Philosophy | establishment of consistent processes between creative and marketing team

scenario:

Philosophy, a skin care and cosmetics company with a strong design-driven brand, was experiencing “growing pains” due to rapid channel, category and product growth accompanied by an acquisition. As a result, the creative team encountered multiple challenges, including:

• transition from a privately owned brand to one owned by an investment firm committed to rapid growth
• overarching disconnect between those passionate about the design/brand/mission of Philosophy and those focused on the financial/growth model
• disconnect between the existing creative team and the newly brought in marketing team
• exponentially increased demand for creative
• organic and informal processes, roles and technology
• unclear roles, titles, and responsibilities at team and individual level
• no documentation of strategy, planning and collaboration procedures across creative and marketing teams

actions taken:

Cohen Miller conducted a comprehensive interview process with new marketers and brand managers and existing creative team, and a diagnostic of their current organizational and operational systems. We made several recommendations including:

• a customized tiering strategy to unify goals and priorities across channels (QVC, Sephora, Ulta, Philosophy.com, etc) and categories
• development of tier-specific processes for project initiation, creative development and execution, feedback and approval, project close and evaluation
• revised organizational team with dedicated resources focused on brand expresssion, team operations and project management
• tightly defined roles and responsibilities for marketing/brand management and creative, at team and individual-level
• seasonal strategy summits to get marketers and brand expression team involved in business strategies and planning earlier
• use of forecasting tool and charge-back system to provide financial ability to determine and plan resource needs
• implementation of self service (dynamic collateral creation) technology and project/ studio management technology

outcome:

Coty, the French privately held perfume company recently bought Philosophy. In the Spring, Cohen Miller will be consulting with internal change-management teams around two prioritized improvement areas: project tiering and technology. Implementation of additional recommendations along with further updates to follow.