Welcome back to The What's Next Podcast, we kick off the new season with Ron Tite, Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Church+State agency in Canada.

About Ron Tite

A best-selling author, speaker, and entrepreneur, Ron Tite has always blurred the lines between art and commerce. He has been an award-winning advertising writer and Creative Director for some of the world’s most respected brands including Air France, Evian, Fidelity, Johnson & Johnson, Intel, Microsoft, Volvo and many others.

He is founder and chief creative officer of Church+State, an agency that unifies content and advertising. In a partnership with Roger’s Frequency Podcast Network, he’s the host and executive producer of the hit podcast, “The Coup”, which recently won “Outstanding Business Series” from the Canadian Podcast Awards and the NY Festivals.

He has written for television. Penned a children’s book. Wrote, produced and performed a hit play. Created a branded art gallery. Published an award winning comedy book with CBC Radio’s hit show, “This is That”. And was Executive Producer & Host of the awardwinning comedy show, Monkey Toast.

In demand as a speaker all over the world, Ron speaks to leading organizations about creativity, disruption, branding, and leadership.

Ron’s first book was, Everyone’s An Artist - Or At Least They Should Be (Co-written by Scott Kavanagh and Christopher Novais), was published by HarperCollins in 2016. His most recent book, Think • Do • Say: How to Seize Attention and Build Trust in a Busy Busy World, hit store shelves in October of 2019.

Ron sits on the advisory boards for the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival and the Institute for Health & Human Potential.

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Hi, everybody, it's Ron Tite.

I'm the founder and Chief Creative Officer of Church + State.

Ron, thank you so much for joining me today.

Really appreciate it.

Thanks. Great. Thanks for having me.

Yeah. So listen, first off, congrats.

Church + State. Ten years old.

Yeah, we're coming up to it.

Coming up to it. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

I think in January, we'll officially be ten.

Wonderful.

Well, happy birthday.

Congratulations on that.

Many places.

I guess there's not many places

these days that are exactly the same as they were

ten years ago, not to mention two years ago.

So I'm really curious,

how did the pandemic change the way Church + State is operated?

Has there been much change?

What do you mean?

What happened?

Something happened, something happened?

Yeah, I mean, nothing too huge.

I mean, we've grown significantly, probably our biggest amount of growth

and over a year over year happened during the pandemic.

So that change, so there's just been that kind of influx of stuff.

There's been a change around talent and kind a fight for talent

and in terms of because we've grown and trying to get new people.

So that has changed.

And so that and even when you do that like growth, organic growth

means that you need new people with slightly different roles.

And so we've seen that we've had to bring in,

you know, some roles that really allowed the growth

to be scaled even more because we just, you know,

you hit that point when you're a smallish organization

where you know, people do multiple jobs, they were different hats

and then you get bigger and you're like, Oh, maybe we need a director of operations

and you know, so we just need because growth without the ability

to strengthen the operations of an organization

is useless because it's just going to, you know, you're just going to end up

driving people insane and you're just going to end up losing people

and losing clients and you'll just have a massive amount of churn.

So we've kind of just like doubled down on like, let's just improve

the operations and let's just build and improve the operations

so that even more growth can come at scale.

But otherwise, you know, our team has been absolutely incredible.

We've deployed everybody virtually really, really quickly.

We quickly changed offices or not quickly we waited.

And just over the last little bit, we've changed offices

so that our new space could more meet

the needs of this new reality.

And then otherwise, you know,

yeah, we we've,

you know, got more.

You know, our clients are Wal-Mart, DoorDash and Centennial College

and you know, Granger and, you know, Canada Health Info Way

like all businesses that have been fundamentally changed

because of the implications on their customer base.

So we've just kind of changed with our clients.

Nice. Nice.

You recently wrote, I believe, on LinkedIn about the last 8%.

I know it's not your idea that you've come up with,

but you talked to how it was important, how you felt it was important for

for business leaders

on how to

deal with their own last eight situation.

I'm wondering if you can, if you can share

what is the last 8% and why is it important? Yes.

So first of all, this was something this is something that Dr.

JP Pawliw-Fry who's a good friend and I sit on the board

of his organization and JP, he's a great speaker and,

you know, New York Times bestselling author and all

that is just a brilliant, brilliant guy, the Ph.D..

And, you know, it was JP's

kind of work that highlighted that most leaders

will have conversations with their team or with their clients,

with their colleagues, you know, that are the kind of the first 90%.

And the way I would describe those is like,

those are the easy conversations,

the inspiring conversations, the informative conversations.

All that but that were real growth comes from both as the leader who's

delivering a message as well as the person that you're delivering that message to.

It's in that last 8% and it's the last 8%, which is the uncomfortable stuff.

It's the last 8% that are the difficult conversations.

And I had to do a huge amount of work in that because you often think like,

Oh, leaders are just like, let's rally round people

and it's giving hugs to people and you know, all those.

And yes, it is all of that.

But at the same time, the real leaders are

the ones who can have those difficult conversations.

Now I remember I got to interview a guy named Jack Welch,

and Jack was voted C of the Century, former CEO of GE.

And so I got to interview Jack on stage at the Art of Leadership. And

I remember my very

first question to him other than this weird random mentor question.

But the first question I had planned was

Your nickname is 'Neutron Jack'.

Because you're famous for firing

the bottom 10% every year.

That can't make you feel good, that can't be you cannot as a human being,

sit here and tell me that if your legacy is neutron

jack, that that fills your your heart with warmth.

And what do you think of that and he was like, I don't care.

And then and and to be honest, Karim I wanted to hate him.

I wanted to hate him because that was my perception of him

was that and I was like, Who is this guy?

He's just like all about shareholder value and didn't care about his people

and all that.

And it was such a great learning opportunity for me because he said,

Look, yes, I did let go a lot of the people

who weren't performing, but none of those people

were ever surprised that they were being let go.

The real, immoral behavior is not letting somebody go.

The real, immoral behavior is not having challenging

conversations with people and dealing with complete candor.

Because if your boss comes to you and says sorry, you got to lose

X percent of your budget or you need to fire two people

and you go to Tom and Mary, you go , I got to let you go.

And they don't know that they're the bottom two performers,

and they don't know that if someone's going to let go, it's going to be them.

That's immoral because they have children and they have mortgages

and everything else. And so nobody was ever surprised.

So it's not about letting somebody go at the end of the year.

It's having those really difficult conversations throughout the year

so that when it does happen, it doesn't come at them.

And that was the first time that I thought of that.

And it was a huge leap of learning.

And then JP's last 8%.

I think when he's got, he's got a whole, you know,

a training session, an assessment.

He's got a full program that that people can take for it.

But that's a great learning experience, for sure.

You know, speaking of the art of leadership,

I think that's when I became first aware of you, you know, being the host of

the 'Art of' events, 'Art of Leadership', 'Art of Marketing' and so on.

And recently, one of the people that you had

an opportunity to share the stage with the late

Secretary of State Colin Powell, you know, he recently passed away.

I'm curious if there's been a lot written about him just recently.

A lot of people have spoken about him.

I'm curious, you know, similar to your story about Jack Welch.

Any lessons that you hold onto from your time with him on stage?

Yeah, there was, you know, and we did

I think I think we did three gigs in a row.

And so I got to see them three times and kind of hang out with them

a little bit backstage.

But you know, you've got people, he's got people surrounding him and everything.

So not like, not like, I'm texting.

I was texting him because he passed away a couple of weeks ago.

But I think, you know, it was kind of the opposite of Jack Welsh,

you know, Jack, I wanted to hate what I had learned at times like,

Wow, this guy actually, OK, I buy it now.

And Colin Powell was kind of the opposite.

You know, not that I ever hated him.

But you know, he came in being this, you know, famous person.

He was somebody that as a Republican, I maybe didn't, you know, naturally go to.

But I always saw him as like the one Republican I would conceivably vote for

if he ever ran.

And and maybe that was because he, you know, superficially I'm like,

Oh, a black guy in the in the Republican Party,

which is not something you see every day.

And maybe that was the point of like difference for him.

But I, you know, he certainly,

I think, has a complicated legacy because of what down what went down

with the war in Iraq and, you know, kind of uncovering the

weapons of mass destruction and all that.

And so it was really just like, well, who is the man?

I think the lesson there is.

Well, he was a guy who was military, you know, he was raised and military

and what, you know, what do you do in the military?

You fall in line when the general says this is the way you go, question

it, you fall in line and you support the general.

Otherwise, everything breaks and breaks down.

And so people saying, like, why didn't he question George Bush and Dick Rumsfeld?

And, you know, Dick Cheney and whatnot,he was a military guy.

You fall in line, you follow the orders.

So he did what was expected of him.

But when you balance that out

with like the whistleblower mentality of like he could have saved a lot of lives

had he done something and said something, and that makes it a complicated legacy.

I think

the other thing kind of this is, you know, not as significant,

but that as a speaker, you really begin to learn.

He was a really compelling speaker, but part of the reason

he was a compelling speaker was because of his fame. And,

you know.

That speakers want to.

Andrew Davis, who's a great speaker and good friend.

He has a fame.

If you're a speaker and you want to kind of drive

your revenue, it's about four things called FANG the F.

And so you and I could share what it was like when we quit a job

and have incredible insight and great performance above that.

That's not going to be anywhere

close to Colin Powell saying, What is it like when he got fired?

Because.

It's just on a

completely different level, and people want their really.

I think intrigued by having the backstage pass to know what was going

down in the White House and whatnot and those they're

just on a completely different level, they're the exact same stories.

With different players, but their exact same stories

are just delivered on a whole other different level.

I hear you, I hear. Let's talk about brands.

People are going to get mad if I don't ask you about this.

Your thoughts on on this new social media company?

I don't know if you've heard of it's called Meta.

What are your what are your thoughts on?

What Facebook has as recently announced.

Well, Meta means dead

in Hebrew, I know I know that now, but.

And by the way, if you ever like, say,

20 years ago, if we were to say there's going to be an evil human being,

we always like Zuckerberg, look like

that's the guy that we would probably create, right?

Like the weird haircut and the blank stare and all that.

Like, he's kind of in that zone.

Well, you know, I think

rebrands are, I think are something that are really important.

And I know in our notes back and forth, you kind of mentioned 680 News,

which may seem completely ridiculous to compare those two.

But let's.

OK, so 680 News rebrand where people are one.

Why would you rebrand this thing?

It's a really famous brand, certainly within the Toronto market, known for news.

Why would you ever rebrand that? Well, look

for a brand to succeed.

A brand needs to diversify its portfolio and especially in the media space.

If you're known as a radio brand,

how you grow, that is to become more than a radio brand

where you now become a TV brand and you now become a newspaper brand.

And you know, this is the problem with media.

Great brands need to become media properties,

and media properties need to think like great brands and great brands go.

You leverage the brand into new SKUs, new products, new portfolios.

So if you buy 680 News and you're Rogers and you have City News

as your brand in no other

in a whole bunch of other places, you now need to extend that brand into radio.

You didn't extend 680 into TV and everything else.

So now you have an ownership group that has a diverse portfolio of services

and products

that all ladder up to the same purpose, informing Canadians and real time news.

It's got to share the same brand, otherwise you're not going to grow,

so 680 need to fall in line and go, OK, we're part of something bigger.

That brand is now going to be associated with that.

So they rebranded after

they rebranded so that the brand would meet the activities

that took place in the products that lived under that brand.

So that's a smart brand,

and it was going to take a couple of years, but it's a smart brand.

Now Facebook, on the other hand, the exact opposite,

which is we need to diversify our portfolio.

We need to stand for something more.

So we need to think part we need the purpose we need to do,

which is a variety of different products and services.

And then once

all of those things are in place, then we need a brand that reflects that.

Well, I think while they have some of the pieces in place,

I don't I think they jump right to the do.

And then to the say without really having a broader purpose.

So the brand, they just said, what did we just change the name

and that will help us drive a new agenda.

Why don't you drive a new agenda and then let the name catch up later?

So I think they're they accelerated the rebrand

because of all the shit that Facebook the Facebook brand was encountering.

I haven't heard how they're fixing any of that, those challenges.

They jumped right to the new brand.

So what do I think of the brand meta and the name and the logo?

It's irrelevant.

Call it doggy.

Do call it a taboo by Hula-Hoop.

I don't care.

Right now, whatever you call that brand, it is not going to

reflect the reality that exists within that organization.

And that's the problem.

This is why I love speaking with Iran,

the the answers coming are insightful and entertaining at the at the same time.

Nobody else is going to say, Doug, you do have but do

what's next?

From where you're sitting with church and state?

What's next in creative, in advertising?

Well, I think it's it's about

it's not about something like we're going back like, no, it's not about recovery.

This is about reinvention.

And I, but what I think we're going to do is that we're going to have

a better embrace of the digital reality, data capabilities, automation

and art and creativity and having brands with souls.

So we've gone too far in one direction.

When I was an old, traditional old

traditional ad guy cranking out TV spots for people

like Kraft and Hershey's, all the digital folks would kind of be a go.

Just you wait.

Digital is going to solve the problems

and you know, it's going to be about the ads that people want to see,

and they're going to see them

when they need to see them, where they want to see them.

All of that.

The reality is a shit show that what digital has become is,

is, you know, it's become it was never supposed to be about scale.

It's all about scale.

How can we easily scale this message to put it in front of more people?

More irrelevant people would be on the opposite.

Instead of being more targeted, it's less targeted

because we're just we're spraying and paying.

Way more than we ever could with television.

So we went too far in that direction.

I think the world of programmatic, I think the world

of media placement

and kind of the soul around that is going to drastically change.

And there's a massive opportunity for people like your organization

because as we redefine how we do that, I think it's going to get way

smarter and way better.

And then creativity great.

Creatively, I think,

you know, the latest agency to launch is called Broken Heart

Love Affair, which is this idea, and they're wonderfully talented people.

And so, you know, if you look at both of those brands,

Church + State is like, Hey, it's this changing world.

You know, the unification of church and state of editorial and advertising

Broken Hearted Love Affair, which is like, Let's get back the soul of brands.

Let's get back to really powerful creativity.

I think when you combine those two ideas, that's really where things are going.

Enough about the data led, metric driven messaging,

because all that does, all of those benchmarks are what people did yesterday.

That only works.

And so if you go, we need to benchmark the data against past performances.

You're never going to end up with something new.

You're never going to end up with something

that's never been done before because there's no data that exists for it.

And I think we're going to see we're going to revisit how those things,

new things, brand new things, brand new placement, brand new messages

shot in ways we never imagined before, which have a greater chance

for failure, by the way, because they've never been done before.

We're going to we're going to see bravery and courage of marketers

to say, I want that.

Ron, thank you so much for your time today.

This has been an amazing conversation, I always learn something new

when I speak with you.

Thanks so much for your time.

Before I let you go, if people want to find out more

about you and your organization, where's the best place for them to go?

We, what you should do is

you should connect with Karim on LinkedIn and just ask, just send him messages.

Now, Ron, Tite everywhere.

Just Google, Connect on LinkedIn.

RonTite.com, churchstate.co .

There's not many Ron Tites in the world.

So if you google it, you'll come up with some stuff.

Thank you so much.

Great. Thanks for having me.

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