Excel was crushing their Corporate Communications team. Q1 was coming fast.
$26B global food & beverage · 40+ countries
The client
A $26 billion food and beverage powerhouse.
Third-largest in North America, fifth-largest worldwide, operating in over 40 countries with brands like Kraft, Heinz, and Philadelphia.
The challenge
Every communications initiative lived in Excel.
Which meant high workloads, confusion, and inefficiency across both planning and execution — the kind that compounds quietly until a deadline exposes it.
- Multiple editorial calendars creating duplicate effort
- Approval processes requiring endless back-and-forth
- Manual tracking of timelines and costs, with frequent errors
- No project visibility across the team
- Unclear ownership of deliverables
- Inefficient intake causing constant delays
The breaking point: preparing for Q1 2024 with a system actively working against them.
The solution
The Marketing Command Center.
We designed and built it in Airtable — one place where a request becomes a project, a project has an owner, and the calendar is a consequence of the work rather than a second job.
Centralized project intake
Simplified requests, with immediate visibility into new initiatives the moment they arrive.
Unified project management
Streamlined tracking, clear ownership, and automatic status updates instead of chased ones.
Integrated editorial calendar
A live view of ongoing and upcoming work, which eliminated the duplication between calendars.
The results
What changed.
- Reduced project turnaround by eliminating inefficient approvals and manual entry
- Improved visibility and ownership, with clear roles on every deliverable
- Eliminated redundant Excel spreadsheets, integrated into one platform
- Enhanced cross-team collaboration through centralized workflows
The expansion
Success was dramatic enough that other departments took notice — the Command Center became the blueprint for transformation across facilities, finance, and other functions.
In their words
“We came to the team with a complex problem. How do we create an integrated content calendar that works for our various Comms stakeholders and allows us to manage projects from request to completion?
I was astounded by the team's ability to take our complicated direction and translate it into a system that was user-friendly, dynamic and intuitive.
It's been a complete game changer for our team, and we could not have created a bespoke and intelligent system like this without our partners.”
Cara Hays
Senior Manager of Integrated Content and Strategy
The Kraft Heinz Company
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