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Marketing Collaboration GuideUnderstanding the drivers of highly effective marketing.

“For brands to be allowed a part in the hyper-empowered consumer’s life, they have to be able to both anticipate and assist with their needs. This means being relevant, tailored and personal —a huge shift from when brands tended to be built for the masses. And they need to do it all in real time, in context, in the language.”

– CMO OF UNILEVER, KEITH WEED, THINK WITH GOOGLE

Your customers have set the bar high. They expect great experiences

that cut through the noise, are personalized and relevant, and are

delivered anywhere and everywhere. They want a great story, they

want to be inspired, and what resonated yesterday isn’t guaranteed

to work tomorrow.

To meet (or, preferably, exceed) these expectations, marketers need to

move quickly and confidently. Strategizing and orchestrating your brand

message, however, requires effective communication across all channels

and teams. Without a single source of truth, marketers risk delivering

disconnected or confused messages, and the brand suffers.

Mitigating these risks is critical for marketers to deliver exceptional brand

experiences. Successful navigation of these challenges comes through

breaking down traditional silos and unlocking new forms of visibility,

ensuring messages are aligned, and providing teams with a consistent

framework for executing efficiency. These are the drivers of effective

marketing collaboration.

Overview

Creating the right message is no longer simply an act of getting

the right people in the room and pushing through from ideation to

publishing. Today, the successful delivery of your brand story requires

creative transparency, coordination across channels, and input from

collaborators across the globe.

As a result, collaborative activities within an organization have increased

exponentially. The good news? According to the Harvard Business

Review (HBR), effective collaboration is a key indicator of organizational

success. But there’s a catch. HBR’s research shows people are spending

up to 80% of their day in meetings, on the phone and responding to

emails. This leaves little time to complete the work they must do on

their own. This independent work is equally important, and a critical

component of effective marketing execution. This research also

shows that the distribution of collaborative work is uneven. The largest

percentage of valuable collaboration comes from a small percentage

of the organization. As people are identified as willing helpers, they are

drawn into more projects and larger roles. This leads to over-taxed and

burned-out team members.

Communicating Effective Brand Stories Takes Teamwork

“It’s not just about one team doing one piece of work. It’s about the collaboration of teams coming together to make it happen. We need all of the teams, all of the hands, working in one place, all together from end-to-end.”

DIVERSE, DISPERSED TEAMS

Today’s marketers are siloed in almost every

facet of their work. Coordination, creation

and approvals now take place across

disciplines, business units, borders and time

zones. Problems are exacerbated when

information is locked in silos. According to

a McKinsey report, employees spend 1.8

hours per day searching for and gathering

information as a result of being isolated.

That lost time could be spent performing

much more valuable activities including:

developing new marketing strategies, creating

more compelling messaging or ensuring the

quality of work.

EXPANDING, EVOLVING CHANNELS

Wrangling omnichannel marketing efforts

isn’t getting any easier. With so many options

to choose from, customers no longer engage

with one channel at a time. According to

a recent report from Gartner, campaigns

integrating four or more digital channels

outperform single or dual channel campaigns

by 300%. In the same report, more than

90% of marketers said they struggle to

connect more than three channels in a

single campaign. Marketing teams don’t have

the time or resources they need to tell a

consistent story across these expanding and

evolving channels.

ANTIQUATED, MISMATCHED TOOLS

Endless meetings, clunky spreadsheets and

meandering email threads slow marketing

teams down. There is too much activity across

teams and channels to manage, and it’s made

harder with antiquated tools and outdated

technology. According to recent data from

Bain research, the most productive companies

lose 50% less time to unnecessary and

ineffective collaboration while the best

companies save more than half a day per week

for all of their employees. Without a single

source of truth that seamlessly connects the

entire marketing team, it’s too easy to make

mistakes and miss opportunities.

Obstacles to EffectiveMarketing Collaboration

“Our consumer is very savvy. Authenticity is key. I need to make sure that everyone is focused on the right things and knowing how often we’re hitting our key themes. If we do that well, we’re going to earn loyal customers.”

Visibility, Alignment,and Efficiency

The drivers of effective marketing collaboration.

The context needed to make informed decisions and produce effective marketing.

VisibilityToday, marketers are forced to make business decisions without access to all the

information. The result is overlapping messages and wasted effort. Marketers must be

empowered to see and understand how their work relates to the bigger picture. The

ability to visualize campaigns—past, present and future—surfaces gaps, dependencies

and opportunities that empower everyone — no matter the marketing function,

channel or location.

When marketing teams collaborate effectively, they have ready access to the

information they need to produce work that delivers results.

CRITICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Can you see marketing work from any distance, at every angle?

Does your team understand the brand footprint, channel strategies and campaigns in play?

Do they know what’s coming next week, next month, next quarter?

The structure necessary to keep work consistent and teams organized.

AlignmentMarketing content fuels brand experiences across campaigns, channels, and

geographies. But most marketing organizations lack structure, operating in siloed

systems. This results in inconsistent content and marketing experiences resulting in a

negative impact on the brand. Adopting a unified approach to marketing organization

enables greater consistency across teams and provides the backbone for successful

marketing execution.

When teams are operating in sync, individuals are empowered to self-align,

messaging is well orchestrated and campaigns have greater impact.

CRITICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Is everyone and everything operating consistently?

Is everyone in sync with communication plans across the entire organization?

Are campaigns consistently coordinated so they support the larger strategy?

Does your team’s work fit within the bigger picture?

The processes required to produce higher quality work, faster.

EfficiencyToday, marketers are challenged with accelerating complexity. But traditional ways

of working—spreadsheets, presentations, email and endless meetings—were not

designed to keep pace. The results are reactive marketing processes that stagnate

the organization, making it both painful for individuals and dangerous for the brand.

To be effective in the face of this complexity, everyone on the team—from content

creators to senior executives— needs to be working in concert, avoiding duplication

of effort and ensuring maximum utilization of resources. When the entire

organization is working better together, teams produce higher quality work, faster.

Increased efficiency ensures the time marketers spend creating great marketing is

time well spent.

CRITICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Are you realizing the full potential of marketing resources?

Are you duplicating efforts across teams, channels or locations?

Do you have a smooth process for content creation?

Does your entire team know what they’re responsible for?

Investing in more effective marketing

collaboration requires commitment. An

understanding of how visibility, alignment

and efficiency creates value for marketing

organizations is a good foundation. But to

really understand how this will impact your

organization you need to get other

stakeholders involved.

To help kickstart the conversation, we

recommend the following questions as

a discussion guide. These will highlight

strengths and gaps in how effective your

marketing teams collaborate.

Are You Ready toStart the Conversation?

Marketing Collaboration Discussion Guide

How well do you know your brand footprint, channelsand campaigns?

Can you see what campaigns other teams are developing?

Can you visualize content across channels, two weeks out or more?

Are you confident you are always seeing the latest work?

What would help increase the productivity of your marketing meetings?

Is your team strategically aligned with other teams?

Do your paid, owned and earned channels work together toward a consistent strategy?

Can you easily produce reports on content plans for senior management?

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Conclusion

Effective marketing collaboration is critical to delivering brand experiences that produce results. By empowering your teams with the visibility required to make smart business decisions, stay aligned and work efficiently, marketers can reduce the risk of making costly mistakes while optimizing maximizing business impact.

Want To Know More?

Opal developed the Marketing Collaboration Index to measure how you work individually and across teams for insights you can use to improve overall marketing effectiveness. Take the four-minute assessment and learn how you score across the key drivers of effective marketing collaboration.

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