About Us
Dario Hudon-Verrelli, Marketing Consultant in Calgary
Octopus & Son is the firm of Dario Hudon-Verrelli, a marketing consultant and fractional CMO based in Calgary and working with companies across Canada. The work starts with one question most marketing skips: who is actually buying from you, and why? Once that is written down, the message, the website and the AI tools all have something to work from.
About Octopus & Son
A Calgary marketing consultant, not another agency
Octopus & Son started in Calgary in 2014 as a social media agency. Over the years the same pattern kept showing up with clients: capable teams, good tools, steady effort, and marketing that still didn't add up. The problem was never the posts. Nobody had decided who the company was for.
So the firm changed what it sells. Today we work as a marketing strategy consultant and fractional CMO, before campaigns and content. We find out who your customer is, fix the message, and then decide what is worth producing.
If you need an agency for the making, we'll say so, and we'll make sure they're working from the right brief.
Who you'd be working with
- Taught marketing at Mount Royal University for nine years.
- Has led marketing as a fractional CMO, in the executive seat without the full-time hire.
- More than a decade working with multinational companies and growth-stage teams on the same problem: who the company is for.
- Works directly with every client, and brings in trusted contractors when a project needs more hands.
What clients say
Rated 5.0 on Google across 30 reviews. Read the reviews.
Case studies: fractional CMO at Nexxt Ideas · AI marketing at Nexxt Ideas · 434 app users in 30 days for Fillip · brand design for the PMISAC'22 conference.
Where we are
#300, 1550 5 St SW, Calgary · 1.888.963.4991 · Working with companies across Canada.
Every engagement starts with a 20-minute call. No pitch: you tell us what's not working, and we tell you what we'd look at first.
The Curious Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Octopus & Son is a marketing strategy consultant and fractional CMO firm in Calgary. We find out who a company is actually selling to, then build the message and the system so everything it produces, including with AI, says the same thing.
Clients rate us 5.0 on Google across 30 reviews, and the case studies show the work and what changed. The honest answer is the first call: if we're not the right fit, we'll tell you who is.
Ongoing work, such as a fractional CMO engagement, runs from $2,000 to $5,000 a month, depending on scope. The Marketing Foundation is a one-week engagement at a fixed price, quoted on the call. Every engagement starts with that call: 20 minutes, and nothing to prepare.
Decide first whether you need decisions (a consultant) or output (an agency). Then ask any consultant to describe your customer in your customer's own words, and for clients you can call. Octopus & Son is a Calgary marketing consultant rated 5.0 on Google across 30 reviews, and the first 20-minute call is where you can test both.
Dario Hudon-Verrelli, a marketing consultant in Calgary and a former marketing instructor at Mount Royal University.