Shane Skillen. I help schools, parents and young people become AI fluent. CEO of Hotspex, Toronto.
Keynotes and workshops. North America, the UK and Australia, or virtual.
Any industry works. Pick one, or type any audience you like. The whole page rewrites itself for them, the way the talk would.
For Schools, parents and young people, the talk would be
Find your thing.
What they're up against Kids are asked to pick a path before they know what they love, and AI is changing many of those paths anyway.
Pages for each room: CMOs and marketers · Government · CPG and retail · CEOs and founders · Creators · Schools and parents
Brand Building in the Age of AI, thinkTV, Toronto, April 2026. Top of mind, top of model, and why marketing has to lead.
80% of attendees rated it 4 or 5 out of 5. thinkTV attendee survey, 50 responses
Video: thinkTV
Make Your Own Luck, Desjardins Entrepreneurship Speaker Series, Western University, March 2024.
Shane Skillen is a Toronto keynote speaker and the CEO of Hotspex, the consumer insights company he has run for more than two decades. He speaks on practical AI for work and life, emotional brand building, and creators. Before every talk he researches the audience with AI and Hotspex data, so the examples on stage are theirs.
Live builds on real workflows from your team, not stock demos. And the personal side too: the trip plan, the kid's science project, the inbox at 11pm. People use AI at work once they trust it at home.
Every student leaves with a first answer to "what's my thing?", and parents leave with better questions.
Copeland leadership offsite
10 of 11 want their whole team trained. Every respondent expects to save at least 2 hours a week; 5 of 11 expect 5 or more. Source
He demystified AI for our group and left everyone with a really positive impression.
Federal government branch retreat
Before: 25 of 30 executives answered my survey. 16 already used AI every day; only 8 had the paid Copilot licence. So we skipped "what is AI" and built use cases.
Their own targets, not mine: accessibility fixes on documents from 30 days to 5, and 60% lower cost per document. Source
Betty, brand and creative team
14 custom AI skills built for the team's real jobs: briefs, design rationales, social copy.
Our AI workflow has changed quite a bit since the workshop.
Shane ran a great session. He made AI approachable and easy to understand, and his practical examples sparked new ideas for how we can use AI to work more efficiently and focus on more strategic work.
The session was eye-opening into the world of AI. Understanding it better means I'll actually use it more often in my day-to-day work.
Shane brought hands-on knowledge of how to use AI as a real tool for productivity and innovation, with clear and concise methods for writing prompts to get the most out of it.
Attendee names withheld for privacy. References from past hosts available on request.
Measured in the rooms so far, by the hosts' own surveys.
Self-reported in post-session surveys. Time saved is the attendees' own estimate.
Shane gave an incredibly engaging keynote that students and alumni in attendance were talking about for the duration of the conference. His keynote was funny, relevant and inspiring.
One of the most unique, energetic, and relevant speeches I've heard at Queen's.
He is able to not only clearly see the future of market research and the changes that are needed, he can also connect the people across the industry to help make that future happen.
Shane is a passionate leader who elevates his organization and that of his clients!
References from past hosts available on request. All recommendations on LinkedIn
Tell me about the event. I reply within one business day with availability and a research plan for your room.
Also on stage for RBC (BMCC, 5,000 people in the room), Toyota (new model introduction, Dallas), Northbridge Insurance (broker keynotes), IIEX, the Toronto Auto Show, Copeland, ACA, Idea Suite and the Queen's Business Environment Today conference.
Meta and Alphabet Q2 2026 results; WPP Media This Year Next Year, June 2026. Sources
Meta's ad revenue grew about three times as fast as the global ad market is forecast to (27% in Q2, against 8.9% for 2026). Alphabet, Meta and Amazon now take 57.6% of the world's ad money outside China.
Their algorithms are built to find who will click today. Nothing in that auction measures what your brand means, so brands drift toward sameness.
43% vs 23%. Over three years or more, emotional campaigns were almost twice as likely as rational ones to report very large profit gains. Binet and Field, IPA, 2013
More than half of advertising's profit arrives after the first 13 weeks, where a click dashboard never looks. Profit Ability 2, Thinkbox, 2024
+28% more very large business effects for the brands that stay most consistent over the years. System1 and IPA, 2024
Every decision is an emotion wearing a spreadsheet.
Brands are moving money to creators fast. Meta's creator-ad business more than doubled in a year, to a $10 billion run rate. But Kantar found only 6% of creator content does both jobs: strong engagement and strong brand building.
That gap is where creators win. I map your content on the Hotspex Map, next to the brands you want. You pitch on fit instead of follower count, earn more across your whole income, and never have to sound like someone else.
For young people and their parents
A free five-minute reflection built on ikigai: what you love, what you're good at, what the world needs, and what someone would pay you for. Kid and parent each get their own questions. Nothing is saved or sent.
After Ivey I called Richard Ivey's office and asked for twenty minutes. He gave them to me, then asked me to do the same for others. This is me doing the same. 300+ young people so far. The goal is 100,000.
Try Find Your ThingYou can't pick their thing. You can help them find it.
Pressure closes doors. Questions open them.
I've run Hotspex for more than two decades. We measure how brands make people feel, then help make every touchpoint say the same thing. We call it being singular.
Brand Singularity: one feeling and one set of codes across ads, packs, creator posts and the shelf.
Ranked the #3 most innovative research supplier in the world by GreenBook's GRIT report (2020). Brands that hold their codes for years get more very large business effects.
Packaging evaluation, shelf optimisation, point-of-sale testing and Pack AI. Some of the biggest CPG brands in the world use them.
Pack AI is trained on 390,000 data points across 61 categories. One manufacturer's shelf redesign: +16% category growth, +5 points share of shelf, and shoppers found the product 33 seconds faster. Three years of growth, then six more categories.
Programmatic media planned on emotion as well as clicks. Listed among Clutch's top media buying and planning agencies.
The platforms grade their own homework. When big advertisers tested the black box, they found waste:
About 35,000 people follow me, most of them marketers. When I come on a show I bring something your listeners can use: a fresh Hotspex Map read on a brand they know, or an AI build they can copy that afternoon.
Updated October 2026
Yes. Shane Skillen, a Toronto-based AI keynote speaker and CEO of Hotspex, speaks to conferences and leadership teams across North America, the United Kingdom and Australia, in person or virtually. Every talk starts with research on the specific audience, so a London bank, a Sydney retailer and a Chicago association each get a talk built for their own room.
Yes. Shane Skillen speaks to any industry and helps the people in the room become AI fluent: banks, government, CPG, automotive, insurance, healthcare, schools and associations. He researches each audience first, then rebuilds their own workflows live, so a hospital, a bank and a creator agency each get a different talk built on the same playbook.
Shane Skillen, CEO of Hotspex in Toronto, gives AI keynotes built on research into the specific audience. He surveys attendees first, then rebuilds their own workflows live and shows how to use AI at work and at home. At a 2026 leadership offsite, attendees rated his session 4.8 out of 5 and confidence using AI rose from 2.5 to 4.0.
Yes. Shane Skillen researches every room before he speaks: a short pre-session survey of attendees, a read of their category on the Hotspex Map, and the AI tools they already own. The examples on stage are the audience's own work. On his site, event planners can type in any audience and Claude drafts the talk from his playbook.
Shane Skillen ran a bilingual AI keynote and use-case workshop for a federal government branch leadership retreat in Ottawa in June 2026, with more than 30 directors and directors general. He builds sessions around the tools and policies a department is actually allowed to use, and teams leave with their own AI use cases to pilot.
Shane Skillen speaks on why emotional brand building matters more as platforms optimise for short-term clicks. In Q2 2026, Meta's ad revenue grew 27% and Google's 14%, while the global ad market is forecast to grow 8.9%. He shows brands how to stay distinctive, keep pricing power and measure the feelings that build memory.
Shane Skillen, CEO of Hotspex, has about 35,000 followers, most of them marketers. He talks about practical AI for work and life, why the algorithm doesn't care about your brand, and how creators get paid for fit. He brings listeners something to use, like a fresh Hotspex Map read on a brand they know.
Shane Skillen and Hotspex map a creator's content on the Hotspex Map next to the brands they want to work with, so creators pitch on fit instead of follower count and stay true to their voice. The free Creator Right Space toolkit gives creators their card on the Map, a pitch-deck builder and brands to call.
Find Your Thing is Shane Skillen's free five-minute ikigai reflection for kids and parents at shaneskillen.com/find-your-thing. It asks what you love, what you're good at, what the world needs and what someone would pay you for. Kid and parent each get their own questions, and nothing is saved or sent. More than 300 young people have used it.
Use the enquiry form on his speaking page with your event, date and audience size, or email shane.skillen@hotspex.com. He replies within one business day with availability and a research plan. Shane speaks across North America, the UK and Australia, in formats from a keynote to a half-day or full-day workshop for teams of 10 to 40.
