I’m Ryan McKee. Twenty years of building brands, launching firsts, and finding opportunity where everyone else sees a wall. Tourism, hospitality, sports, culture — if the challenge is real and the blank page is terrifying, let’s talk.
See what I’ve been up to →My career has taken me from Vancouver to Melbourne and back — running marketing at MEC, Fairmont Pacific Rim, Essendon Football Club, and Vancouver Whitecaps FC before launching my own consulting practice.
I work best at the edge of what’s been tried: finding the gap in an industry, building the thing that fills it, and making sure it actually launches rather than living forever as a deck. I’ve done that in sports, outdoor retail, luxury hospitality, destination marketing, and film tourism — sometimes all in the same year.
Now I run a lean consulting practice with a small roster of clients I genuinely care about. Still restless. Still building things.
“The best opportunities live where convention ends.”
Ryan possesses a rare mix of results-orientated team member, a great creative talent, empathetic leadership, and the highest level of personal integrity. His impassioned presentations were compelling both from a creative aspect but also the connection to the brand was always so crystal clear — the messages were relatable and you always felt Ryan was able to view the organisation through the eyes of the customer.
“Ryan McKee has spent over 20 years building a career by doing what hasn’t been done before. The industry firsts he’s personally spearheaded are almost too many to measure.”
Twenty years of firsts have taught him one thing: the best opportunities live where convention ends.
Ryan cares about marginalized groups and he leads by listening first and creating space for others to participate. He helped navigate the AFL establishment in partnership with the Purple Bombers at a time when LGBTQ+ supporters felt unsafe attending AFL games in Australia. It changed the supporter environment forever.
I work with a small roster of clients at a time. Here’s what that typically looks like — though honestly, the best engagements usually start with a problem that doesn’t fit neatly into a category.
This is where it starts. I help organizations figure out what makes them genuinely irreplaceable — and then build the strategy to activate that in the world. Whether you’re launching something new or repositioning something established, I bring rigour and a good eye for what will actually land.
I have a track record of building things that don’t exist yet — platforms, programs, partnerships, campaigns. If you have an idea that needs someone to take it from whiteboard to launch, I’ve done that more than once and I know where the landmines are.
Sometimes the strategy is fine — it’s the organization that needs work. I help teams modernize how they’re structured, build digital capability, and actually implement the changes they’ve been putting off. Available for fractional or interim leadership when you need a steady hand.
From brief to delivery. I manage the full arc of marketing campaigns and creative projects — writing the brief, leading the agency, keeping the work on strategy, and making sure it gets out the door on time and on budget. I’ve done this with seven-figure budgets and shoestring ones.
When a cross-sector committee landed on the idea of a film tourism platform for BC — and then nobody picked it up — I did. Two years of building something that had never been built in Canada: a platform bringing together the film and tourism industries, nine regional DMOs, and major Hollywood studios to turn BC’s filming locations into a travel product.
BC’s screen industry is worth $5.4B to the provincial GDP and competes globally for productions. Screen BC and the BC Film Commission brought me in to build its first-ever brand strategy — defining what makes BC irreplaceable beyond the tax credits. Designed and facilitated the Beyond North Summit to get the industry’s brightest minds in one room.
When MEC needed to figure out who it wanted to be — in a competitive retail landscape, with a membership increasingly vocal about diversity and inclusion — we didn’t sidestep it. We built an industry-wide framework for cultural appropriation in product design, overhauled imagery and model selection, and issued a CEO statement that generated hundreds of millions of media views.
A multi-year engagement that grew from three specific projects — building an e-learning ambassador platform for hospitality workers, managing MICE business development across North America, and overseeing PR — into an interim Director of Marketing role and a Dumpling Trail video series. We eclipsed all MICE revenue targets in 2024 by October of that year.
Rooms are the bread and butter, but restaurants are the true expression of the brand. With Michelin arriving in Vancouver for the first time, I built a strategy around pop-up dinners with world-renowned chefs from the US, Mexico, and Malaysia — each sold out, averaging $30K in daily revenue. Leading the plastic-free initiative four months early generated 150M+ impressions.
34 players suspended. CEO and coach resigned. Pundits predicting dissolution. We turned the crisis into a mandate — launching the AFL’s first Pride Round, first Hindi broadcast, and an Indigenous reconciliation program. The club retained its sponsors and actually grew its supporter base through the scandal.
One word, gumption. His dedication to his team and partners is relentless, his passion for work oozes with enthusiasm. Couldn’t recommend him more.
I keep a small roster by design. Every client gets the senior attention, not the junior team.
Selected past and present clients.
I work with a small number of clients at a time — which means I have the capacity to actually care about your project. If you’re building something in tourism, culture, sport, or the creative industries, reach out.
ryan@ryanmckee.co