Event Marketer’s 2025 B-to-B Dream has been unveiled. Each month, we’re sitting down with one of our all-stars to talk trends, best practices and all things uniquely b-to-b.
Adele Bencsik, Director-Trade Marketing & Sales Operations, Red Bull Canada
Adele Bencsik is “someone who’s always up for a challenge,” and in her career, she’s dedicated herself to learning the business inside out, making connections and exceeding expectations.
Starting at Toys“R”Us as a supply chain analyst and then merchandise assistant, Bencsik absorbed as much as she could about the retail industry and later took her knowledge of the toy category to Loblaw Companies Limited. After almost nine years at the Canadian retailer and climbing the ladder to category director—where she oversaw the toy, seasonal and sporting goods categories—Bencsik pursued a new sales opportunity with Red Bull Canada. There, she set her sights on moving into marketing, a goal she reached in three years.
“It was an interesting conversation with the person who is my boss now, who was interviewing me at the time. I said, ‘I’m not coming here to do sales because I want to keep doing sales. I’m coming here to show you I can do sales really well and over-deliver everything and make you trust me to put me into a marketing position here,’” Bencsik recalls. “I made massive changes to the accounts that I was managing because I came from the retailer side. I delivered on a three-year plan and, I think, left that desk in a really good spot.”
Bencsik then took on the role she worked years toward: director-trade marketing and sales operations at Red Bull Canada, and while there was a lot of learning on the job, she set out with a clear vision that helped guide her through the department’s internal expectations and responsibilities. It gave her the chance to build out a new structure of efficient processes for her team.
“Over the one year of struggling and feeling completely stressed out, it gave me a lot of growth and turned out to be quite the success after all,” Bencsik says. “My whole career has been built on partnerships, whether that be with our vendor community, customers or even the agencies that I’m working with today. Partnerships have been one of my greatest strengths, and it’s important to build relationships on the understanding of what their priorities are and our priorities are and having a middle ground.”
Fun Fact: Sustainability is an important consideration for Adele Bencsik and her team, so for this year, they developed a new stand with digital screens for easy programming of Red Bull Canada’s latest marketing campaign and to cut down on waste of physical signage.
Reporting to the head of sales and distribution, Bencsik manages a team of two trade marketing managers, an e-commerce account manager, a trade events manager and a shopper marketing manager. From planning marketing initiatives for product launches to activating in stores to reaching consumers online, they tackle several areas of business, but the trade show side has undergone the biggest evolution, Bencsik says, with a portfolio of about 30 indoor shows a year in Canada and a few in the U.S.
“When I got into this role, there was a high demand of requests for trade show assets, and we didn’t have any. We had to find solutions using some of our field marketing assets, which were just tables and basic things. I created a business case that was reviewed by our leadership team for significant funds to elevate the way we show up by homing in on our brand,” she says. “Once approved, there was a lot of backend work to be done, budgeting and developing new assets and logistical functions. Depending on the initiative at the show, we have to coordinate within our internal departments to get product and pull coolers from our warehouses. If we’re going to have an athlete within our booth, it’s coordinating with our sports marketing team.”
And the collaboration pays off, as athlete appearances are a big draw for Red Bull booths. For instance, the brand has twice brought in Philip Kim, aka Phil Wizard, the Canadian gold medal winner in men’s breakdancing at the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, to hang out in its booths. The Red Bull-sponsored breakdancer performs for show attendees and encourages them to get on the dance floor with him in what Bencsik calls an “awesome, only-Red-Bull-can-do moment.”
“In Canada, we’ve been exploring national trade show events to meet more customers outside of those we currently work with. This was the first year that we showed up, and there was a lot of strong feedback, like, ‘Wow, it’s so great to see Red Bull here,’” she says. “It actually brought a lot of people to us, which was great, and we won the Best Double Booth Award at [Grocery Innovations Canada], which we weren’t expecting to win. There’s a uniqueness in the shows that we do.”
DAY IN THE LIFE:
Photos: Courtesy of Adele Bencsik
