Relevancy: Winning the Battle for Consumer's Time

Ron Tite, founder and CEO of Church+State (Toronto, Canada), discusses the evolution of content and advertising and how, today, a marketing problem is no longer a content problem or an advertising problem—it's one unified problem—winning the battle for the consumer's time. Church+State operates under the premise that every ad can be a piece of content if it is good enough, and every piece of content can be an ad if it is authentic enough.

Agencies clamoring for relevancy may define their businesses by affiliation with a (HOT!) narrow niche markets or a specific (and inherently volatile and evolving) platform (such as Facebook). Ron feels it is important to think larger and drop the "buzzwords," since environmental/technological/legal/platform evolution issues can render a tightly-defined business model irrelevant.

Church+State has developed a consistent flexible approach and process that "elevates the conversation out of chaos," consistently distilling and bringing focus to those client issues impacting marketing effectiveness. Ron believes the foundation of great brands—and the great people who inspire and lead those brands—is based on what they think, what they do, and what they say.

• What they think: Mission and vision are meaningless. Finish the statement. "We believe that _____." What is your purpose? More than product, more than transactions . . . what values do you believe are significant and important?
• What they do: What products, services, actions, and processes justify those values and bring those values to life?
• What they say: If you have a product that reinforces your brand belief, what is it? How do you promote it? How do you talk about it? Where do you place that promotion? Where do people go after they consume that promotion? How do we repurpose content for distribution across multiple channels?
• And, finally, how do you ensure that whatever material you provide for customers is compelling enough that people will find it worthwhile?

Ron can be reached: @RonTite on. Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, whatever. His company's website is: churchstate.co.