Perrine Pavageau on The Audiencers

5 projects of a PMO at NYT – The Interaction Model

Perrine Pavageau — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 06:05:00 +0000

As part of a reorganization of The New York Times marketing department, Perrine Pavageau took on the role of "Program Manager" (PMO), a role at the crossroads of strategic vision and execution (read our article introducing her role here). Her main objective: to put in place operational mechanisms to ensure the success of marketing strategies. It's a function that answers the questions "how do we do it?" a contact person for teams to turn to express and overcome their organizational challenges. 

In this series of articles, Perrine recounts 5 operational projects carried out in this role for The New York Times.

As The New York Times revisited its paywall strategy, a specialist media strategy team was created in-house – expertise that had previously been completely outsourced. Why this decision?

Firstly, the cost. Working only with agencies could limit the work to “scopes”. With The New York Times strategy in the midst of reform at the time, greater flexibility was needed. As Janis Huang, VP Subscription Growth, says, “Working with an agency required a lot of work to convey our strategy, but we were in the process of redefining our strategy.”

Also, the desire to rethink the marketing campaigns for The New York Times, which were mainly made up of banners and emails. According to Janis, the answer to the question “What should The New York Times Marketing look like to the world?” was to bring the campaigns to life, for a stronger emotional impact. This could be done with new media such as audio, radio, TV or outdoor.

Finally, there was a desire to measure the “brand affinity” impact of these new formats on specific brand attributes.

The New York Times therefore switched to a hybrid model. Experts in digital and traditional media were recruited to join a team called “Marketing & Media Strategy”. The New York Times chose to bring in experienced leaders to guide the strategy and establish capabilities from the ground up. While still using agencies, especially for brand campaigns or specific expertise.

My first project as Program Manager was to review the campaign execution processes to integrate the media team’s work. This was called the “Interaction model“. A new term, which has become part of everyday language.

An Interaction Model is a framework that defines the roles and responsibilities of each team, strengthens collaboration, and brings transparency and alignment. For The New York Times, the objectives were:

Minimize disruption from reorganization

Provide a common structure, understood by all

Improve visibility throughout projects

Establish a structured and positive collaboration

Reduce operational risks

A bit like an internal consultant, I went through the following steps:

Listening to existing processes and challenges
Defining a framework that included phases, roles, interactions and deliverables
Obtaining validation from the teams and management
Integrating the framework into the templates of project management tool
Communicating and evangelizing the framework to ensure adoption

It included:

A high-level framework for monthly, quarterly or annual planning. The objective: that teams anticipate together, and are aligned on the priorities and necessary resources.

An end-to-end campaign framework with all steps and interactions.

Here are the points that really made an impact, in my opinion:

Clearly naming each phase – like in agile. It doesn’t sound like much, but it helps. When I said to management “we have a sticking point in the media build phase”, they knew what I was talking about

An “official” kickoff phase followed by a brief for the creative and media teams. This avoided projects being launched on an impromptu request. And everyone was briefed in the same way

Creative & Media checkins so that creative teams and media planners would work together, just like in an agency. Imagine: the creative team starts with an illustration-based concept, but the media team ends up recommending audio. These teams need to communicate upstream to have time to look at each other’s progress

Sharing results with the creative teams, so that they understand what worked and what didn’t. Through this, the creatives have started to acquire a business language and a better understanding of the issues at hand.

The challenge was to get this framework adopted. We quickly had to make specific versions for different types of campaigns or business lines. The 3 weeks of Concept & Planning were not always possible with the increasing pressure on the pace of promotions. And not all projects needed an innovative media plan. In contrast, Brand Campaigns had a much longer Concept & Planning phase.

For me, what has kept these interaction patterns going was:

Management support

The Program Management function, which guaranteed their adoption

Daily stand-ups with the project teams. They allowed us to discuss the status of each phase, the blocking points and the dependencies

Today, the teams still rely on a system of Interaction Models, which have of course evolved over time, constantly being called into question according to structural changes and company objectives.

> To add to your reading list: The New York Times dynamic paywall model, analyzed

The post 5 projects of a PMO at NYT – The Interaction Model appeared first on Audiencers.

Integrating a Program Management function into the marketing team: the example of The New York Times

Perrine Pavageau — Sun, 16 Apr 2023 13:41:25 +0000

Perrine Pavageau worked for 4 years as Program Manager in the Marketing Department of The New York Times. Her main mission was to set up operational mechanisms to ensure the success of subscriber acquisition strategies. 

This article is an introduction to Perrine's role, the first in a series of articles in which she shares behind-the-scenes details of 5 projects she carried out in this role.

I’m going to tell you about a little-known role I had at The New York Times, that of “Program Manager”. A role in the marketing team at the intersection of strategic vision and execution.

My main objective in this role was to put operational mechanisms in place to ensure the success of marketing strategies.

Before this role, I was Project Manager for acquisition campaigns, coordinating their execution, from marketing brief to final delivery. So, Program Manager, what’s the difference?

Program Management can be identified with the function of a PMO (Project Management Officer), more commonly seen in Product or Tech Departments. A PMO provides teams with the methods and tools to enable them to achieve their objectives. A PMO can also manage their own projects, whose actors often have very different objectives. For me, the key words in Program Management are align, facilitate, organize, rationalize and communicate.

Needs that speak to you, in a context where needs are increasingly transversal, objectives increasingly ambitious, and teams are distanced by remote work?

This role was created in a context of reorganization, with the creation of an internal media planning department, then the setting up of squads and a “Marketing Operations” entity. I reported to the SVP, Subscription Acquisition & Media, and then to the Executive Director, Marketing Operations.

The reorganization into squads was based on a principle of “missions” and “functions”:

Mission = equivalent to “squad”; cross-functional team composed of Marketing, Product and Tech experts, whose work was focused on a specific target, objective or product.

Function = hierarchical attachment. For example, a project manager could be part of the “Growth” mission, but their function lived within the “Marketing Operations” team. A media planner could be part of the “Customer Experience” mission, but their function would live within the Marketing & Media Strategy team.

The role of the Program Management function then became clear. A function that answers the question “how do we do it?” in such a context. A contact person to whom teams could turn to express their operational challenges. In a series of articles to come, I will tell you about concrete projects that I have carried out in this role.

Humanly, this role is exciting, but challenging. As a former project manager, this new role allowed me to work with a much wider range of people within the company, to learn about different jobs and to gain more exposure to management. On the other hand, I had to know how to navigate between different teams, listen to others, learn from them and get out of my comfort zone. A real satisfaction: succeeding in getting teams that previously worked in silos to work together. The hardest part was imposing certain tasks or methods on teams that did not report to me hierarchically.

The Program Management function at The New York Times still exists. It has been renamed “Strategic Programs and Operations”, which demonstrates its impact at the strategic level and not just at the operational level. The team consists of four Program Managers, each specializing in a particular expertise and business line, all of whom have an impact on achieving the ambitious goal of reaching 15 million subscribers by 2027.

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