Who’s behind this, and why
Here’s exactly who you’d be working with.
Three people, no committee-written bios.
John Hall
Founder, Find The Ethos Marketing
I’ve spent my career doing one thing, really: cutting through the noise. Breaking down silos, getting teams to actually talk to each other, and making marketing work like one system instead of a pile of disconnected efforts. I’ve been a lead strategist, a general manager, and a managing partner at a national agency. I’ve run global marketing for a brand, and I’ve owned and operated a business myself, so I’ve sat on both sides of this table.
Over the years I’ve worked on brands like Destination BC, McDonald’s Canada, General Motors, Ford, Vancouver Film School, Sauder School of Business, Gustavson School of Business, Cathay Pacific, Destination Campbell River, Discover Surrey, Tourism Prince George, and the Government of British Columbia, among others.
For the last two years, my focus has been almost entirely on how AI is changing the way people find and choose brands, and how to turn that shift into an actual advantage instead of a threat. I hold a certification in Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), which is the formal way of saying: I studied this properly, not just from watching the headlines.
Debbie Chabot
Founder, Chabot Media
Debbie is a builder, full stop. She’s spent her career launching, fixing, and scaling things that weren’t working, with a specialty in media planning and buying: getting real results without wasting budget. She led media strategy at a national agency, then built entire media departments from scratch for agencies that needed to move faster than the old model allowed.
She started Chabot Media because she saw the traditional agency model getting too slow, too rigid, and too comfortable. With AI reshaping everything right now, she’ll be the first to tell you: this isn’t business as usual, and waiting for things to settle down isn’t a real strategy.
Will Taylor
Brand Strategy Partner
Will helps companies figure out who they actually are, how they need to show up, and what has to change to make that real. He’s worked across the US, UK, Europe, India, and Southeast Asia, with roles at Amazon, Interbrand, and Ogilvy, always at the point where brand, story, and business strategy meet.
He’s known for turning insight into something usable: sharper positioning, stronger communication, brand systems people actually use day to day. His work includes rebranding Fire TV, leading Jardine Matheson’s first brand initiative in 180 years, and supporting Traveloka through a period that helped lead to a $400 million raise.
He saw early that a brand can’t just sit off to the side as a messaging exercise anymore. It has to work across the whole business. That’s where he does his best work: helping organizations find the story and the structure to actually move.
A note on the name. “Find The Ethos” means two things to me. Every brief arrives with an obvious problem attached: traffic’s down, leads are soft, the last agency didn’t work out. And almost every time, once you actually dig in, the real issue turns out to be something else. Finding that is always the first job. It’s also what I try to do for the brands I work with: help them find their own ethos, the real reason someone should care, underneath the logo and the tagline. Same instinct, pointed in two directions.
Why we came together
Most businesses are still set up around a version of marketing that doesn’t really exist anymore: teams working in isolation, slow decision-making, old thinking dressed up as something new.
We’ve all seen it from the inside, and we’ve all spent years trying to fix it. AI isn’t just another tool to add to the pile. It’s changing how people find, evaluate, and choose brands, and most organizations simply aren’t set up for that shift yet.
So we built something different: a small, senior team that moves faster, thinks about the whole picture instead of one channel at a time, and actually reflects how marketing works today, not five years ago.
Our approach
I want the businesses I work with to stay easy to find, easy to trust, and easy to choose, even as the ground keeps shifting under all of us.
That means breaking down the walls between media, creative, and strategy, and building things that are built to adapt, not just built to look good in a deck.
I’m not here to help you keep doing what you’ve always done, just a little better. I’m here to help you see clearly what’s changed, and get ahead of it while others are still catching up.
