Coworking with Ashley Shaffer

Each week, we spotlight Marketing Brew readers in our Coworking series. If you’d like to be featured, introduce yourself here.

Ashley Shaffer is CMO of Redscout, a Stagwell-owned brand strategy and design consultancy. She’s worked in strategy and leadership roles at brands like Netflix, Ideo, Preacher, and Outerknown.

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in marketing? I finally finessed my answer to this when I went to work in-house in marketing at Netflix. My mom finally tapped into what I did because I worked for a brand she’d heard of! “You know how Netflix makes all these famous shows and movies, like Stranger Things, Orange is the New Black Squid Game? There are lots of smart people that make those shows and that market those shows so you’ll watch them. I work on making people want to subscribe to and fall in love with Netflix.” That super simple explanation of building brand love and resilience hasn’t failed me.

Favorite project you’ve worked on? Earlier this year we partnered on a really unique project with the Seattle Sounders and Seattle Reign FC ownership group. The brief was to act as the organization’s fractional CMO, help them find efficiencies, and set a marketing strategy that would help both teams “play offense.” For the Reign, that meant breathing fresh life into their visual brand and setting the strategy for this iconic club to take on the next decade of growth. As a lifelong soccer fan, I couldn’t have designed a dream project better myself.

What’s your favorite ad campaign? I love Ikea’s style—making the utility category fun and famous. If I have to pick one, it would be when they re-created the living room from The Simpsons. The first ad campaign I remember paying attention to was the Absolut print series from my childhood, during the 1980s–90s. I’m sure I wasn’t the intended audience, and I had never tasted vodka, but boy, did my Rolling Stone subscription teach me a thing or two about an advertising concept.

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile: I’m a mom of a three-year-old boy and a three-legged dog. Our dog Baloo despised kids before our son was born. Now they’re brothers and best friends.

What marketing trend are you most optimistic about? Least? I feel quite optimistic about powerful brands rapidly taking notice of and valuing the female sports fan. The New York Liberty, Angel City FC and the PWHL helped marketers see what they were missing in a female-first fanbase. Sephora landed a landmark partnership with the new WNBA franchise, the Valkyries, while simultaneously becoming a main plot line in the Netflix show, Running Point. Now, the NBA, NFL, and MLS all have started to deploy partnership strategies that show they understand the female fan.

What’s one marketing-related podcast/social account/series you’d recommend? I have to plug my friend and fashion strategy guru Grace Gordon’s substack, Great Point. Also, as an eager student of sports marketing, I’ve been a fan of The Women’s Game Podcast since Day One. They’ve built a really attentive community. It’s required listening for anyone with a brand looking to tap into women’s soccer’s meteoric rise.