Purina
Managed in partnership with:
Purina, a leading pet food and products company, implemented the Braze content orchestration engine into their myPurina app, enabling a more personalized experience for app users, even at scale. The initial use case for this integration was powering the personalization for their pet training program called Happi, allowing different users to progress through the experience at their own pace and speed.
The complexity of this project stemmed from the enterprise scale at which it was intended to operate. The Happi program, in particular, stretched Braze's capabilities to their limits. Happi is a personalized program designed to help pet owners bond with and train their animals, with daily activities being unlocked over ten weeks as previous activities are completed.
While implementing Braze into a mobile app might seem relatively straightforward, this project touched multiple teams both inside and outside of Purina, including product, content, and the newly formed personalization team, as well as three separate external agencies. As the central project manager, I was tasked with uniting these disparate teams, keeping everyone apprised of progress and updates, and ultimately using Braze to implement the Happi program and roll it out to Purina's mobile app users.
Due to availability, I joined the project after work had already begun, with individual teams having already established their own processes. Some teams managed their portions using a waterfall approach, while others integrated the Braze work into their existing agile sprints. Upon joining, my goal was to keep teams on their successful trajectories and interrupt their workflows as little as possible while improving visibility into project status for other stakeholders and enhancing communication across teams.
To achieve this, I built a centralized project plan in Notion and integrated it with other systems teams were already using, including multiple Jira projects, Trello, and Azure DevOps. Notion integrations helped break down silos and communicate progress to key stakeholders, uniting disparate information in one place.
Just before Christmas 2023, the Happi program launched to Purina employees, allowing them to stress test the program over the winter holidays. Subsequently, in early January, the program ramped up to reach 90% of myPurina app users. (This ramp-up served as an A/B test and ensured the possibility of rollback should any major issues arise.) Users were highly engaged with the program, with nearly two-thirds of enrolled users actively making their way through the program about a month after launch.
The successful implementation of Braze and the Happi program in the myPurina app demonstrated Purina's commitment to delivering personalized, engaging experiences for pet owners. Building on this success, Purina continues to explore new ways to leverage Braze's capabilities and further enhance the app's personalization features.
