Catherine Sheehan is the VP of Brand Strategy at Arnold Worldwide. She knows how to get the most out of a team of strategic thinkers.
“Don’t improve weakness, build on strength instead.” - Catherine Sheehan
Max Traylor: There's two things that have blown my mind this week. Number one is WhistlePig, aged 10 years, rye whiskey that will blow your mind. The second is Catherine Sheehan. She builds strategy teams for Arnold worldwide. She's the head of brand strategy. You got to pay attention to her talking about the four main archetypes that make up a kick-ass strategy team and the environment that you need to create to get the best work out of them. Listen up.
Catherine Sheehan: What it is that you're inherently interested in and what you like observing about the world. I do think there are a few types that I tend to bring into the group time and time again, who are incredible at their competency and also complement one another so beautifully. The first is the one who is probably most antithetical to me and how my brain works, which is like my data wonk, the person who loves the numbers and who loves the facts and who just thrives on digging into the data.
Max Traylor: Do they have to wear glasses?
Catherine Sheehan: They do not, although it is really uncommon to find them without them.
Max Traylor: We're borderline stereotyping here.
Catherine Sheehan: They also tend to be the most lovable. I find that when they crack a code and the whole rest of the room who are very intuitive, very empathic, freak out with joy, it makes them very uncomfortable, but also very proud, which is a moment that I super love. If it's cool, I'll tell just a short story about what a data person brought to me in terms of insight that shaped an entire big project that I did for an insurance company, who's been a long time client.
We were given what seemed like a very straightforward assignment, one that would almost not impact how you went after it at all, which was growth of 2 to 3% in their customer base. They're big. They're number one in the motorcycle insurance category, so there was no reason to think that trajectory wouldn't continue. We said, "Okay," and went about our business the way we normally would.
Our data person came to us and said, "The trick is the motorcycle category is shrinking. Fewer people are buying bikes. Fewer people are riding. More people are selling them." He dug into the data and he came back and he said, "You know, there is actually one segment that's growing and it's growing at faster than 3%, and it's women. It's women riders, who are typically relatively young, 25 to 40. A problem that they have is they're typically the only woman riding in their group. And so if they get into a relationship or it can just be like a very personally awkward thing, when you don't see anybody around you who's like you, they drop out at a disproportionate rate."
That led us to look online and in social media. It turns out that these women riders are using social to try to find one another, to get advice on bikes, on purchasing them, on maintenance, trying to find one another so that they can ride together. Where can I stop? Is this campsite safe? Can I stay there alone? All happening organically in a way that this insurance company could not only advertise about, but could use their size and scale to actually connect and make a difference in this community. You sell policies and you create a following who will never leave you. And if we hadn't had that piece of data, we never would've gone down that road in the first place. It was absolutely transformative.
Max Traylor: If I had to sum that up, I'd say validated focus.
Catherine Sheehan: Another type that I realized I hired time and time again are the people watchers. These are folks who sometimes come from anthropology or a sociology or a zoological background. She was one of my favorites of all time. They are people who by and large are fascinated by human psychology. They typically tend to be great eavesdroppers. They'll go to bars alone and just listen in on what people beside them are talking about. They love watching behavior. So when you talk about things like ethnography, which to me is one of the best ways to gain insight into what a person actually does versus what they'll tell you in a focus group-
Max Traylor: I don't know what that means.
Catherine Sheehan: Oh. Ethnography is essentially studying behavior in situation. So sometimes it's going into people's homes and just watching and observing how they go about their day. Sometimes it's a shop-along at a supermarket to see where they actually stop, what catches their eye, the patterns that they fall into. Sometimes it's following them around at work to see how they do their job every day.
The trick of these people, whether they're doing ethnographic research or just interpersonal research through interviews or focus groups even, the thing that's always special about them is I call them shape-shifters, they are able to put any type of person completely at ease. I've got folks who can get all done up and go in and hold their own with a CEO all day. And then she could go to a garage full of mechanics, who'd been doing this job for 40 years, and get them to open up to her. They're able to match their personality to the people that they're observing in a way that makes them familiar and invisible, which is incredibly powerful when you want to observe somebody but not make them feel like they're being observed in a way that will change their behavior.
Then we've got a type who are as obsessive as the people watchers, but they are obsessed with culture. They're our culturists. What's amazing to me, because I'm very not one of them, but I'm always blown away by the people on my team who are so hooked into trends, so hooked into microculture, underground culture, the stuff that you can't read about in the New York Times, or stuff that you're not going to read about in the New York Times until four weeks, eight weeks down the line. They've been to music festivals you've never heard of. They get invited to art installations you had no idea were happening. They go to poetry slams in a basement of a place you didn't know existed.
They've got circles of friends and acquaintances who are very diverse, who invite them into these different experiences, and they go not as an exercise and not as a chore, but because they have this inherent curiosity not just in people, but in tribes, in groups, and what makes a group stick together and a passion point that they all rally around. That kind of insight into culture, especially things that are on the cusp of taking off, when you think about the things that are going to provide either tailwinds if you can hook into them, or headwinds if you don't know they're coming, when you're positioning a brand, these are the people with their finger on the pulse.
We talked about a fourth last time that I've put more thought into because typically across all the kind of personas that we've talked about, by and large what I've always thought makes a good planner, a great planner is a healthy dose of cynicism or coming in with an assumed contrarian point of view. Because if things were as simple as what the client said they built and what it does and why it will matter to people, it would be an assignment, not a brief. And so we always take input assuming like, "I'm not sure that's it." It makes you want to dig. It makes you want to see what else is there. What didn't they see? What haven't they uncovered? What angle hasn't been explored yet? That's what makes our job so fun. But cynicism can add up and does add up over time, especially when you have a whole group not taking things at face value.
I realized that I've always had one person on the team who I've called the optimist. They tend to have a pattern. It's not that they take things at face value, but they always assume the best in people. They always assume positive intent. They hear something that on the surface can be boring or pedestrian or factual, and they can find something in it that's beautiful just as it is. Sometimes the simplest explanation or the thing that seems Pollyanna is actually right. They're a great gut check on what we do and they're an awesome cultural lift to the spirit. They keep everybody up in a room that otherwise can get too cynical for its own good.
The way we do it is actually quite informal, but the same outcome tends to happen every time. I was thinking a little bit about why that is. It is as simple as each planner typically has an account that he or she is the lead for. We do a thing called briefs bureau, where we all get together in a room, on Zoom these days. Oftentimes somebody will come with a brief or they'll come with an insight or they'll come with a problem that they haven't cracked yet. They'll toss it up on the board and they'll say, "Here's the ask. Here's the digging that I did. Here are the pieces that I'm starting to see and how they seem to fit together." Sometimes they'll walk us through a whole analysis of company, competitive set, culture, consumer, and say, "I'm starting to see this as an insight or as an answer or as a story that this product or brand can stand for, a purpose that they can have."
Essentially everybody in the room gives their feedback or their input, what they see about it that seems to totally make sense and hold water, things that they've observed in the world or in people or something that they've read about that you would want to add to, or, "Hey, I saw this thing. Maybe this is a little bit off."
Essentially what I realized we were doing, it's kind of like a jury of your peers, the most thoughtful peers you can think of, ones who are inherently on your side, but they see the world differently. So they're going to comment in all likelihood with the questions or with covering a blind spot or a way of seeing the world that will challenge by definition the answer that somebody came up with. So if we come out of that room with an answer or an idea, or the notion of a story that everybody's pressure tested and feels good about, essentially we've litigated it in that room and hopefully covered a lot of bases of what a multitude of clients will see who come from different backgrounds and different competencies. I like to think that we are both conceiving of and shaping the idea and making it bulletproof at the same time.
Max Traylor: That's it for today folks. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I did. The book, Challenge Everything. Don't forget to pick up a free copy of Agency Survival Guide, featuring insights from people like Scott and other brilliant folks that don't have any problems in life. Now it's available for free on my website, against the best wishes of people that know things about books and podcasts, special for you. Cheers. See you next time.