Tell us a bit about yourself, what do you do?
I find ways for brands to make themselves meaningful in people’s lives--and importantly—to culture. SRG has a sterling reputation in the world of brand strategy already, so it’s amazing that they’ve let me into their work to help elevate brand strategy in ways that help bring it to life in new and interesting ways to ensure the world takes notice.
What did you do before your current role and what led you to where you are now?
Prior to coming to SRG I was contracting with a Social Impact agency called Fearless Unlimited that Alex Bogusky and Dagny Scott had formed as CP+B ex-pats. Prior to that I spent about 4 years at CP+B working as a “Cognitive Anthropologist” (aka Planner) on brands such as Hotels.com, Microsoft, Best Buy, Kraft, Fruit Of The Loom, and Hershey’s. Working closely with CP+B mentors like my former colleagues Jason DeTurris, Rob Reilly, Andrew Keller, and CP+B ex-pats like Dagny really developed my sense that looking through the telescope—at culture--was equally important as looking through the microscope—e.g. traditional/expected marketing research. And that finding unexpected insights in unexpected places is what truly fuels creativity. It’s that POV that attracted me to an agency that had been dabbling in the “consultancy meets agency” model for over 20 years—the prospect of bringing fresh perspective and energizing a company culture of already successful brand stewards felt like an enriching brief for my career.
How would you define the role of a strategist in your agency?
At the risk of being elusive in a “classicly-planner-y” way I don’t think there’s any way to “one-dimensionalize” what a strategist does at SRG. Our strategists come from diverse backgrounds: client-side, agency-side, tech, academia, journalism, art, etc., so, we all bring different thinking to the table. I think it’s the alchemy of our diverse cavalry of thinkers/strategists that defines us—in fact, we call ourselves “solutionists.” At the end of the day we all have an insatiable desire to put our heads together and find new ways of cracking our client’s biggest and most meaningful problems.
How have you seen the role of a strategist been evolving since you first began?
Well, one thing that has remained static over the years is that planners/strategists are inherently perpetually evolving beings—that bias toward being and seeing things in new ways is the magic they bring to creativity. I find it’s just part of our DNA, to be honest. However, importantly, I’ve seen industries adopting these thinkers (i.e. strategist/planners) in fields such as software development, management consulting, and industrial design that would have seemed entirely outrageous 15 or 16 years ago when I was brought into the world of being an agency planner at Arnold Worldwide. I think a growing demand for creativity overall, has created that demand for us. It seems to be a virtuous cycle because that demand continues to fuel our desire to never stop growing.
In your opinion, what are the greatest barriers an aspiring planner/strategist encounters when trying to start their career?
I started as an agency planner as an intern in college. That turned into my entry level job as a “junior planner.” I think the only reason that happened was because I was naïve enough to be steadfast in my conviction to be an independent thinker (maybe even an iconoclast, at the time ?) . Because here’s the challenge; when I was entry-level, I was consistently told “there is no such thing as a ‘junior’ planner” by older colleagues. To be fair, that was hyperbolic, wrong, and condescending—but the struggle is real …and not illegitimate. My advice to all aspiring and/or budding planners is this; learn the tools, learn the best practices, learn the methodologies and the ideologies, and put your own spin on it. I’ll never forget a moment about five years into my career when I asked a supervisor of mine for their thinking about a client-brief that felt impossible—the response was; “we pay YOU to think …you’ve got to persevere.” I would never be told that again. But I learned; Keep showing up with your own thoughts, voice, ideas, and perspective, and you’ll always be asked to keep showing up to the meeting. Because the reality is if planners/strategists aren’t adding value, they’re likely taking away from it.
In your time, what have you noticed are the key skills and traits that separate great strategists from the mediocre?
At the risk of sound like a job description I’ll re-iterate some of the most fundamental, but important, traits: Be interesting, be yourself, be adaptable, create change, bring people along—don’t drag them or push them. And do whatever it takes to keep your curiosity-candle burning bright.
How do you avoid getting stuck in a cultural bubble and stay informed on the needs and desires of everyday consumers?
Get in front them. Be a life-long student of culture and life in general. Never take your planner/strategist hat off. It’s not a 9-5 job—it’s a lifestyle. Appreciate that you get to have a job like this. When you get to travel for work, ask if you can move your flight so you get to stay a weekend and go meet “the people,” observe the intricacies and nuances of their culture or subculture, find their magic DNA, discover unexpected ways in which people communicate with each other …find the remarkable in the mundane. Give yourself permission be OK with being an outsider. If you’re intrigued by what you notice, see if you can become an insider. Show respect for all points of view and recognize that yours isn’t always the most important—but acknowledge and appreciate, sincerely, that they exist. Welcome in the energy of others. Question everything. But be more interested in what’s interesting than what’s right.