Coca-Cola
Managed in partnership with:
It's not every day that a Fortune 500 company changes their agency of record, but in 2022 that's exactly what Coca-Cola did. They brought their worldwide media, creative, social, and production into OpenX, an organization created by ad giant WPP for the purpose of servicing the Coke account. The first work to transition was the analytics and measurement for non-commerce consumer-facing brands and campaigns. I managed that analytics team, helping to build a new process for a new client within a new organization. My team answered to numerous stakeholders across Coke's brands and was successful both in implementing data collection for a number of new initiatives as well as revamping older dashboards and reports to be easier to understand and more accurate.
When Coca-Cola made the monumental decision to change their agency of record in 2022, it presented an immense challenge. Not only did this mean transitioning all of Coca-Cola's analytics and measurement processes to a brand new agency, but it also required building those processes entirely from scratch within OpenX itself. As the project manager for the newly formed analytics team, I was tasked with spearheading this daunting endeavor. I had to construct a wholly new process to meet the needs of this giant client, including an intake process for new requests that accounted for various types of work (e.g. implementing analytics on a new site, building dashboards and reports, solving a problem or answering a business question, and placing tracking pixels); an operations process to get the work to the right team member and create accountability; and a process for showing burn, resource utilization, and other key agency benchmarks.
Numerous stakeholders across Coca-Cola's myriad brands looked to my team to not only implement data collection for their new initiatives, but also to revamp and optimize existing dashboards and reports to provide clear, accurate insights. Balancing these demands from a multitude of decision-makers made the challenge even more formidable.
When Coca-Cola transitioned their global advertising operations to the newly formed OpenX agency, it presented a unique challenge for the analytics team, the first team to transition services into OpenX. As the manager of this team, I recognized the need to establish robust processes and workflows to ensure seamless collaboration within the new agency structure.
One of the initial hurdles was the lack of a standardized intake process for new projects. Work requests were coming in, but there was no systematic way to delegate or track tasks. To address this, I leveraged Monday.com, OpenX's chosen project management platform, and built our operations processes around it. I created a form to standardize how we collected project details, tailoring the questions based on the type of project being requested. For instance, for tracking pixel implementation, we asked about the specific URLs, interaction events, and preferred methods. This data then automatically flowed into our backlog within Monday.com, allowing us to review, prioritize, and assign tasks to team members.
Beyond intake, I implemented a kanban-based work management strategy to ensure a continuous flow of work. While we considered a scrum-based approach, we determined that some of the ceremonies might be extraneous, and sprints could slow our ability to respond rapidly to new requests. Our kanban method relied on continuous work, with a daily standup for intaking new tasks, assessing team bandwidth, and resolving any hot issues.
I configured Monday.com to help facilitate all of this work management, leveraging features such as:
As we identified workflow challenges, it was my responsibility to systematically remediate them. A significant hurdle, for example, was the asynchronous nature of working with disparate development teams, as analytics work relies on developers accurately communicating their technical approach and properly implementing tracking code defined by analysts. I developed a process to reduce reliance on inconsistent client communication and to minimize quick-turn project surprises. We also defined process workflows, or "orders of operation flowcharts," for each project type, outlining how our teams would collaborate, including sequencing steps for building pages, defining events, creating analytics triggers, implementing analytics, and testing. Additionally, we scheduled regular meetings with each partner team to have dedicated time for live discussions and addressing questions.
Coca-Cola represented a new account for a new company and therefore needed a complete end-to-end process to productively manage and complete analytics work. I was tasked with building a process from scratch to support the nascent team.
By implementing processes and workflows, I established a solid foundation for effective collaboration within the new agency structure and across partner teams. The standardized intake process, kanban-based work management, and streamlined communication with development teams enabled our analytics team to adapt quickly to Coke's needs, ensuring smooth operations and accurate data tracking for their global campaigns.
After about six months, I rolled off of the Coke account; however the structure and processes that I created remained in place, largely unchanged, as team personnel evolved. Furthermore, Coke demonstrated their satisfaction with the team I managed by bringing millions of dollars more into OpenX for new project scopes.
