Sarah Palmer - Big Green Door

You probably won’t have heard of Sarah Palmer.  You’ll know the industry-leading brands she’s turned around, the high profile campaigns she’s been behind, but Palmer herself?  You won’t know her.

That’s because she’s one of the consumer industry’s best-kept secrets.  What she and her team do at her creative consultancy, Big Green Door, is so confidential, so innovative, so cutting edge that most of us don’t see the results for five years.  And, by then, Palmer is long gone.

Working for media groups and magazines, financial institutions and food conglomerates, Big Green Door has helped brands re-shift their focus, develop their products and overhaul their marketing campaigns to better fit their consumers.  Think Lynx, Snickers, Persil, Dove, Adidas - the list is endless.

“With the growth of the Internet and rise of people power, companies are now beginning to appreciate they’re not in control of their brands”

Sometimes the changes are so subtle, so sub-conscious, you wouldn’t even notice.  Other times, they’re screamingly obvious.  But what they all have in common is months, even years, of in-depth research behind them – which in turn captures new customers, re-engages old ones and changes even the most stubborn mindsets in a matter of minutes.

But if this sounds like spin, it’s not.  Palmer left the advertising industry almost 20 years ago to get away from all that.  Back then, ads had very little research behind them.  Were companies giving consumers what they wanted?  Were advertisements sending companies in the right direction?  No one was answering those questions, so Palmer decided to. 

“A lot of clients were saying ‘Where should I go next?’  ‘What products should I be producing?’ and ‘Where am I going in relation to my competition?’” she explains.  “But Ad agencies were moving further down the execution road and simply making the advertisement without those fundamental questions ever being answered.” 

She set up Big Green Door in 1993, with her first piece of work coming from Unilever.  They were launching a product aimed at women and wanted to understand their audience better.  “There was very little proper understanding of how women thought and behaved back then,” remembers Palmer.  “It was a big lack of insight which stemmed largely from the fact that creative departments were populated mainly by men.”

The work also fitted her company perfectly.  Being one of only a few women to climb the ladder of the male-dominated advertising world, she consciously chose to hire people like her; intelligent and experienced women who were being spat out of the industry for juggling work with raising a family.  These were some of the very people Unilever were trying to understand.

As with projects nowadays, Palmer began by listening to customers, before going on to canvass their views on the brand and find out what they were looking for.  The information was then fed back to her creative teams who identified consumer trends.  They then worked with Unilever to incorporate this information into their product and any future marketing, strategy and creative activities. 

Seventeen years on, Big Green Door has grown out of all proportion.  It currently has 20 employees, countless clients and has been expanding its premises regularly - from Palmer’s home to three muse houses, to their current address near Edgware Road in London.

“You can’t have it all, it is not possible. If you’re a driven person and determined to succeed, there isn’t a short cut”

Today, the business is more relevant than ever.  Firstly, with the power balance shifting, companies are now scrambling to give consumers what they want.  “Over the past ten years, an attitude in certain quarters was that if you pump a message out there, they [consumers] will come,” she says. 

“Now, with the growth of the Internet and rise of people power, clients are beginning to appreciate they’re not in control of their brands in the same way they were.  It’s more a dialogue than a monologue now.  So there needs to be a more interactive approach.”

Secondly, the recession has led to the biggest shift in consumer attitude in decades.  “Three years ago, we were all about 'consume and chuck'.  Now we’re thinking ‘I’ll re-use that stuff in the fridge’ and being more thrifty.  Six months ago, companies were thinking ‘Oh, that’s just a blip’, now they’re realising the mindset shifts are a bit more fundamental. 

“So it’s coming up with ways of helping them keep track of how customer behaviour is changing.  Because I don’t think that attitude will go away when the recession abates.  It’s a different way of looking at things and once you’ve got there, it’s hard to come back.”

Palmer could be describing her own journey as an entrepreneur.  Having worked non-stop throughout her career, she’s now at the stage where she can ease off a little.  But, a self-confessed workaholic (“I’m recovering!”), change is harder than it looks.

“You’re just used to going everywhere and doing everything.  Suddenly you’ve got very capable people around you and it’s about really focusing on what you can bring to the business and redefining your contribution.”

It might be easier if she believed in work/life balance, but she never has.  Married with two boys that are now in their late teens and early 20s, she’s always felt ‘it’s a seductive illusion’.  “You can’t have it all, it is not possible.  If you’re a driven person and determined to succeed, there isn’t a short cut.”

She knows she’s sacrificed for her business’s success.  Early on, she stepped away from a potentially promising career as an actress, after years with Footlights, the Cambridge comedy group, where she played opposite Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson.

Later, it impinged on her family.  She admits feeling ‘incredibly guilty’ when her boys were young and she was working ‘all hours’.   “But I think it took its toll more on me than on them, seeing the young men that, thank goodness, they’ve become. 

“Also, I don’t think I could have done it any other way because I was driven by this.  I think they grew up realising that.  And that if you work hard, you can achieve great things.”

For more information visit www.biggreendoor.com

By Barbara Walshe