The Challenge
Large matrixed corporation needed a new team to meet growing online marketing needs.
The Outcome
I built a high-functioning internal interactive marketing team that worked very well together in spite of geographic differences and corporate growing pains.
Marketing teams across the country quickly chose using my team vs. outside agencies. The team was able to output over 1,400 projects per year and had high morale with zero turnover.
References Available
The Solutions
As much of what this team would be developing would be new, I began by understanding the gap between the capabilities of the team vs. what was needed by the organization.
The current team consisted of print designers who were converted to email designers and they were responsible only for pushing promotional emails. This was vastly different from what the organization needed.
Training and Team Building
After speaking with members of the product team and leadership, I prioritized new capabilities that were needed to include: video, animation, microsites, landing pages and banner ads. Another requirement was to bring these people who were separated by thousands of miles together and work as a solid unit. I instituted weekly meetings for the entire team to share what they learned and help each other solve issues. One important intended side effect of these meetings was to let people vent. Building a new team in a large organization going through massive change is stressful. Ultimately, creating this safe environment helped build trust which facilitated learning and process development.
Developing a Process to Learn by
I worked with my team to develop standard operating procedures. These SOPs served two functions. The first was to cement learning. I would often ask members to create an SOP after I or another member trained them. Second, it served as a centralized location for all team members to learn from. As team members found better ways of working, they would share information in our meetings and update the files.
Hands-On Support
Initially, I needed to support the team directly by producing videos, animations, and microsites. However, as the team learned and improved, I was able to able to shift focus more to strategy and creative direction.
Working with product managers, I developed multichannel campaigns for my team to execute. From there, I directed creative efforts, often storyboarding animations, developing landing page concepts, and refining team members’ output.
