Blazer partnered with a global apparel brand to enhance their marketing effectiveness and efficiency. Despite the brand’s prominence, they faced challenges competing against major legacy brands in their vertical. The scale of their marketing organization made it difficult for the VP of Marketing to determine the best optimization strategies. Additionally, the global marketing team was viewed as a cost center, leading to recurrent layoffs and reorganizations. Exhausted from this cycle, the VP sought our partnership to chart a new course. Their central question was: How can we deepen leadership’s understanding of marketing’s impact on revenue while increasing our effectiveness and efficiency to mitigate the risk of reorganization?
Our approach with this client was to implement a holistic strategy to revitalize marketing operations and demonstrate value.
We began by conducting a deep assessment to uncover the root issues stifling growth and productivity. Our evaluation revealed a scattered approach, with marketing efforts spread thin across various channels and lacking cohesion. Additionally, the absence of a consistent process to measure marketing effectiveness meant that campaign contributors were evaluated based on the quantity of their output rather than the impact on organizational goals.
Equipped with these insights, we proposed establishing a dedicated Marketing Effectiveness team. This new team, built with talent sourced internally, would oversee data insights, marketing automation, predictive marketing, test-and-learn initiatives, and CRM marketing.
The creation of a test-and-learn department was a significant development. By having a dedicated experimentation practice, our client was able to cultivate a more customer-centric approach, reward campaign performance based on results, and foster a culture of continuous learning. Additionally, by more tightly integrating marketing and CRM data, our client refined lifecycle marketing campaigns. Through partnering with our data science practice, we helped determine accurate measures of attribution, incrementality, and uncovered purchase propensity.
In the first year of our partnership, our client witnessed a paradigm shift in their marketing approach—transitioning from quantity-driven to performance-driven strategies. By leveraging experimentation and refining analytics processes, we revealed opportunities to streamline investments in key channels, leading to higher campaign effectiveness and ROI. The partnership also reshaped internal team dynamics, empowering collaboration across previously siloed teams.
The new Marketing Effectiveness team emerged as a catalyst for innovation, offering critical insights to refine strategies and drive growth. Email marketers began building campaigns using insights sourced from paid media strategists, leading to increased engagement.
Ultimately, this work empowered our client with the insights needed to replicate successful strategies, source new ideas, and ignite a culture of innovation and growth. Our stakeholder’s openness to our perspectives enabled us to build a genuine partnership that evolved alongside the organization’s needs. Today, we remain trusted partners and collaborators.
At Blazer, we partner with ambitious brands and leaders that refuse to settle for less.
Blazer is the consulting firm that helps brands prove what drives customer value, and builds teams that deliver on it.
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16 W. Martin St., 9th Floor, Raleigh, NC 27601