The story begins in 2006 when Leonardo was known as VFM Interactive, a niche visual content production company in Downtown Toronto serving the global hospitality industry.
Paolo Boni, the company’s CEO was eager to start scaling the business, and in order to do so, he needed to be fully equipped with high-performing talent. Specifically a CFO, an Inside Sales Manager and an Account Manager. That’s when Martyn entered the story.
Martyn went to work on the searches. He presented Paolo with candidates that not only had the effective skillset and expertise for the roles, but were also excited to join a small and thriving company with plenty of opportunity and growth in its future.

And ‘growth’ would be an understatement. In 2008, a time when the economy was tough and investors were risk adverse, the company secured $18.5M in financing and purchased Europe-based Leonardo to become VFM Leonardo. As is the case with mergers and acquisitions, considerable changes were mounting on the horizon.
Next Step: Kick-Start Sales and Marketing
The biggest change initially came with major shift in the company’s value proposition and go-to-market strategy. They needed a top-tier CMO to head up this change and a high-octane roster to execute it.
Martyn and his team were tasked with the search for a candidate who had sales operations, analytics and digital strategy experience and could build the company’s complete digital marketing infrastructure. Enter: John McAuliffe.
John was a 20+ year marketing veteran at the time with hands on experience in leading market-driven strategies for disruptive technologies. He previously led the marketing function of a Silicon Valley technology firm and was the President and COO of a mid-size Canadian advertising agency.

Martyn then went on to place a Manager of Demand Generation and a Web Operations Manager who worked together to successfully implement a marketing automation system and a powerful marketing machine that took the company from receiving no incoming leads to 40,000+ in just under two years.
An increase in the company’s revenue inevitably followed, but not without the essential building blocks that Martyn helped lay the foundation with. They quickly built a global team of sales representatives to convert the leads generated by marketing to closed deals. Today, exclusively inbound leads fuel their sales.
Between 2014 and 2015, Martyn successfully placed two key Digital Marketing Managers, a Marketing Operations Specialist and a Content Marketing Manager to fuel the division. With an effective marketing machine up and running and sales of its hotel visual merchandising solution taking off, the company was able to expand its vertical in their product to include social and mobile marketing capabilities.
Key Search Highlights
- Staffed marketing team that moved all marketing to inbound
- Placed product managers with highly specific skill sets
- Played a key role in company’s revenue growth
- Placed 6 high-ranking marketing team members