How an embedded Growth Pod, integrated GTM planning, and an aggressive marketing modernization initiative unlocked a stalled product launch for a Fortune 500 media company.
Client Profile
National Streaming & Linear TV Provider
Fortune 500, 500+ person digital org
Engagement
Embedded Strategic Lead, Growth Pod
Late 2024 – Mid 2025
I was embedded inside a major streaming and linear TV provider's consumer digital organization during a significant period of operating model restructuring and market disruption.
The brand was responding to cord-cutting with a new digitally-native streaming product. My mandate: lead the "Growth Pod," audit their digital capabilities across 15 dimensions, and co-lead a marketing modernization initiative to reclaim control from a fragmented agency ecosystem.
Large organizations launching new digital products often don't fail because they lack strategy — they fail because the operating model hasn't caught up. Internal teams (marketing, product, analytics) were siloed, and external agencies were optimizing for their own SOWs rather than unified business outcomes.
Fragmented & Siloed
Integrated Execution
I designed the overarching capability audit and modernization roadmap to serve as the "operating system" for the Growth Pod—creating shared language and shared accountability before any results existed.
Audit scorecards, pod architecture, and modernization roadmap.
Overall Readiness
2.4/5.0
Gap IdentifiedAssessment Areas
Collapsing the silos by reorganizing fragmented teams into a single, accountable delivery unit working in parallel rather than sequentially.
Offer & Positioning
Traffic & Conversion
Activation & Retention
Measurement & LTV
The modernization plan wasn't just about cutting agencies—it was about rebuilding internal capability to hold them accountable, reducing vendor sprawl, and ultimately absorbing the functions that drive competitive advantage.
Why execution requires an operating model that matches the strategy, and why measurement must precede performance.
A fragmented digital strategy is rarely an agency problem. It's an organizational design problem. When internal ownership of campaign strategy, creative direction, and performance accountability is distributed across multiple vendors, every agency optimizes for their specific SOW instead of the unified business outcome.
The Growth Pod scorecard created shared language and shared accountability before any results existed. The act of agreeing on what success looked like across brand, media, digital, product, and analytics teams changed how those teams engaged with each other. Measurement infrastructure is not just a reporting tool — it's an operating governance mechanism.
Large organizations launching new digital products into competitive markets often fail because the operating model hasn't caught up to what the strategy requires. Building the Growth Pod, unifying the GTM plan, and laying out the path to a modernized agency model was the critical work that connected strategy to actual execution.