How to unearth strategy magic - The CSO view
Tips from Jo Arden
Over the past few months we had the privilege to chat with a group of APG award-winning planners on a project partnering with the excellent Account Planning Group.
We chatted to nine authors of award winning papers from the 2025 APG Awards, with a loose conversation guide, but with a centre of gravity around: What mix of research actually powered the work?
We wrote a newsletter about the findings that you can see here.
This second post is touching on the end of our presentation, where Jo Arden shared some tips and tricks on how planners and planning departments can ensure that they’re maximising their human-led research impacts.
Jo is the Chief Strategy Officer at AMV BBDO and the Co-chair of the APG.
In her section of the findings she named the reasons planners and planning departments maybe don’t use human-led research at all, or as much as they should.
She didn’t share theoretical barriers, but real ones.
The ones that show up in the meetings you’re in, the timelines you have to stick to and the budgets you’re working with.
And then, one by one, she shared tips on how you can get around them to maximise the impact of human-led research
“I don’t have the time.”
This is the one everyone nods along to. And it’s easy to go along with this because your calendars are full. Your days disappear into endless meetings.
But Jo reframed it simply: zoom out to see the benefits.
A day spent with people inside a three-week project is not a delay. It’s an acceleration.
Because, as she put it, “an hour with a person is worth ten at your desk.”
And more than that, it changes the quality of what follows.
Less time rewriting the strategy.
Less time course-correcting creative.
More conviction, earlier.
You lose a day. You gain momentum.
So, in the constant pressure of time, it’s a case of not simply continuing on the treadmill but of pausing, considering, and then making an argument with your teams that doing something properly at the outset, inputting human-led research at the outset, will save time in the long run.
Her argument, I believe, is a really strong one.
In that, if you include a human-led research partner at the outset, you can tap into their mind ongoing throughout the project or the pitch. Yes, they’ll deliver the research to you, but certainly the way we work with our clients, we’re always on hand to hop on calls to discuss their thinking, their hypotheses, and to sense check that against what we’ve heard for their specific research, but also overall.
“We don’t have the money.”
This is something we constantly hear from our clients and potential partners, in that they don’t have the money for ‘proper’ research… Until you look at where money does go.
The reality is human-led research is rarely unaffordable. It’s just rarely prioritised, and the cost of research seems to be more heavily scrutinised than other costs associated with a pitch or a project.
Jo’s point was blunt: there is always a way to scale it, and always a way to afford it too.
From full-scale projects… to sitting in a pub buying rounds and asking questions.
To the best planners and the best strategists, human-led research is something worth fighting for. Something that improves everything downstream.
And if you can’t get the budget yet — start anyway!
Build the case through doing.
Far be it from me to give career advice tips, but certainly working to the mantra of ‘seeking forgiveness before seeking permission’ stood me in good stead throughout my planner career.
I’d be flabbergasted if your planning leaders or planning team saw it as a negative that you were getting out speaking to real people or speaking to potential research partners about how you could make the pitch or project better.
“The audience is hard to reach.”
Jo split this into two extremes:
Those on the margins in society
Those at the very top in economic terms
Both get labelled “hard to reach.”
Of these audiences that are apparently harder to reach, her view was: that’s precisely why they matter!
And if you can’t reach them directly, get closer to who is close to them.
Talk to the people around them.
The intermediaries. The experts. The ones already inside those worlds.
In one example Jo shared in her presentation, insight into ultra-wealthy audiences didn’t come from them at all — but from chefs, trainers and chauffeurs orbiting their lives.
Not perfect access. But real perspective.
If you think your audiences are hard to reach, simply ignoring it because it’s hard to confront will do you no good. Attempting to reach them or the people around them is something that a good human-led research company can do for you.
“A small group can’t shape direction.”
This is the comfort blanket of quant.
Something we have talked about lots and something we talked about in our part of the presentation. The continuing and growing mindset that ‘the data told me’. The security blanket that more clients and strategists are taking as they (fail to) make decisions
Big numbers. Statistical safety. But strategy doesn’t really work that way.
As Jo put it, “everyone’s story is the story of humanity.”
We don’t need 1,000 people to tell us something true. We need one person to say something that resonates, that we can feel.
Something that sticks.
Something that shifts how you see the problem.
One heartfelt truth can do more work than a chart ever will.
Planning leaders and agency leaders need to back their strategists when they have a piece of evidence that they want to throw their weight behind.
That piece of evidence does not need to be statistically robust.
Amazing, effective, growth campaigns all existed before big data; they all existed before AI!!
We need to remember that part of a planner’s skill set is spotting something that is magical, and that can be one single quote from one single person.
“I’m a bit scared.”
Going into someone’s home, asking questions, sitting in their world — it’s uncomfortable. It should be.
And instead of brushing that aside, Jo normalised it.
Of course you’re nervous. You’re in a stranger’s home.
The answer isn’t to avoid it. It’s to do it properly:
Go with someone
Use trusted partners (us or any number of other human-led researchers!)
Get trained (we can help and have off-the-shelf training ready to go - drop us a line!)
Build confidence over time
This isn’t about throwing planners into the deep end, it’s about reinstating this skill as a key piece of the planner’s armoury that has been lost over the past few years.
Clearly, we follow safety protocols and MRS guidance on how to best and safely meet with strangers, either in their home or in public places.
If you ever need any tips or any advice on this, just drop us a note; we’ll be happy to chat
Stealth mode
And then Jo ended not with a grand framework. But with a list of small actions that sounded like the Trainspotting ‘Choose Life’ manifesto: energetic, urgent, and meaningful.
Over time, spending more time as a strategist with real human beings in real contexts, listening, observing, conversing will bring you multiple benefits:
A habit of listening.
A sharper instinct.
A closer connection to reality.
Or as she put it:
“Talking to people is irreplaceable. You remember those conversations more than any deck or stat.”
If the first part of the talk made the case for a Reality Advantage™, Jo’s part of the presentation made it feel doable to a bunch of you out there.