Trend Spotter
Strategy diva Cynthia Cohen (MET’77) predicts the future for her client companies and helps them make the sale.
By Jenny Brown
“When you do what I do, there’s no
separation of work and personal life,”
says Cynthia Cohen. “My antenna is always up.”
It’s an unusual job description: huddle in the stands with soccer moms, order pitchers of beer with college guys, root through the magazines in doctors’ offices, and fly back and forth across the country. But it’s all in a day’s work for strategy diva Cynthia Cohen, who gets paid for spotting the next big trend for clients ranging from 3M and Office Depot to Walt Disney and Godiva Chocolatier.
Founder and president of Strategic Mindshare, Cohen (MET’77) and her company do what she calls “trendstorming,” a kind of cultural reconnaissance intended to help businesses develop strategies and concepts, determine market positioning and strengthen brands, and perform market research and acquisition analysis.
It’s definitely not a nine-to-five desk job. Based in Miami, Cohen is out of town more often than not, observing people in their own environment, learning what they like, what they do, and most important, what they buy.
“We call it natural habitat observation,” says Cohen. “It’s really better than a focus group. You get a group of like-minded folks in their natural environment.”
To learn what interests soccer moms, Cohen hangs out with them at a game. “While they’re watching their children, I ask them how did they make the decision about where their children went to school? How did they make the decision about the last washing machine they bought? What were the last five things they bought at the mall? If I’m with college guys, I go out to a bar and order a pitcher of beer. If I’m with young women, we’re walking the mall, talking about their fashion. I’ll ask, ‘It’s spring — what interests you? What’s hot? What are you asking for graduation presents?” That, she says, gives her much better data than focus groups, where strangers are paid to sit in a small room and discuss their buying habits.
Cohen compiles yearly lists of consumer trends, which so far have been eerily accurate. She predicted that 2006 would be the year “for fashionable pregnancy.” She wrote, “It’s Katie, Brooke, and Gwyneth now; will Jennifer or Angelina be next?” Shiloh and Suri might answer that one in the affirmative. When Cohen declared 2005 the year that backyards would morph from “green grass and a barbecue grill” boring to trendily designed living spaces worthy of Martha, one of her Fortune 500 clients opted to buy a garden accessory business, which has proven a great success. That year she also predicted that the “itsy, bitsy, teeny weenie dog” would make a comeback; it was the year Paris Hilton wore her Chihuahua Tinkerbelle like a fashion accessory. Well, Tinkerbelle, Cohen’s putting you on notice. For 2007, she’s declared engineered pets the must-have companion. “Behavior is the new pedigree,” she says, “and little Peanut is bred to the family’s specifications.”
Cohen’s interest in retail began when she was thirteen, working in, of all places, a supermarket meat department. “I got a sense of retail with my first job,” she says, “The dynamic of how you price something and how you position a product changes consumer behavior, and I was fascinated by that from the beginning.”
Now, “When people ask where I live, I tell them, ‘On American Airlines,’” she says. “You have to remember the bulk of the population is middle America, women size fourteen, so that’s where I like to travel.” She needs to chat with “the NASCAR dads and SUV-driving moms — and you’re not going to find those in NYC.” She also reads more than 100 magazines a month, watches all the popular shows, and keeps her eye open for the next big thing.
“When you do what I do, there’s no separation of work and personal life,” she says. “My antenna is always up.”