Navigating an Ever-Changing Landscape

tl;dr: In this article, I interview Catherine Hainsworth, who joined Rehab in 2021 as a digital producer, leading projects for industry giants including Roche, Google, LEGO and Disney before working her way up to her current role as project director.

We discuss her background in Adland, what success looks like to her for innovation projects, and her approach to talking to clients about new tech and ROI. 

How can you “de-risk” innovation? Is there a way to expect the unexpected during phases of a project? Will AI help or hinder human teams?

Can you please introduce yourself and share a bit about your background as a project director?

Catherine> I've always been attracted to creativity. In school, I was more interested in arts, textiles, and theatre than anything else, but I was also inquisitive, enjoying the human behaviour side of the humanities. 

After graduating from Manchester Met Uni and getting my degree in retail marketing management, I interned at the family business (A W Hainsworth), a Woollen Mill in Yorkshire. While I was there, the business rebranded, allowing me to see and appreciate the different considerations at play when developing creative work. 

After moving on to in-house marketing and agency roles, I realised that I thrive in being closer to the action and making the work happen, which I found to be agency side. I discovered that I enjoy working in hybrid roles, working directly with clients to define their requirements and then, in turn, delivering against these.    

What attracted you to join Team Rehab?

Catherine> Having experienced a larger network agency, I realised I felt more at home in a smaller independent where the focus was on delivering the best work for clients and consumers rather than just winning TVC awards. I’m also interested in emerging technology, understanding how it can be used and why people should care. This didn’t really fit in the land where TVCs are king. I knew I wanted to work more in digital, where innovation was happening. 

So that's what attracted me to Rehab. The work was game-changing, not just because it won awards but it made a difference in people’s lives. Looking at the case studies, I could see the projects used innovation to solve problems and improve experiences, not just to tick a box.

Now, having been here a while, another thing I appreciate so much about the team is our knowledge-sharing culture, so I’m constantly learning new things from very talented people. There’s no gatekeeping and every day is a school day for me. So yeah, Rehab just felt like a natural fit. 

Having had so much experience as a project manager, what do you think makes a successful innovation project?

Catherine> I think that innovation has to be grounded in human insight. Innovation alone doesn’t cut it. We should be solving problems or improving experiences and this very rarely means coming at a project technology first. 

By first understanding the people, problem and environment, we’re able to choose the right technology and application to deliver the best results. This approach also provides our clients with data to help inform the decision-making process and allow for smoother stakeholder management.  

My advice to aspiring producers or account managers would be that doing something first can be a hard sell, but having data to prove that doing nothing is just as risky helps to soften the blow. 

How do you go about discussing new tech innovation with clients? 

Catherine> First, I always explain the why of a new innovation. Why it’s better, why it’s needed, why users ask for it etc. Often the ‘what’ is too abstract, but you can get down to a simple definition and make a technology easier to understand by starting with why.

Our triage process also makes this simpler as it de-risks the innovation. Starting with discovery, we interrogate the brief and really understand the ins and outs of the situation. This gives us a grounding to make decisions on which technical innovation or configuration is right. This also allows us to understand if the proposed solution is right for the brief and if not, we have those conversations honestly. 

We then define our new solution before design and build. This phased approach allows projects to pivot and evolve as new information arises. Clients are under pressure to move at the speed of culture while also needing to phase their budgets annually, we need to expect the unexpected and our approach allows for this.

Finally, now that AI is so accessible, do you use any tools to help accelerate your teams or processes within the agency?

Catherine> I’m quite aware of not getting lost in the hype, but if a tool can genuinely improve our process, then I’ll use it. For example, I recently created a custom GPT that helps me build briefs for internal projects, which gets us to the purpose faster. So far, it’s been incredibly helpful for me.

We’re also currently building tools that help with the creative process, from validating ideas with an AI panel of audiences to gaining fresh trends and insights from social data; this all really helps to ground our ideas, especially for pitches when we don’t have the time to do a full research and strategy phase.

As emerging technology develops and evolves, I look forward to seeing how it can empower my human teams to achieve their full potential.