Catherine Benson
Select Resource International
Launching Masterpieces With Spielberg To Running the "Google of Consultancies" | Catherine Benson
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"our belief is if it's not a win for the client, which is all based on business outcomes and business growing, brand recognition, brand relevance, the bottom line basically. that partner's not doing its job and therefore they won't want to continue to work with them
Key Takeaways
- ◆Catherine turned down graduate school funding and chose business school instead because she knew she could get a job immediately after, showing how financial constraints shaped her early career pivot from international law to marketing.
- ◆A mentor at Warner Brothers told Catherine that as a young woman MBA she wouldn't be taken seriously in Hollywood, so he coached her to work at an advertising agency first to gain gravitas and learn to write marketing plans classically, then return to entertainment at a higher level, advice she followed that accelerated her trajectory.
- ◆When pitching your business to new agencies, tell the CEOs upfront that if they win they'll hire you away from your client to run the account on the agency side, which accelerates their learning curve and gives you a clear exit strategy.
- ◆Catherine Benson's company, founded in 1992, sits between corporations and their marketing agency partners to broker win-win relationships based on client business outcomes and agency ability to do great work and get paid fairly.
- ◆Catherine's competitive advantage comes from staying close to the agency universe through in-person office visits, industry workshops, conference involvement, and jury work, so when clients call she knows which partners have relevant experience and skills.
- ◆H&M told Catherine's team in 2022 that despite being hip and the rage ten years prior with Madonna as their brand ambassador, they had not fed and nurtured it and lost relevance to new competition.
- ◆The next generation of consumers does not behave, engage with media, or value brands the same way predecessor generations did, so companies must blow up what worked before and rebuild their entire brand-to-market strategy from understanding these new audience behaviors.
Full transcript
Show
Chad Paris
Welcome back to Process Over Pressure. Real, unscripted conversations with people who actually built something, failures and all. Not the highlight real, not the full human journey. Today's guest is very special. And here's why. Catherine Bension has been invited on hundreds of podcasts over the years. And she's never said yes once until now. I'm very honored. This is her very first podcast conversation right here on Process Over Pressure. Her career reads like a history of American marketing. She started in Real Hollywood, Columbia Pictures, launching close encounters of the third kind with Steven Spielberg, became the CMO of Universal Studios, then Recreation Group, 10 years a senior executive at ad consulting, then bought a boutique firm called Select Resource International and built it into what at age called the Google of Consultancies. Thirty plus years society the dot com bus, the two thousand eight, we all remember that, and COVID. And today, she spends her time and her love of mentoring the next generation at UCLA Anderson. Catherine, welcome to Process Overpressure. How are you?
Catherine Bension
Thank you, Chad. I'm I'm extremely pleased to be here. I'm looking forward to our conversation. yeah, it's been a journey and I I just realized that it was time to start sharing it. So thank you for giving me the opportunity.
Chad Paris
Well, thank you for for for picking my show. I I feel very honored. I think you are you know, as people here will will will a lot of people will know you and know your name as you've been around for a while and you know a lot of people. But at the same time you you have a beautiful journey and a and a great story to tell. And so I'm very excited about kind of talking through that with you today and getting you an opportunity to to to talk a little bit about your journey and and what's What's molded you, I say, you know, we're all we all moaded by our our past and things that we've experienced in our life. So so I'm anxious to hear yours and and think our guests will be too. So we'll get started. I I well I find it interesting and then I'll get to host the show. So whatever I say goes. So so you know, when when you and I talked before, we we were having some conversation and and and I'd love to go back 'cause I I think we would
Catherine Bension
They find it interesting.
Chad Paris
You know, to understand the true impact that this has has had on you, but not only but you've had on it. You you started in Hollywood. I mean, Billy Jack, Columbia Pictures, Close Encounters, I mean, you name it. And then eventually became the CMO of universals. what was it like in those early years? I think it's we could probably talk for two days about this, but what what was it like in those early years that kind of I'd say kinda taught you about yourself and maybe maybe you look back on and go, Man, if it wasn't for that, I wouldn't be the person I am today.
Catherine Bension
Yeah, so it was different. Hollywood was very different. This was a long, long time ago. I'm an LA native, grew up literally in Los Angeles and finished high school in Northern California. So I had a little bit of both, in fact, in what is now Silicon Valley. came back and went to UCLA, thought I was gonna do something very different. I was a language major, I studied abroad, I was fluent in French and German. I got a Opportunity to go to the Columbia University in New York for a master's in international law and relationship. And then it dawned on me, my God, my parents are not supporting graduate school. I am really on my own. Do I know anyone in the State Department? my God, do I want to move to New York and live in Manhattan and fund my own graduate school? I maybe don't think that was the best tact. So quickly I thought, okay, what is this? this degree called a master's in business MBA. I didn't know much about business. I didn't know that if I would like it, but I knew I could get a job and that was obviously important as I was coming out of college. So I thought, okay, I live in California. I applied to both Berkeley and UCLA. I got into both. I was a good academic person. And I thought, okay, I'm here. I'm in LA. I'll just go to UCLA. And it was interesting because when I got into business school, the thing that engaged me the most was marketing. Perhaps because I had a strategically creative oriented mind, and that was I like things like statistics and economics too, but I I just couldn't see my life being part of that world. and in those years, UCLA was known as a finance school. To get a job in marketing, you had to be a little bit aggressive, you had to be a little bit proactive. I got myself interviews in New York, I flew back, I was interviewing.
Chad Paris
Yeah.
Catherine Bension
trying to do everything I could to get that right first job out of grad school. And I got a request from the head of placement at the school. Would I be interested? The LA Times was doing an article on graduate students, and they were interviewing three students from UCLA, one undergrad, one from engineering, and one from the Graduate School of Management. And he thought I would be the great candidate. So I said, well, sure. And think about this. This was in the mid late latish 70s. There was no internet. So the reporter came to my apartment and I'm sitting there, you know, trying to look professional. I'm a I'm young. And I could have died. The article comes out, and the first line in the article reads, She's Cover Girl Pretty in a red dress. And I'm going, my goodness, I want to be taken seriously. Why does he say
Chad Paris
Yeah.
Chad Paris
Yeah.
Catherine Bension
However, it got the attention of a movie star who had turned producer, director, distributor. His name was Tom Laughlin. He was an anti-establishment because the Vietnam War was just finishing character. I had never seen his movies, which is not a good thing, by the way. If you're gonna market a product, the first thing you need to do is experience it yourself. And I I hadn't done that, but I thought, He reached out and I interviewed him and he wanted to find a person to sit between him and his ad pub, advertising and publicity, and distribution executives, because he was too busy, couldn't stay on track of on top of what they were doing. And he thought someone like me would be good in that role. He didn't know, but he was willing to experiment. And I was willing to experiment too. He offered me the average starting salary for an MBA graduate that year. And I tried to get interviews in Hollywood and no one seemed to be interested in women, MBAs, young. It was not a thing yet. It became a thing later, but it wasn't a thing yet. So I said to myself, what do have to lose? Okay. So the most important part of that journey was the fact I was a self starter. His people thought I was a spy.
Chad Paris
Yeah.
Catherine Bension
And I had to prove to them and to myself that I could be effective and bring actually added value to things they weren't doing yet. And some of the people he hired were brilliant, but he really didn't empower them to do what he hired them to do. It was and unfortunately as time marched on, when I showed up to work, by the way, great story. My office was in the plantation house on what was the Columbia Pictures lot, which is now owned by Sony. where Gone with the Wind was filmed. That's where I went to work every day. I mean, think about that. And then we moved to a different location and then ultimately moved to a studio center in Studio City. He wanted to remake Mr. Smith Goes to Washington with Billy Jack Goes to Washington. They built a three-quarter-sized Senate. It was very interesting. And unfortunately, he was overextended financially.
Chad Paris
wow.
Catherine Bension
The company shrunk from over a hundred and twenty employees to six at the end. And I just felt too vulnerable. And so in the interim, we had released films with Warner Brothers, and I had gotten to know quite well Mr. Letterer, who was quite renowned and famous in Hollywood, and he ran marketing there. I called him up, I told him my plight. He said, You know what, Catherine? You've really struck me as this very amazing, interesting An intelligent person who's learned a lot about the business in a short amount of time. I was at Billy Jacket almost about a year and a half, almost two years. He goes, You know, my protege, Andy Fogelson, runs advertising publicity for Columbia Pictures. He is not the most organized person. He is crazy. He's great, but he could use someone like you. I think I should introduce the two of you. So I thought, wow, this is amazing. So that ended up in a job. I was his right hand person. I attended every meeting that he went to basically and was his sort of con I don't know if I was a chief of staff. I really wasn't that, but I it was an amazing learning opportunity. And unfortunately for me, after this about a year plus, he took Mr. Letter's job who decided to retire. And you know, companies can't move people, there's conflicts of interest and things. And so
Chad Paris
Yeah.
Catherine Bension
We were not allowed to accompany him. And I got sort of reassigned to a different job, which actually may have been a better job. So if you think about marketing, there are product managers. I was made a project manager, which was similar to that for close encounters of the third kind. And that meant that I would be the marketing lead with another senior guy on how that film came to market. And it gave me an opportunity, I mean, I think about it to this day and I go, seems so glamorous, right? I met Steven Spielberg when he was living with Amy Irving in a rented home. He didn't even have a house of his own yet. He moved during the production to the house Jaws built. you know, I met his editor, got to be familiar. I was on set a lot. I hung out with Richard Dreyfus. In fact, I was with Steven the day he went to screen Star Wars for the first time. And he had been an investor with George Lucas and some of their other friends, because it was very hard for George for whatever reason to get distribution. Finally, Fox stepped up and, you know, it's it's history. I mean, I don't know why it didn't work, but it took a while. but the problem, truthfully, with movie marketing and with with marketing in an industry where marketing is not the rock star, where the product is the rock star.
Chad Paris
Wow.
Catherine Bension
And I mean, what we could contribute to the success of that launch. So you can open a film, so it's huge. And these were the years, of course, there's no streaming, there's no internet, everything was old fashioned and in theaters. You could take a a movie that didn't have a lot of of you know exciting stuff and you could give it a bigger opening because you added that to the perspective. Or you could take, we used to say a dog and give it legs. Because we could help in that regard. But if the the film didn't generate word of mouth, that's interesting. I even went to Wharton with a sort of a peer, protege peer, to learn how to manipulate word of mouth mouth and movie marketing before the world of social media, if you think about it. I mean it was it was interesting, but it was also political. It was also incredibly hard to see. where and how I could go up the food chain. And I had a a relationship with a young guy. He was five years older than me. And he had been at McKinsey. He'd gone to Wharton. He had gotten hired by David Biegelman, the CEO of Columbia at the time. And he was put into our department and he really wanted to get Andy's job. He was lobbying for that. And he said to me, You know, Catherine, he goes
Chad Paris
Yeah.
Catherine Bension
I look at you and I go, You're really smart, and you've been in this business longer than me and know more about things than I've learned yet, which is great. But you're young and you're a girl, and I don't think anyone's gonna take you seriously. He said, What I would do if I were you, and he literally coached me, go work for an advertising agency, get some gravitas, learn how to write marketing plans in a classic way, learn how to present. And then if you want to come back to this industry, come back but come back at a higher level. So without going through the details, I stayed in LA, got hired by an agency that just bought the largest independent. My job was funded out of New York, which is why they hired me because I had an MBA two years of experience. They sent me to New York to for training. I go, my God, I should be in New York. So vacation comes and I go to New York and I'm interviewing everywhere and I'm at this one agency and they go, we don't have anything for you here in in New York, but The head of our LA office just left here. She's a woman. She's fabulous. She's a rock star. You could learn a lot from her. You should look her up. Here's her information. So I come home. I'm still gonna move to New York. And I'm writing a letter with my resume and I send it. Literally, two weeks later, I get a call from this agency, which is very famous called Ogilvy, and they had an opening on their Universal Studios business. Would you be interested, Catherine? I said, Absolutely. So, long story short, they hire me. I find out when I start the relationship with Universal is not in such great stead because they are dominated at that time by Mattel. Every time Mattel sneeze, they go running to help the client. And Universal, the CEO, who had a very big ego, didn't particularly appreciate that. And he had chosen them because of that knowledge of marketing to children. Because Universal was evolving into a theme park. Where they were going to start to target families with kids and they wanted a partner who could understand and help them sell that experience. So very different than the old-fashioned tram, and Warner Brothers still has it, that goes through the studio where you go behind the scenes to learn how movies are made, which is where it started. So interestingly, I guess I had a personality for dealing with this guy because nine months later, he offers me.
Catherine Bension
The director of marketing job for his division, which was the recreation group, which consisted of the theme parks. We managed the concessions in Yosemite, so destination marketing. We handled a live concert venue also in LA, live concert marketing. And we had a tour mobile of sorts in DC that took visitors around the mall and through Washington, DC, et cetera. And he offered me that job at twice my salary and I thought, my God, I really love working on the agency side. I enjoyed the culture. I enjoyed the strategic challenge. But I knew if I didn't take it that they might lose the account and that I might not never I may never have the opportunity again. And this is one thing I would share with your listeners. I I think there are those moments in one's career where you get opportunities, where there's a little luck involved. Where it may not be what you're seeking, but you have a very strategic decision to make. And I it was sort of like going with Billy Jack versus a traditional entry-level MBA job. I chipped the the the opportunity, kind of the roll of the dice, because who knew? I thought, my gosh, if it, you know, if it doesn't work, you always have a backup opportunity in some way. And then It worked. Not only did it work, but two years later I got promoted to be the CMO for the whole group, running everything in the world. And I was very young. I don't think I was if I was thirty, I I might have been thirty. I was very young. And
Chad Paris
That's that's that's amazing for you said at your best, a female under thirty running a O CMO. Like that's unheard of at that time.
Catherine Bension
I should
Catherine Bension
No, well, the biggest issue he had was he was a little frightful to send me up to the corporate C suite because would they challenge him for hiring someone like me? And I learned very quickly to make best friends with our head of finance. Because every time I go in with a plan, every time I'd have to work on a budget, the first thing the CEO did was he'd ask him, Well, have you seen this? And he'd go, Yeah, yeah, we're together. I agree with her. She's gone through her. I learned so much, so much. I also Though learning that it was a very toxic environment, this gentleman who unfortunately just passed away in his late 80s, he he he did an end-of-life decision because he had very serious Parkinson's. It was very sad. But he was the obituaries and the the tributes to him were amazing because he was the responsible creative visionary who saw the potential in taking assets out of movies. or I guess you could say a TV show. And and turning those into live adventure attractions for a human experience that really created what Universal Studios has become today. And and it was his vision and he was there for years and years. And but he managed through intimidation and it was stressful. And you know, there was no internet. I go to work every Sunday, work all day long in the office. I was I had an assistant. She would keep a phone log. We'd spend hours returning. It was it was so different. You didn't type your own memos. You had someone you you what do you call it? You yeah, dictated to, right? Exactly. I can't even remember. anyway, fast forward I met my husband there. not initially, but later in my journey. it it wasn't ultimately
Chad Paris
Like dictators? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Catherine Bension
why I left, but it contributed to my decision. I I ultimately strategic decision that if I stayed, I had been made the chairman of the United States Attractions Marketing Group. So this is a trade group that supported our industry. The only non-member was Disney because they believed they were so superior to the rest of us. But I mean it had Knoxbury Farm, it had all the six flags, it had all the, you know, I I went on to Ohio and ran Road at the time, the biggest, fastest roller coaster that ever been created. and and I kept thinking about what turned me on and what I wanted to do with my career and my future. And it it wasn't being a theme park marketer for my whole career. And I really believed that if I stayed there, that's what I would have become, because the longer I stayed there, the less flexibility I would have. So
Chad Paris
Yeah.
Catherine Bension
We made a decision as we're building up Florida that we wanted to change agencies and I had led a review to leave my former employer early on while I was there and I've now it's over four years. And I went to the CEO and I said to him, Look, we're going to do this review. You want a different partner. I recommend two different firms that we look at for these reasons. We had also looked at agency models, different things. The features group didn't really have one agency. They used a variety of of portfolios sort of of creative talent. and that wasn't really right for our division. So we were gonna choose between two shops, one who handled the movie marketing and one that we had been using on a freelance basis that was creating an entertainment group. And I said to him, I said, Look, You're gonna go to their CEOs and you're gonna tell him that you're inviting them to pitch your business, which was quite impressive. And if they win, they're going to hire me away from the client to run the account on the agency side. The benefit was that he would get that transition and someone who could educate the agency about what we needed, why we needed it, how how they worked. Really fast start, you know, the learning curve would be much
Chad Paris
Yeah.
Catherine Bension
shorter and then he'd be secure and I could go on my own. And it was a transition I could imagine and it gave me permission to do something that I thought would lead me to a different, different journey. and they chose FCB and I went to work there. I became known as the person who could handle the most difficult clients. Why? Because this man had taught me I'd never work for anyone nor will I ever again who was so challenging. I've never met any client
Chad Paris
Yeah.
Catherine Bension
Or any, you know, boss who was as tough as he was. and I stayed there actually for a while. I enjoyed it, and then they merged. And in the merger, one of my largest clients had to be resigned because there was a conflict. and actually by then years later, my husband and I were getting married, and I get a call from the head of the office telling me that he had been approached this as a large financial institution.
Chad Paris
Yeah.
Catherine Bension
By the CEO and he and the head of Creative were leaving to start their own agency. Anyway, long story short, I bolted, did that, spent about 10 years on the agency side and fast forward. My husband had a very, very large career in live music, to the point where I always like to say he went to the dark side, but he built the largest live concert company, Pre-Live Nation, and then went to Ticketmaster. And of course, you know it's in the press all the time. They're
Chad Paris
Yeah.
Catherine Bension
Together it's it's i it's so complicated. But as part of that ticket master role, he ran global and he had offices in London and France and Germany and all kinds of places. He was never around. and here I am now a mother with two little children and always a big job. I did do one more tour on the client side at AMC right at the very end. and I was traveling a lot and he goes How can you do this? Be on a plane four days a week. You wanted these babies. Their mommy, they need their mommy, and they need her now. They won't get the time back. You got to make a decision about your priorities. You know, and here is this guy with his big job talking to me for whom a career was really, really important, Chad. I mean, I think sometimes a younger generation of women, and I have a lot of sorority sisters who we were in this really transformational time.
Chad Paris
Yeah.
Chad Paris
Yeah.
Catherine Bension
Where we were given permission to try things that the generation before us had not. But as we all said, we didn't have mentors really. I had a girlfriend who was a corporate CEO, head of lending at first it she was in the department of B of A and then went, she said she went from a small player in a big pond to a large player in a small pond. She went and ran that for Bank of the West. And we we grew up without that, that, you know, and Somehow I think we define ourselves perhaps too much through what we did because of that generational kind of moment that we were, you know.
Chad Paris
Well I yeah, but I think you know, I think in in your story is I mean it's just amazing to me because and as you were talking about it, one of the things that you know I was just sitting here realizing is like that because of you and because of the women like you, what the women of today get to do is partly because of some I mean, listen.
Catherine Bension
Yes.
Chad Paris
Let's just be honest, the work environment in the 70s for women was not great. I mean, he wasn't he wasn't looked at as equals. So he just was not. But the fact that you held your own and kind of got in there with them and and and not because you're a female, but because you're a smart person. And and I'm sure like the the challenge in that is was constant. Like I say it like this. You probably had to work four times harder than anybody else because you was a woman. And that's that's sad that that happened. But had it not been for people like you, what today's environment would not be the same. So it's a trendsetter, or whatever you want to call it, like you know, breaking ceilings, breaking barriers. And it and it and it really and it really is. The the women of that time, I think a lot of people forget that in history, like and you know, really because of of of how they worked, of how they they you know, had to work extra hard, probably put in four times what a man had to do at that time. Not take nearly as much. yeah.
Catherine Bension
not paid nearly the same amount of money. And then those of us who had certain types of bosses may have had to deal with other issues which, you know, have become very top forward in today's media landscape, you know, sexual harassment. But I I've never shared any of my journeys there, but trust me they they existed also. So
Chad Paris
There. Sure.
Chad Paris
Yeah, HR w HR was not like Yeah. Yeah. Well, it HR didn't exist like it does today. You could get away with a lot more back then. not today. You had to be tough. You had to be tough. And then the fact and then yeah, and then the fact you you look, you you you had this great career and you've done s you've done, I mean, what you've accomplished, you know, that's another thing I know people understand like.
Catherine Bension
You know, you just were tough. You just had to be tough. You just had to do what you had to do and Yeah.
Chad Paris
movie world at that time and having a a female that has kind of rose the ranks there is unheard of. Like that's not something there's there's not a lot of them that did that at that time. And so the fact that you were able to do that, obviously you have smarts and you have resilience and you have a lot of other things. I know, you know, you started off the comment like the whole article was about how you look. she's a pretty girl, but okay, well she's pretty but she actually kind of smart too to be honest. And like they don't talk about that. But But then you then you become, you know, you have kids and you and you're a mom, and which probably is the toughest job you've ever had, can only imagine being and the best job. But you but you now you're sitting here today and you you run a consultant, you consult today and and what you do, and you know what do you what would you say to that person today where you sit at today, what would you say to that young Catherine?
Catherine Bension
The best too. I loved I loved every minute of it.
Chad Paris
young, eager MBA, what would be one advice that you would give her today? Now that you've kind of been that you would go back and say
Catherine Bension
don't be afraid to push the envelope and and follow your your true instincts yourself. I I tend to be a very optimistic person, which in some instances has made it harder. As an example, when I was at Universal, the first marketing plan I put forth was very ambitious. And if you don't make the goals that you set out and you have everyone living to expect, then you have failed. But
Chad Paris
I like that.
Catherine Bension
If you if you under project and you exceed, then you look like a s a huge champion. And but then the next year you're competing against yourself. So it's a really interesting space when you think about kind of the need to have strength. I mean, my husband always cautions things with more of the downside planning, and I was always more optimistic. I do have mentors as you said in in our lead in. I am I am I'm sorry, I am mentoring some students. I I think, you know, figure out what turns you on, what you like. Make sure you're prepared. You don't you don't put yourself in a position where you can't do the work, but you also give yourself a bit of room to grow and learn. I also learned when I got into this consulting space, we had an admin position. We have several. And my founder would hire traditionally trained admins. And they were okay, but they didn't have a whole lot of interest in what we did. And I shifted that. I started recruiting young people right out of college who had chosen to learn about marketing and advertising, who thought they wanted careers in it, but didn't have, you know, maybe they'd done an internship, but they They didn't know what they didn't know. They didn't have a lot of exposure. And that transition of finding people who were interested in learning and who wanted to grow and wanted to be improving what they could bring, what made a a huge transformation. So I would have these people, they'd stay a couple years. Some went on to get advanced degrees. Some said, based on this, I never want to work for an ad agency, or I have to be on the client side, or That's where I want to go. I want to be in production. You know, they they learn the business by getting a chance to see the business in a a broader context. And I do think you have to recognize that learning goes on forever, and that's a big part of it. But I I would tell them to research what they need to be considered for and to find what turns them on and to understand it's a journey.
Chad Paris
Yeah.
Chad Paris
I like that.
Catherine Bension
And it's different today, unfortunately. you know, right now with AI potentially eliminating some entry-level jobs, although we're finding that people need to participate with AI and AI needs to have human connection. So I think I even sat in a board meeting with the head of corporate strategy for Google, and he was giving us five watch outs. that they were observing that corporate America, especially at this at CEO C suite level, were making about AI decisions right now because there's still so much unknown. They're maybe over overextending some things before they really have a good handle on what that's really going to deliver. So but back to back to the career. So ultimately with being the mommy and
Chad Paris
That's right.
Catherine Bension
And recognizing that I have to do I quit. I quit my job. And a friend who actually just reached out, I hadn't talked to him in long time, had gone into a sort of consulting role. He was on the West Coast in those years, advertising agencies didn't have the resource to make a single job around growth. Today you'd have a chief marketing officer there or a growth officer, but in those years they piled it on on top of whatever else you were required to do. And I had done quite a bit of new business development on the agency side. I loved it. It was always a new challenge. I'm a competitive person. I liked pitching and winning and I was just something and he was counseling on a freelance basis a bunch of agencies and he had too many clients and he couldn't do it all. So I'm doing that. And then I think I told you I get a call from someone in my space who had played golf. with this guy who was a consultant. And the guy turned out to be the founder of the company I own and run now. He had an amazing career. I he went to Stanford. He was at a very young age, he will always like to remind me, the head of the global proctoring gamble practice at Great Advertising in New York. You know, he ran half the portfolio for McCann Worldwide, which is another very large and this brand still exists today. Anyway, he had been playing golf with this guy, and he was telling the guy that yeah, he had this company, but he really needed to find a senior person he could bring in, train, but who was in a capacity to take the business over because he knew that was his long term plan. And he described a person, I guess with a certain background capabilities, whatever the criteria were. And this guy I knew who I hadn't talked to for a while, said, I know that person.
Chad Paris
Yeah.
Catherine Bension
Know who that is. I'm gonna call her and I'm gonna introduce you. And we had breakfast and sort of sounded interesting. So the comp the company concept is in pre-1990, corporate America would hire an advertising agency, think back to madmen, and they would do everything. They do the strategy, the creative, the media. There was no internet yet. It was A one-stop shop. They were mostly independents, owned by founders, and you know, the lead talent, and that was the world. And they, as he said, Proctor and Gamble didn't change out its agency. In fact, Gray is still working with Procter Gamble. They would just ask the agency to change out people if they didn't like them. And so there was really no need for someone to manage agency reviews because they really were far and few and in between. The 90s, and we're in a recessionary mode, and things are changing from a technology standpoint. And there is a sort of an advent of this the publicly held advertising agencies. These holding companies that now have gotten so big that you know you go to talk to them, they have 60,000 employees. They're gonna pitch your business. Yeah, right. It's it's very tough. But at that moment they were new and they were coming into the market and Hiring and buying shops, they were changing the makeup of the industry. And it was a different era. And clients were starting to realize they had choice and they should they were having problems or their business wasn't working well, they could change who that partner might be. And this model that he was building was starting to be recognized as meaningful. And so basically what the model is all about is
Chad Paris
Yeah.
Catherine Bension
we sit in between corporate America or corporate the world. We have global clients too, I should say corporations, clients, it can be small companies, but they're often large companies, and all of their marketing communications partners. So, you know, that could be a creative agency, it could be a social media agency today, it could be a media shop, it could be a digital specialist, it could be an experiential PR, whatever the type of expertise might be that that company needs that they would outsource. We sit in between the two. And our mission, which he created, which I bought into, which we still believe in today, is we're all about bringing together and sustaining win-win relationships between clients and their agency partners. Because our belief is if it's not a win for the client, which is all based on business outcomes and business growing, brand recognition, brand relevance, the bottom line basically. that partner's not doing its job and therefore they won't want to continue to work with them. On the agency side, their ambition has to do with the work. Being able to do the best work they've ever done, finding clients who value their their skills, who who value them as partners, who collaborate and let them into their house you know, extensions of their team, so to speak, and also help make them whole, meaning it is a business relationship. So pay them what they're worth or give them permission to be be successful financially. And that's so there are things that go along with that in addition to the search, which is where we are today, meaning our practice has evolved. This is he founded us in 1992. We are in 2026.
Chad Paris
Lot of changes, I'm sure.
Catherine Bension
And actually that's been part of the interesting, interesting thing, and why when I bought the company with my husband in 2002 following the dot-com implosion, following a reduction in our revenue by 50%, and his fear like I just don't have it in me to get back up there. I need someone else who's gonna and we've been working together for that interim period, and and he knew he knew I could do it. and You know, I mean it was a risk, but I kind of believed in the model, I believed in myself, I brought on another senior guy, and I started adding some other talent and off to the races we went. And you know, in the early years our reputation was based on our reputation, meaning we would do an amazing job and that would lead to someone telling someone else about us. Or let's say the CMO worked with us in one job and then went someplace else and they get there and they don't like what they inherited and they call me and they go, you know, I mean, so it's I I I would say two thirds typically at any one point in time of our business comes from a referral or a former client. and then the rest is new and then those people go on to become the referral clients down the road. and to your point, I mean there was a moment my boss from the lost ad agency I worked at would send me In the old days our trade publications were printed. They weren't online. And every week they'd issue a new issue and it would have a list of all the agency reviews, all the companies, and what who's doing what and who they'd hired to do those searches. And there's one and I've got it right here sitting on my my wall where it was select resources, select resources, select resources, select res He said, What are you doing? And that was
Chad Paris
Well.
Catherine Bension
That was right before Google referred to us as the, I mean AdAge referred to us as the Google of consultancies, because we had an over large share of of the business in our space. a lot of things have changed though, Chad. So one thing that changed, in the early years, corporations did not have sourcing executives. They did not have procurement. And as I said, in the early days, clients wouldn't necessarily do reviews.
Chad Paris
Yeah.
Catherine Bension
and if they did, it would be like I did when I was a universal. The marketing leadership led the review, not a sourcing person. Today, 85% of all agency reviews are led by the internal team, probably sourcing, in conjunction with the marketing team. So the need for an external third party consultant has gone down, just as more people do what we do today. there are also platforms being created using AI tools to do some of what we do. So the other part of the business that that goes with being successful is our agency knowledge and being able to query a client at the beginning about what it is they're trying to accomplish. Why are they doing this? What is what is you know success look like? What what are their needs? What are their the capabilities and the skills that they need what What kind of talent or experience is going to be relevant? And you know, the only way to really know that is to know the agency universe. And so a big part of my job and my team's job over the years has been staying close to that side of our business model, meaning visiting the agency's offices in person, having them do workshops with us in LA, being A part of the industry. I'm still part of it. I'm a jurist on the Association of National Advertisers Multicultural and Inclusion Award program this year. They do conferences across all the sort of content states that are in the business. But you know, being involved, being recognized as a thought leader in the industry, so that when our clients come knocking, we kind of know. Who those potential partners might be who have the relevant experience, skills, talent, et cetera. And then we have a process that's been proven over all these years that, you know, we've tweaked with time, like, you know, leveraging tools and experience and made it more tech forward and and seamless. But the idea that a AI tool could ultimately come in and, you know, replace us, I mean,
Chad Paris
Right.
Chad Paris
Yeah, perfect.
Catherine Bension
I I don't know. We've previewed some of them. They don't really get into the human side yet. They're more about that research piece, you know?
Chad Paris
They do not. Yeah. No, they do not. And I agree. And that's that's a big concept. I think the the human side is and and I and I'll say this, you know, it it's such a valuable part. It's a it's a part that that that AI can AI can do a lot, but that human element part, it cannot. It's not a human. So having that in conjunction with it to me is a winning combination.
Catherine Bension
Well, and it's interesting. So as a non-digital native, right? If if I go back to my early years, I told you I even dictated what a waste of time that was. You tie up two people, you're both and then I went to work with word pool processors, you give them a document you hand wrote and they type it up. And then, you know, we we were in I was at an agency when Macintosh came into play. We got all these IMAX delivered, nobody knew who to give to.
Chad Paris
Yeah.
Catherine Bension
Do you give them to the admin people, the writers? I mean, where where do these fit in? How are we going to use this stuff? So I went through an era where I saw, you know, we started faxing things. I mean, where we saw how technology changed fundamentally, how we worked. Okay. It was an ecosystem. In the beginning, there was no normal. It was experimentation. I mean, the dot com era proved when you think about the number of companies that existed that blew up.
Chad Paris
Yeah.
Chad Paris
Yes.
Catherine Bension
And the ones that remained, well, this is gonna happen with AI. To me, it's an ecosystem transformation that's in progress. Last year our clients were curious. This year they're experimenting. You know, no one's come and said, Well, I have to change my partner because they're not leveraging enough AI for me. But then when they figure out who they're interested in, they wanna know how each of those potential partners will leverage AI on their behalf. there's a range, you know, there's a lot of controversy in how to leverage it and create in the creation of content and creative. But there's a middle ground where it's going to work very well, but there's still aspects that you have to to entrust to humans. So we'll see. I mean, I I think it's really interesting. It's you know, data, data, data, that has been a huge transformation. The Marcom era, Just so many things. It's just it's it's a constant I I feel like I'm in school all the time. And do I miss periods of our of my career where things were different? Maybe. Is our industry the way it once was? No, not at all. I think one of the other unfortunate things that only got worse with COVID. So as we're going through our assignments, we give agencies final strategic and creative assignments many times or if it's a media review, whatever. And a number of years ago, this is quite a while ago, I'm looking at research and it's talking about a young target and they're showing a group of eleven year olds sitting around a table in their cafeteria. And I'm thinking about, yeah, what was it like to be 11? You're starting to look at boys, you're gossiping, you're doing this, you're starting to make Friends, it's the beginning of social skill development, really, right? No. These kids were all on their phones. They were focused on their phones. They weren't talking to each other at all. And I go, my goodness, this is what this is what we have to look forward to. And you know, it was kind of a prescient moment because the social skills. So one of the things I loved about the agency side versus the client side. It was a collaborative working,
Chad Paris
Yeah.
Catherine Bension
a team. So you would sit together and you would go through the assignments and there were roles that you each had, but you worked as a team. I remember moving from the agency when I went to Universal and having to react to work that was already conceptualized versus having been on the team that worked to get to that work. It was it took took time to figure out how to assess it, how to react to it, because you didn't have that view of the process. And you know, we've just seen a real challenge in our industry on every level, with the social and collaborative skills of the next generation. And then COVID, you know, just added fire to that process because of just the remote work. I I had a client who wanted me to mentor his son. And when I talked to the son, he was in Manhattan. He gotten a great job.
Chad Paris
Yeah.
Catherine Bension
But he'd been there for four years and never worked in an office with any other people. He worked remotely the whole time. And it was like, why are you even in Manhattan? What what is that? You're sitting in your apartment. Yeah. So, you know, now today he's in a different environment and there's interaction and whatnot. But it's it's very different. And then you add AI and some of the other tools. so we'll see. It's just generational. We're going through it.
Chad Paris
Yeah, go somewhere cheaper.
Catherine Bension
My company is trying to do as much consulting as search because, as I I mentioned, I think at one point, one of the trends that we're seeing is less confidence within our client marketing suites. they have huge demands that they're being tasked with fulfilling in very unrealistic in some ways amounts of time with. reduced or restricted resources to do them with all these new tools and technology and that may or may not have been in their, you know, swirl before, they're scared. And if they don't do it, by the way, they're out of their job. And there have been articles, and we talked about this at my board meeting, about the CEO not having confidence in the role of marketing anymore. And there was just an article in the Wall Street Journal, I think it was yesterday or the day before, about
Chad Paris
Yeah.
Catherine Bension
The power of the chief communication officer in corporate America, because of the role of influencers, social media, press, things getting out of control, and having the need to understand how to manage communication in a proactive way. We have seen our PR reviews that went very far forward into experiential and social and a lot of that owned, earned, and paid space saying, my God. We better make sure we have teams that know how to manage corporate reputation and risk management because there are all these things that come up that you you sort of forgot that was a big part of the corporate communication role. To the point where we work with McDonald's a year ago to recertify all their local PR partners to make sure they had all the tools and skills that could ultimately be relevant. So It's a it's a very different time and I guess if you're not curious and if you're not willing to take risk and if you're not willing to be going through change, then it's hard to justify twenty-nine years working and owning a company like
Chad Paris
Yeah. Absolutely. Well, Catherine, we are we are at time. what a my gosh. I could I could probably sit here for a day. I mean, just listening. Listen, I'm serious. Like like you you you just it's amazing. I mean, really, you're you're a fantastic guest. And I think there's so much good stuff that you've unpacked. you know, I I've really enjoyed it and I think that People need to hear this. And it's so true. There's so much of what you said, not only with your experience of what you've been through, but just kind of the way the change has happened. Like I think people are still trying to get their head around the change and how much is happening. And and and there's a lot of fear out there. And you you just, you know, you think you have to embrace it and you have to embrace it cautiously, and you have to have the right people that you can lean on to ask the questions and not be afraid. There is no dumb question. Ask.
Catherine Bension
No.
Chad Paris
it's a lot a lot easier to ask and and do some due diligence on that or or or surround yourself with people like yourself or what I do and say, Hey, can you tell me about this? Like what what what what do I need to do and and be okay with having somebody kind of filter that for you? Because I mean, that's what we do. We spend our time learning about this stuff to be able to help companies like yeah, you know, it's important.
Catherine Bension
Yeah, and it it is really being that consigliary. I mean, the one thing about our firm I should add is that we do not tell our clients who to hire. We are neutral. We realize it's their their partnership, their relationship. We're gonna exit when they're finished. But having a veteran and my team are all older, seasoned, they both most of them have been agency execs and clients. They've they've been on both sides. They have that perspective. sitting there to help you as you're making some really critical decisions that will have huge bearing on your company's performance but also your personal career is it's it's tough. And it's scary and it's a different time. And the other big mo motivator right now is the next generation of consumers, so we think about marketing, not from the B2B standpoint so much, but from the consumer standpoint.
Chad Paris
Yes.
Chad Paris
It is. It's scary stuff, yeah.
Catherine Bension
They're young and they don't behave. They don't engage with media. They don't value. They are not the same audience that the predecessor generations were. So what worked before may not, you gotta throw, you gotta blow that all up, sit back, understand them, and then figure out the best way to bring a brand to market, engage with that audience, make it relevant. You know, we had HM tell us. This was 2022 and they're in Stockholm and they're this huge retailer. my goodness, Catherine, ten years ago Madonna was our brand. We were hip. We were the rage. Everyone thought we were the hottest brand in in retail. We haven't fed and nurtured our brand. We aren't hot or hip anymore. We have all this competition now. We need help. We need help to figure out what that looks like again and and to get on the right track. And that's what makes it fun, you know.
Chad Paris
Yeah.
Catherine Bension
I think we get to learn about humanity and behavior and all of those things in a creative and new way. And so anyway, thank you so much, Chad. I I appreciate this.
Chad Paris
Yeah.
Chad Paris
Thank you. Well, if people were trying to reach you or trying to get out, how would they do that?
Catherine Bension
Well, they could probably go on to an AR tool and put Select Resources International into it. But we have a website, www. selectresources.com. that would have a now contact us. I don't know whether I can share my my email is my first name at selectar.com. I don't know that I should share my number or my phone number. I don't know what you yeah.
Chad Paris
Thank you, then.
Chad Paris
No, I wouldn't do that. I but I I I wanna make sure I I don't want people calling you and all I was gonna
Catherine Bension
they can find us basically through the internet with our website or probably if if you put our name in you're gonna get something will come up through AI and you'll find us so
Chad Paris
Absolutely. No, that's great. Well, well, Catherine, again, thank you so much for for being you did a as a first time podcast guest, you did amaz. Congratulations. It's over. You're you're what you're one done. Now you got many, many more to do. Well, you did great.
Catherine Bension
really?
Catherine Bension
Yes. Thank you for giving me the confidence chat. but thank you for for this really interesting philosophy that you have about process over pressure. I think I think it's a universal theme that is very relevant to everyone today. So
Chad Paris
Well, thank you. as always, process over pressure. I'm your host, Chad Paris Thanks. And I'd love for you to subscribe and have more content like Catherine's coming out. So thank you very much.
Catherine Bension
Thank you Al
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