Executive summary:
Publicis, a global leader in creative marketing, faced significant data management challenges, particularly in efficiently processing vast amounts of data and meeting growing client demands for advanced insights. Upon adopting Funnel, Publicis Sweden not only streamlined report preparation by up to 90% on selected clients, but also effectively manages data from over 3,000 sources and 25+ API connections. This strategic move enhanced Publicis’ agility, enabling it to easily adapt to changing client requirements and position itself as a frontrunner in data-driven client solutions.
Key results:
- Cut down report preparation time by 90% on selected clients, shifting focus towards valuable data analysis and client strategy.
- Leverages 25+ unique API connections and 3,000 data sources.
- Tailors insights for its customers through 800+ custom dimensions and metrics
- Standard media dashboards for new clients are assembled in just 30 minutes.
Agency profile:
Publicis Worldwide, a global creative network, guides clients through their marketing and business transformations by strategically intertwining creative ideas with data and technology. With a presence in 110 countries and a robust team of over 100,000, Publicis manages a broad portfolio of clients. Considered among the top four most creative agencies in the world according to the luminaries at Cannes Lions, the company remains a beacon of innovative marketing solutions in the middle of the ceaseless evolution of technology and market trends.
The challenge: An avalanche of data
Back in 2018, Publicis Sweden, renowned for its strategic creative endeavors and data-driven marketing competencies, encountered substantial challenges in its data management and reporting processes. Johan Stockmarr, Data & Technology Director at Publicis, remembers how his team saw a rapidly expanding volume and range of data cascading through advertising platforms. Simultaneously, customers' expectations and appetite for advanced insights grew at the same pace.
To meet this new challenge, the data team at Publicis Sweden started experimenting with gathering data in BigQuery, applying some advanced transformations, and displaying the data in Google Data Studio (now Looker Studio). Johan remembers that he was intrigued by the early results, but it quickly became evident it would be a difficult process to efficiently scale to multiple clients and cover all data sources needed for complete analysis.
Johan recalls, “We tried putting together some experimental models in BigQuery using different methods but they were never stable enough to show to a customer and we definitely couldn’t charge for it. We realized that we would need too much tech and competence in order to build and maintain this on our own because you need specialists in a few different areas.”
The solution: Eliminating bottlenecks
At this point, the team started researching different potential solutions to its problems and came across Funnel. Once they started using Funnel, Johan remembers that it was a revelation: “When we got access to Funnel, we were amazed with the amount and types of data we got access to and we will be able to do very advanced things at scale.”
The more they kept using Funnel and rolling it out across the team, Johan started seeing other benefits. One of them was that it made the ability to build and maintain powerful reports accessible to more people in the organization, since it removed the need for everyone to learn SQL.
This also meant that they avoided situations where reports became unusable because the only one who knew how it had been built had left the organization. Instead, ownership and know-how could simply be transferred in Funnel. This became even clearer to Johan when he talked to another agency that specializes in building bespoke reports for its customers: “What they build is 100% custom, everything is tailored and technically advanced, but it will only work as long as the person who built it stays around. As soon as that person leaves, things will start breaking down. And that’s when it hit me, that you should just use Funnel instead.”
The results: Scalability and resilience to changing requirements
Resilience to change is not something that is traditionally associated with marketing reports, but Johan has seen first hand how using Funnel helps when changing requirements happen on the customer side. Johan recalls a situation where a customer was going through an internal change and wanted to move their data storage from BigQuery to Snowflake: “That takes me 5 minutes to fix with Funnel, by setting up an additional export to Snowflake. If Funnel did not exist as an intermediary that allows you to be flexible on things like this, it would not take 5 minutes to move the set up from BigQuery to Snowflake, it could take months”.
Having the ability to be flexible and to respond to changing requirements has been a game changer for Publicis Sweden and its data team. When they pitch new clients, Publicis makes a point of showing how they are truly agnostic when it comes to the data stack preferences of its customers thanks to its use of Funnel. Standard reports for new customers are produced within 30 minutes and a customer is fully onboarded with advanced, bespoke reporting within two weeks.
“During sales presentations we say that we’re using Funnel and that we’re really experienced in data management, and working with data at scale. This is something clients like to hear, that we spend time doing actual value adding work in the form of analysis of data and taking action on results, not spending time crunching data.”
