipment gives the claim a visible action, a transaction and a second trip outdoors.
The membership card becomes a system
CAA-Québec announced Gaudreau’s arrival in 2024 by pointing to experience in retail, media, telecommunications and ecommerce. The organization also described a collaborative communicator who had led teams through digital change. His title - senior vice-president, marketing and digital strategies - captures the bridge he is expected to build.
CAA-Québec is a nonprofit membership organization supported by commercial activities. Roadside assistance may be its most vivid service, but the relationship extends into insurance, travel, mobility advice, home services, discounts and digital assistance. Every additional service creates value and complexity. A member might meet the organization in an emergency, then return months later to plan a trip. Data can connect those moments. Careless data use can also weaken trust. That is why business intelligence, digital experience and ethical leadership belong in the same conversation.
In early 2025, Gaudreau appeared in an interview devoted to ethical leadership. The subject is a natural extension of his operating record. Transformation gives leaders new capabilities before it gives them settled norms. What can be measured? What should be personalized? Which friction protects a customer rather than merely slowing a conversion? An ethical leader has to make those questions discussable before a metric makes the decision by default.
His board work adds another lens. Gaudreau has served corporate, startup and nonprofit organizations, including outdoor apparel company Hatley and Montreal tourism-and-entertainment incubator MT Lab. He has earned the ICD.D designation for corporate directors. Boardrooms demand a different zoom level from marketing operations: risk, governance, succession and institutional durability sit beside growth.
The useful pattern
A neat career story would claim that Gaudreau predicted every turn. The public record supports something more instructive. He repeatedly entered organizations where the turn was already underway and helped make the response operational. Bell customers were moving online. Yellow Pages users were moving to search. Fashion shoppers were moving between stores and screens. Outdoor consumers wanted commerce to reflect what brands said about nature. CAA members now expect a complex service relationship to be available, legible and personal across channels.
The skill is not prophecy. It is translation. Customer behavior must become a strategy. Strategy must become objectives. Objectives must become work that teams can coordinate. Data must become judgment. Technology must become a service that makes sense in an ordinary moment.
That also explains the engineer, the teacher and the director inside the marketing executive. The engineer asks how the parts connect. The teacher asks whether the explanation survives a question. The director asks whether the system deserves trust and can last. Marketing brings the final test: does any of it matter to the person on the other side?
At CAA-Québec, the person on the other side may be stranded beside a road or dreaming about a departure. The organization has to be useful in both moods. Gaudreau’s career has prepared him for exactly that sort of range - not by offering a single answer, but by building the discipline to make many answers feel like one promise.