Redesigning Marketing Organizations: Lessons from Coca-Cola and AT&T at POSSIBLE 2025

On April 29, 2025, the POSSIBLE Marketing Expo 2025 hosted a compelling panel discussion titled “Redesigning Marketing Organizations to Boost Sales Growth and Marketing Team Satisfaction” at the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach. Held from 10:40 AM to 11:10 AM ET in the Upper Lobby Level’s Inspiration Hall – Sparkle Ballroom, the session featured three prominent speakers: Omar Rodriguez-Vila, Professor of Marketing Practice at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School; Rebecca Messina, Senior Advisor at McKinsey & Co.; and Kellyn Kenny, Chief Marketing & Growth Officer at AT&T. Together, they explored the challenges facing modern marketing teams and shared strategies for redesigning marketing organizations, offering actionable insights for enhancing effectiveness and team morale through innovative operating models that have driven success at Coca-Cola and AT&T.

The Frustrations of Modern Marketing

Omar Rodriguez-Vila opened the discussion by highlighting the complex emotional landscape of working in marketing today. While the field remains dynamic and exciting, it often breeds frustration due to its evolving nature.

Omar Rodriguez-Vila

The way people are feeling working in marketing today is more like this. Some days it’s deeply exciting and dynamic, but there are many days where it’s very frustrating.

He explained that marketing has become fragmented, overly specialized, and sometimes disjointed, leading to confusion and disengagement among teams.

Omar Rodriguez-Vila

Marketing has become so many things. It has fragmented, specialized, and sometimes become almost disjointed. When that happens, it creates the perfect conditions for marketing teams to start feeling like they are unclear about their work.

Rodriguez-Vila identified three critical symptoms of ineffective marketing operations, underscoring the need for redesigning marketing organizations. The first is an imbalance in decision-making, where too many team members can veto ideas, stalling progress.

Omar Rodriguez-Vila

The first symptom is an imbalance between the yes and the no. It starts to feel like there’s a lot of people in the team that can say no, and very few that can say yes. When that imbalance happens, a sort of games of chutes and ladders shows up in your team.

Kellyn Kenny elaborated, illustrating how this imbalance leads to repeated setbacks in projects, creating a sense of stagnation.

Kellyn Kenny

You start working on a project, you show up to some check point meeting, and somebody says, no, we can’t do that, and so your project goes back down. You feel like progress is not quite possible.

Rodriguez-Vila added that unclear decision rights exacerbate the issue.

Omar Rodriguez-Vila

Work gets slowed down because decision rights are becoming more blurry.

The second symptom is overlapping roles within teams, leading to inefficiencies and frustration.

Omar Rodriguez-Vila

The second symptom is one where we are overlapping our roles. So who’s managing social? There are three different teams that are managing social. Who’s managing content? Suddenly, we find ourselves playing this game of Twister, and really stamping on top of each other.

Finally, he highlighted a lack of alignment as the third symptom, where teams diverge from their shared growth agenda, creating internal divisions.

Omar Rodriguez-Vila

The last one is a lack of alignment. We all start the year thinking we’re in the same team, working to drive growth. But as the year unfolds, all the different areas of the marketing world begin to take different roles. We have the G, and we have the R, but then some B shows up, and some X shows up, and you’re wondering, what exactly does that work have to do with the growth agenda we set at the beginning of the year? In the worst cases, we become tribes inside the marketing function, instead of a coalition.

Rodriguez-Vila argued that while restructuring is a common response, it’s insufficient without a unique operating model. Quoting economist Paul Krugman, he emphasized this need as a key aspect of redesigning marketing organizations.

Omar Rodriguez-Vila

Organization structure is almost always the wrong answer to the right question. The right question is, how do we increase the operating effectiveness in our marketing teams? In order to operate effectively, you also need an operating model.

He challenged attendees to reflect on their own operations, asking whether they have a cohesive approach that aligns their teams toward growth.

Omar Rodriguez-Vila

Do we actually have a way of working? I know we have goals and functions and teams and data, but do we have a way of bringing all those different pieces together in a way that makes sense for our business and drives growth?

Using analogies, he illustrated how successful teams combine structure with a distinct way of working: the Chicago Bulls’ triangle offense in basketball, later evolving into the Warriors’ positionless basketball; Barcelona’s style and Brazil’s Jogo Bonito in football; and jazz ensembles’ joint composition and role clarity.

Redesigning Marketing Organizations: The Coca-Cola Way of Marketing

Rebecca Messina, with 22 years at Coca-Cola, shared how the company transformed its global marketing operations. Initially, a “think local, act local” philosophy under a previous CEO, who prioritized speed and cost, led to chaos across 200 markets.

Rebecca Messina

We did business in 200 markets. We were able to hire the best marketers everywhere we operated. They came with tools and methods and ways of doing things. I worked and lived in four countries around the world. There was a period when we had a CEO with a stated philosophy he was very proud of: think local and act local. He favored speed and thought this favored cost.

Rebecca Messina

Before you know it, we had 200 World Cup programs being activated and created differently in duplicated efforts all around the world. And as you can imagine, it became a mess. It was a terrible consumer experience.

Rodriguez-Vila noted the toll on marketers.

Omar Rodriguez-Vila

It was a terrible experience as marketers.

The disarray impacted results, with costs soaring and morale plummeting. Messina recalled the personal frustration.

Rebecca Messina

Our results were flailing, and costs were soaring. We had become the largest local company in the world. It was a pretty awful place to work. I remember ripping my stock options papers up year after year.

A new CEO introduced the “Manifesto for Growth,” identifying three core capabilities: franchise leadership, commercial leadership, and marketing. Messina led the marketing transformation, defining its mission as a unique operating model.

Rebecca Messina

To build the world’s most loved brands in ways that fuel the sustainable value growth of our business. The beautiful part of this sentence is the tension in the ideas: brand love and brand value.

This mission balanced “brand love” (art) and “brand value” (science), embodied in the “DNA” framework.

Rebecca Messina

We came up with the concept of a DNA molecule, made up of equal parts art and equal parts science. Our brand growth strategies and our portfolio strategy and our brand plans are made up of equal parts art and equal parts science. When a marketer presented a brand plan, it was just as much held together by the creative as it was by the innovation.

The framework evolved over time, starting at “DNA 0.7” and reaching “DNA 3.0” by Messina’s departure, reflecting its adaptability.

Rebecca Messina

We launched with what we called DNA 0.7. By the time I left the company, we were at DNA 3.0. We constantly evolved and updated the model. It was living and dynamic.

Technology and shared processes enabled distributed work, with markets like Brazil leading global initiatives.

Kellyn Kenny

It was kind of silly that Atlanta was designing World Cup programs when you had countries like Brazil and Mexico and others with a lot more inherent knowledge around football.

Rebecca Messina

We had a system of charters, which meant there was no more center in the field or the markets. Our markets could bid to be the center of any project. They could lead the work to create World Cup programs that the world would use. Everyone had access to the digital systems to pull down the tools and methods right down to the menu boards we needed to activate our programs anywhere in the world.

Messina concluded by emphasizing the impact on culture and results.

Rebecca Messina

It created an incredible culture. It’s well-documented results, not just in the activities that we won, the effectiveness, but also in the revenue that we gained, getting the core back on track, as well as the share growth around the world.

AT&T’s Blueprint for Change

Kellyn Kenny discussed AT&T’s marketing transformation, emphasizing three keys to success: building trust, creating a compelling vision, and harnessing collective expertise. She acknowledged the challenge of balancing short-term results with long-term change.

Kellyn Kenny

If you’re trying to lead transformation, there are three helpful things: first, a culture of trust with a learning mindset; second, a clear and compelling vision; third, harnessing the collective expertise of the people inside your organization. You can’t just turn on trust. You can’t just turn on team camaraderie. It’s something you have to build brick by brick, from one-on-ones to smaller workshops to eventually town halls, but it is worth the investment.

Kenny outlined AT&T’s systematic approach to transformation, starting with baselining gaps and building psychological safety.

Kellyn Kenny

We said we have to baseline where we are today, understand the gaps between where we are and where we’re going, and build psychological safety into the culture so people trust that when they fail, they can learn and bounce back. Then we recruited a core team, envisioned the future, and hosted workshops so people could put their fingerprints all over the change we needed to inspire throughout the company.

She detailed the three-step process to drive change:

1. Winning Minds: Building a case for change rooted in purpose.

Kellyn Kenny

We authored a white paper that went through, bit by bit, what could it look like. We built a case for change deeply rooted in the company’s purpose, that lined up to the value proposition that marketing and growth team offered to AT&T.

Winning Hearts: Inspiring the team through engagement. Rodriguez-Vila noted the team’s enthusiasm.

Kellyn Kenny

We built anticipation for the marketing way, which we call the blueprint. We had conferences and scavenger hunts. There was full-body tackling of people trying to get the scavenger hunt pieces because they wanted to win the prize. When we launched, we had photo booths.

Omar Rodriguez-Vila

Every single person wore the AT&T blueprint T-shirt.

Omar Rodriguez-Vila

There was an undeniable energy and a shared ambition. People even had stickers on their laptops and changed their background in Teams and Zoom, all saying they were on board with the blueprint.

Kenny emphasized the importance of listening to the team’s aspirations.

Kellyn Kenny

We asked them, what did they want to make possible? They told us customer centricity. I want to be insights-led. I want the strategy to be informed by the customer. I want great teamwork. I want every member of our organization to be part of what we’re building, and I want to ignite new growth for the company.

Winning Hands and Feet: Providing clarity to drive action. Kenny emphasized clarity, while Rodriguez-Vila added the need for balance in execution.

Kellyn Kenny

When you encounter resistance, it’s often just confusion. Clarity will set you free.

Omar Rodriguez-Vila

You need to be detailed, but not overwhelming. You need to be prescriptive, but not so rigid that it becomes paralyzing for people.

Kenny shared pro tips for sustaining momentum in redesigning marketing organizations.

Kellyn Kenny

You’ve got to recruit a core team with incredible tenacity and vision—they have to be persistent because any sort of transformation requires a strong stomach. Rally the entire team by communicating small wins and key milestones. That gives people the stamina to keep going, even when productivity drops initially. Assess over constant improvement, ensuring you’re leaned in and feeding solutions back to them.

AT&T’s “blueprint” launched in October 2024, yielding results by March 2025, such as leveraging March Madness to promote the AT&T Guarantee.

Kellyn Kenny

Six months later, we have gone from a company that tried to tap into culture to really igniting culture and creating culture on one of the biggest stages. We launched AT&T Guarantee in January and used March Madness as a platform to get the word out, competing with the best marketers—salty snacks, sugary treats, boozy drinks, and automobiles.

A New Way Forward: Redesigning marketing organizations with a unique operating model

The session underscored that while structure is essential, redesigning marketing organizations with a unique operating model is critical for success. Coca-Cola’s “DNA” framework revived a global icon by balancing art and science, while AT&T’s “blueprint” ignited cultural impact through trust and clarity. These insights offer a roadmap for marketing leaders to enhance effectiveness and satisfaction, proving that a clear approach to redesigning marketing organizations can unlock transformative potential.

Photo Credit: POSSIBLE 2025 by Shutterstock