Project Background
Spotify is preparing to launch a new 6-week in-app and paid media campaign to promote its Family Plan in the US and Canada before the back-to-school season. You are the program manager coordinating marketing, product, analytics, finance, and CRM teams across a 12-person cross-functional group. Leadership wants the campaign live in 5 weeks because a competitor has just launched a discounted family bundle.
Key Stakeholders
The VP of Growth wants aggressive subscriber growth and fast launch. The Finance Director wants clear payback thresholds and is concerned about overspending on paid channels. The CRM lead wants to prioritize retention messaging to existing free users, while the Brand team is pushing for a broader awareness campaign that may be harder to measure directly.
Constraints
- Total campaign budget: $1.2M
- Launch deadline: 35 days
- Team capacity: 12 people, no additional headcount
- Paid media creative must be finalized by Day 18
- Analytics instrumentation updates require 7 business days after requirements are approved
- Legal review for promotional claims takes 5 business days
Complications
- Historical campaign reporting is inconsistent: prior teams used different definitions for conversion and incremental lift.
- Product analytics can measure sign-ups and trial starts reliably, but household-level Family Plan activation data lags by 10 days.
- The VP of Growth is asking to launch on time even if measurement is imperfect, while Finance says the campaign should not launch without agreed success thresholds.
Your Task
Produce the following:
- A pre-launch plan for defining campaign success criteria, including primary metrics, guardrails, and decision thresholds.
- A stakeholder alignment approach for resolving metric-definition conflicts before launch.
- A launch recommendation that addresses trade-offs between speed, measurement quality, and budget control.
- A risk mitigation plan for the top execution risks before and during launch.
- A first-30-day monitoring and reporting plan, including when you would continue, adjust, or stop the campaign.
