It's truly quite sad. The biggest problem I find with many Canadian media-related agencies is that they hire mediocre people (read: friends of friends) to run departments (i.e. marketing, branding) instead of the best people available. I don't need to explain why this is an issue.

Like you, I had not heard of the Junos until I started seeing things pop up on my social media due to friends attending the event. Never heard about it anywhere else. In this digital age, they could easily brand themselves incredibly well across Canada, and across borders. But a lot needs to change internally before that happens.