Branding Canadian: Q&A with Dx3 Content Curator Ron Tite

Where do you think Canada stands in the digital scheme of things? By some metrics we’re the most digitally engaged nation in the world, but nobody’s talking about Canada as a digital powerhouse, are they?

They’re not. There’s a massive gap between consumer behaviour and expectations, and what Canadian businesses are delivering.

Services, products and e-commerce aren’t properly integrated or offered digitally to Canadians. One of the biggest reasons for that is our small population. The U.S. can return its investment on a $500,000 website much faster than we can.

The second difficulty is that the U.S. has a much easier time extending into the Canadian space and selling through their existing websites. The third reason is that the large majority of U.S. businesses operate in a model where key decisions about investments are made in the U.S. and put to the U.S. market first.

The final one I’ll say is that Canadians have a history of bitching about it, and feel that they can never compete, so they just don’t try.

Forbes recently named Canada the best country in the world to do business in and international retailers like Target are setting up shop across the country. Do you think Canadian retailers are at risk of getting locked out? Should we care?

I think it’s a balance between protecting Canadian consumer interests with Canadian professionals doing the work. There are a large number of Canadian businesses who aren’t investing and who aren’t competing against their U.S. counterparts when they should be.

Hasn’t the internet made the very notion of a Canadian digital industry obsolete? Aren’t we just part of one big interconnected worldwide web?

In some ways, but we also know that there are Canadian brands, products and services who live here and understand the Canadian market; Canadian Tire and Tim Horton’s for example.

While those companies face competition from the U.S., they can also live beyond our borders. So it’s just as much an opportunity for Canadian businesses as it is a threat.

Current problems aside, RIM is a great example. RIM was born here, grew up here and became a global powerhouse. We have to continue to promote Canadian innovation. Not just to serve Canadian consumers, but so that Canada can take on a lead role globally.

Do you think we’re seeing a digital brain drain? Are the best and brightest Canadians fleeing to Silicon Valley like they’re fleeing to Hollywood or Wall Street?

Well, we’ve certainly seen acquisitions, but given the state of the U.S. economy we’re now starting to see reverse brain drain, where Americans come north because the foundations of our economy are better and it’s a great place to do business.

If you want to be a big player in television and film, you go to Hollywood – it doesn’t matter where you’re from. And if you want to be a big player on the digital stage you go to Silicon Valley. It doesn’t mean we don’t produce Canadian television or film that can succeed globally.

What have you learned from your travels with the Art of Marketing event – are there notable similarities or differences between crowds in Vancouver and Montreal, for example? Can we generalize about Canadian marketers?

Here’s one thing we do really well in this country: We talk. But there’s a lack of action following those sessions. They’re critically important in terms of education and motivation, but we need a kick in the ass. 

What’s the deal with all these conferences and trade shows anyway? Has technology made these events more important and powerful since we’re connecting more than ever?

It’s made them more powerful because there’s an assumption that we don’t have to get together. My first job was to help launch the National Executive MBA program at Queens University in 1994. It was the first video-conferencing executive MBA delivered globally and it linked 11 cities countrywide.

But we met face to face for three weeks first, and by the time the video conference came around, the interactions were natural. Technology can certainly make it easier but I think we have to get together to talk, see, demo and compare things, and get immediate answers.

It seems like Canada’s version of branding tends to be self-referential and even self-deprecating – think of the closing ceremony of the Olympics. What’s unique about Canada’s brand story? How would you brand Canadian?

The reason I think we turn to self-deprecation is because there’s a sort of inferiority complex about being reserved that I don’t think should exist.

We’re a Volvo that’s next door to a Ford Mustang that’s sexy, powerful and everything else. It’s okay to be reserved, it’s okay to be quietly sophisticated. I think that’s at the heart of Canada’s brand.

But right now, the people of Canada are stuck in this zone where we’re all looking around thinking, “Man, someone’s got to innovate. Just don’t touch my job.”

That’s the reason I resigned as a creative director. We all have to stick our hands up and say, “I’m personally going to innovate and contribute to national innovation.”

Content has become a buzzword in media and marketing. There’s all this talk about content marketing and content strategy. You’re Dx3 Canada’s content curator. How’s Canada doing on the content front?

The first of two issues that I looked at when constructing the content for Dx3 was the fact that we do a lot of talking at the high level and little in the trenches.

I once did a keynote address on the benefit of a socially connected brand where someone came up to me and said, “I get it, I know this is what we should do, but how do I retweet?” So we’re just not sure about the nuts and bolts.

On the other hand, we can’t talk about marketing without talking about location-based markets, or mobile advertising, or social media, or even affiliate marketing.

What we have are these agencies that know one tiny space but may not know how to connect to social media agencies or branding agencies, and how it all connects with content agencies: silo gurus of sorts.

That’s why I really wanted to make sure that we covered off those big areas that were really driving key marketing decisions. That way, we could really take the talk happening at the 30,000-feet level, bring it back to the trenches and have people leaving saying, “I’m personally going to change the way I do things and the decisions I make.”

Sparksheet caught up with Ron at the Art of Marketing event in Montreal last year and asked him about the connection between business and comedy, personal branding, and the power of storytelling: