Project Background
You are the Account Executive leading a strategic retail advertiser preparing a back-to-school campaign across Facebook, Instagram, and Reels. The client is a top-20 US retailer spending $18M per quarter on Meta and is threatening to shift budget to a competitor unless Meta delivers a custom campaign package before the retailer’s national media launch in 8 weeks.
The project requires coordination across a 10-person cross-functional team: you, a Client Solutions Manager, a Meta Creative Strategist, Measurement partner, Sales Ops, Legal, Product Marketing, and Ads Engineering contacts. The urgency is high because the client wants a bundled plan that includes Advantage+ shopping campaigns, a Reels-first creative package, and a custom conversion reporting view in Ads Manager for their executive team.
Key Stakeholders
The client’s CMO wants a polished, executive-ready launch with weekly reporting and is pushing for product capabilities that do not fully exist today. Internally, the Product Marketing team wants to prioritize scalable solutions, Legal is concerned about custom data handling, and the Engineering partner says the requested Ads Manager customization would require work not committed on the roadmap. Your Sales Director wants to protect the relationship and avoid revenue loss this quarter.
Constraints
- Launch deadline: 8 weeks
- Incremental budget available for support and creative services: $120K
- No net-new engineering headcount
- Engineering can provide only 1 frontend engineer at 25% allocation for 4 weeks
- Legal review requires 10 business days for any custom reporting workflow using first-party data
- Client has already publicly aligned internal teams to a launch date that is 2 weeks earlier than Meta’s realistic estimate
Complications
- The client insists the custom Ads Manager reporting view is a “must-have,” although Engineering says a production-ready version would take at least 12 weeks.
- Your Sales Director is pressuring you to verbally commit now to preserve the quarter’s revenue.
- A separate enterprise advertiser has already reserved the same Creative Shop resources for the first 3 weeks of your timeline.
Your Task
- Build an execution plan for the 8-week launch, including what you would commit to, defer, or re-scope.
- Explain how you would push back on the client’s unrealistic demand while preserving trust and revenue.
- Show how you would handle disagreement with internal partners, especially Sales Director, Legal, and Engineering.
- Define launch success metrics, decision points, and escalation triggers.
- Identify the top risks, fallback options, and rollback plan if the custom reporting component is not ready.
