Pictured left to right: Guillaume Brunet, founder and CEO, Substance; Natalie Larivière,
EVP, strategy and operations, Substance; Robin Whalen, president & CEO, Church+State,
Ron Tite, founder & CCO, Church+State
Montreal’s Agence Substance is now a “strong minority” stakeholder of Toronto’s Church+State.
As part of the deal, Church+State has also made an investment in Substance with what it calls a smaller position.
Both agencies will combine forces to create a new national holding company that is Canada-focused, and wholly committed to helping businesses and marketers grow here. The new group plans to pursue further acquisitions to solidify its position on a national scale.
While each agency will remain separate and independent entities with no changes to existing leadership, the move will combine strengths to form what it says is one of the leading independent full-service agencies in Canada, with strategy, creative, media, production, PR, data and analytics, and more.
Church+State CEO Robin Whalen says the two teams had worked together before on a couple of clients. For example, earlier this year, the duo came together to secure a pitch win for national pharma association, Innovative Medicines Canada. Church+State took the lead on strategy and creative, and Substance handled media, performance analytics and French creative.
Whalen tells strategy that Church+State had discussed potential partnerships with various organizations over the years, “but none felt quite right.”
“We knew that in addition to our complementary capabilities, we also shared the same values about how we approach the work, our clients and our people,” Whalen says.
Substance founder and CEO, Guillaume Brunet says ambitious marketers need unique structures with collaborative cross-functional teams using rigorous and nimble processes to deal with current realities.
Both agencies were founded around the same time in 2012.
More details about the holding company brand and roles within the groups will follow in the weeks and months ahead.
Church + State’s client roster includes Centennial College, Greenshield, for which it supports internal communications, SickKids Foundation and Walmart Canada to name a few. The agency also supported Google’s campaign about news connections, and recently helped Scouts Canada honour the outdoors, emphasizing to parents that its programming can help kids nurture their imaginations.
Substance has worked on digital marketing content for the paint brand Sico, and has done campaign work for Les Producteurs en serre du Québec – Quebec Greenhouse Producers and the portable car-shelter brand, Tempo.
