The ‘Spy’ of Madison Ave. : Marketing: If you see Allison Cohen in a swimsuit talking to kids at the beach, don’t assume she’s just relaxing. She just may be doing ad research.
Some call Allison Cohen the biggest snoop on Madison Avenue. That doesn’t bother her one bit.
In fact, she’s rather flattered. Her sole job at the New York ad agency Ally & Gargano is to find out how people feel about her clients’ products--and then tell the agency’s creative staff what she’s found. That way, the agency figures, it can better target its ads.
Cohen goes into people’s homes and videotapes what they keep in their cupboards. She has made videos of families cooking breakfast, lunch and dinner to see what products they use and how they use them. In the line of duty, she’ll even don a swimsuit to stroll on the beach and ask women personal questions, such as what would make them choose one brand of sanitary napkin over another.
“You can do all the market research and quantitative surveys you want,” said Cohen, whose position at the agency is considered so crucial that her office adjoins the chief executive’s. “But to understand human behavior, you need to talk to people individually.”
While her official title at the agency is senior vice president and director of account planning, she prefers to call herself the agency’s in-house consumer spy. “I’m the consumer expert,” said Cohen, 38, who also spends many hours paging through magazines and browsing through trendy gift shops. “I understand consumer motivations.”
The concept of the account planner--as some consumer spies are formally called--began in England and was generally popularized in the United States by the ad agency Chiat/Day/Mojo. Others, including Ogilvy & Mather and Young & Rubicam, also have account planners.
But few agencies seem to give planners the scope of authority that Cohen has at Ally & Gargano. There, she takes on the added responsibilities of what she calls “a combination psychologist and anthropologist.”
Not everyone in the business thinks a designated consumer spy is needed.
“Spying is what great ad people do all the time,” said Donald Deutsch, executive vice president of the New York agency Deutsch Inc. “If you put it on video, you trivialize it.”
Also these days, some consumers are increasingly critical of marketers’ prying. But Cohen says that has hardly affected her. Perhaps that is because she carefully presents herself much more as a friendly neighbor than a psychological researcher on a mission--the mission being to help the agency’s biggest clients, including Jergens lotions, Tambrands feminine products and Dunkin’ Donuts, increase sales.
“Are people I interview aware of all my motivations? No, not completely,” Cohen said. “But you’ve still got to be up front about it. It’s too hard to spend two hours with someone and cover up what you’re after.”
One of her strolls on the beach--in which she videotaped interviews with teen-age girls about feminine hygiene--directly resulted in an ad campaign for Tampax. One ad, targeted at teens, shows how using the brand allows one girl to wear her favorite jeans to a party. “That’s the kind of thing that teen-agers worry about,” Cohen said.
In all cases, Cohen says, she informs people that she’s doing research for an ad agency. But she is rarely more specific.
Cohen approaches many of the people she interviews at shopping malls or on the street. If the questions are lengthy, consumers are usually paid a small fee for their time. Those who allow her--and a video camera operator--into their homes are usually paid slightly more.
“We always tell people not to clean up their homes before we get there, but most do anyway,” Cohen said. “They’re usually nervous for about 15 minutes. After that, it doesn’t take long before they’re showing me what’s in their cupboards.”
And yes, plenty of people invite her into their homes. The things Cohen discovers there can be terrific fodder for TV commercials. Once, Cohen was asked to help the agency win its pitch for a large British maker of chocolate products. The theme of the campaign--which the agency didn’t win--was passion for chocolate.
Cohen coaxed several consumer “chocoholics” to show her where they hid their chocolate. One woman showed her a huge bowl--filled with dozens of candy bars--stuffed under her favorite chair in the living room. One man hid his chocolate in the freezer, behind the ice cube trays. And one woman took Cohen into her bedroom and opened her underwear drawer. “That’s where she kept her favorite bars,” Cohen said. “She figured her children would never find them there.”
Then there was the time the agency was pitching a new frozen-food client. Cohen persuaded a number of women to let her and a camera operator into their homes to film how they made dinner. This wasn’t for a specific ad. It was simply to show the prospective client--which had an outdated outlook--how American women really prepare meals.
“I wanted to show the client that most women aren’t meal ‘artists’ anymore,” Cohen said. “They’re really meal ‘engineers.’ They mix some ‘A’ plus ‘B’ plus ‘C’ and call it dinner. For them, the real question is, What can I do to get a meal on the table?” One woman even broke down in tears in front of the camera when her microwave went on the fritz.
Is Cohen spying too closely on consumer habits?
“People always have the option of saying no to her,” said Amil Gargano, chairman of the agency. “Of course, if she came to my door, I’d tell her it was none of her business what was in my kitchen cabinets.”
Yet Gargano, who originally objected to his agency hiring a consumer spy, is now one of Cohen’s biggest boosters. “What consumers really do can be vastly different from what we think they do,” he said. “She helps clients understand who uses their products--and how.”
