Global Chief Strategy Officer
Sarah Ivey is a 20+ year veteran of the marketing industry, with substantial media agency experience. However, she sees herself as a strategist first and foremost, and in this age of specialization, is proud to also call herself “a strong generalist” with skills in business consulting, research, systems development, consumer insight work, and facilitation. She’s led accounts, run markets, created new business models, and now, as Initiative’s Global Chief Strategy Officer, she’s in a role for which she’s ideally suited.
Based in Canada with a worldwide mandate, she has a broad view of different cultures and different approaches, which has led to a strong best practice experience in strategy. She also admits, “What I love best about what I do is that my only limits are imagination and budget.”
“Innovation, she says, “is at the heart of what we do. I think we’re at the point where we need to push both ourselves and our clients take risks, even ones we can’t weigh. That’s why at Initiative we live by our Fast, Brave, Decisive and Simple (FBDS) credo – it has to be at the heart, otherwise brands simply don’t move forward.”
She adds, “One of our biggest challenges-- and accomplishments-- is connecting teams and landing ideas in multiple markets. Ideas and cultural movements travel much faster than organizations can move – that’s why we’ve focused on the Fast in FBDS. We have client and category-specific idea banks that pool ideas across markets so that we can tap into them when needed.”
Being global is at the center of Sarah Ivey’s passions. From a Toronto home base with her dual Canadian Irish citizenship, she has worked and trained in over 30 countries. As part of her Global Strategy role, she also runs Initiative’s thought leadership function with the agency’s research team. She’s particularly proud the group’s work, which she calls “the most amazing global studies of massive media challenges-- like seeing mobile entirely from a consumer’s perspective, or the largest study of the Millennial generation in 19 markets worldwide, or the first-ever feature phone study across 15 different markets for the World Cup to track the ramp-up in tech adoption.”
Sarah is never short on enthusiasm. “Our tools at Initiative are my pride and joy. They are each a multi-year project of constant improvement and development.” She outlines how she and her collaborators pulled together a massive single source panel worldwide that powers the agency’s decision planning tool, Matrix. She adds, “Last year we launched our consumer profiling tool, Real Lives, a web-enabled data visualization that brings this data to life and tells the complete story of who the target is. We’re now at the point where we can do ‘live planning’ – perpetually bringing in real consumers to sense check our plans as they develop.”
She also specializes in some personal research during her travels. She’s built an interactive map of the best coffees and espressos around the world. And whenever she visits a new culture, she always do two things: “I go to a restaurant that doesn’t have an English menu and point to something interesting. Then I shop where normal people shop and buy whatever crazy drinks and snacks are on offer.”