Transformed multi-channel digital marketing ecosystem for a CPG giant

Consider the massive digital consumer engagement footprint of a CPG major: more than 65 unique brands across 80 different countries, with hundreds of brand variations, more than 800 online properties and a digital marketing budget surpassing $1 billion. It’s an envious position to be in, but such great size and reach also brings great complexity, especially in digital marketing. Think about the fact that each of these brands may use multiple agencies across countries for digital marketing, not only for creative work but also for technical work. In the days of banner ads, basic HTML, and email blasts, such an approach may have been manageable. But as digital technology became more complex, a massive inefficiency was exposed with each agency deploying new technologies and writing its own technical playbook on how to implement new marketing tactics. The client recognized that this was very costly in multiple ways―duplicating work was a waste of money, but the process also took a toll on the value of its brands. Since so many different agencies were executing similar types of marketing initiatives without collaboration, the quality of the deliverables and service was highly variable. This presented an inconsistent view of the client's brands across its digital channels. 

Standardizing the digital marketing ecosystem 

In 2009, the client decided to pursue a digital decoupling model as the best way to reduce costs and improve effciencies. Under this model, all of the creative agencies could focus solely on what they do best, while the technical work of producing, releasing and maintaining these properties would be owned by a primary vendor with expertise in the domain. The client asked LTM to propose a model for decoupling their digital marketing work. LTM defined the roles and processes so that the technical and creative agencies focused on their strengths to work as “One Team” to realize the brand’s vision more efficiently. We started by developing a unified service orchestration and cost optimization. We combined that with a unified governance structure to leverage best practices and learning across tracks. Inheriting diverse technologies such as .NET, MS SharePoint Server, Java and PHP LTM took over development and maintenance for web, mobile and social development, including localizations. We also enabled web analytics and content management systems. This significantly increased site traffic, provided better consumer understanding and actionable consumer insights. 

Developing a unified digital marketing platform

A couple of years into the partnership with LTM, the client embarked on a larger, bolder step: building a new platform for all its brands that would eventually become the world’s largest digital marketing ecosystem for a single company. Such a platform would further streamline, simplify and standardize their digital marketing operations. It would also integrate best practices for existing services, such as hosting, search, analytics, consumer data, store locators, ratings and reviews, and more. This program would make the client's digital presence better, faster, cheaper and more secure.

Together we laid out a strategic road map for building the next generation, multi-channel digital presence platform on Sitecore, and defined the processes to onboard the client's brands through a digital factory. LTM also orchestrated the digital ecosystem, collaborating with various client marketing teams, creative agencies and third party vendors.

We built one of the industry’s largest multi-channel digital presence platforms by using an innovative digital factory model to migrate 600-700 sites from legacy to new platform, resulting in a reduction of 50% in time-to-market and 25% reduction in cost, ensuring privacy, accessibility, and security compliance for 65+ brands across 6 BUs and 10+ brand categories for the client.

We were honored with the ‘External Business Partner Excellence’ award because of our successful transformation from the client. We also received the Sitecore Experience Award for Marketing Agility and the ISG Partner Award in the category of Collaboration (jointly with our client). With clearly defined roles fulfilled in perfect rhythm between the CPG giant as the central leader and LTM as the digital anchor partner―we continue delivering best-in-class digital experiences to consumers.