María Iglesias adidas · Content Management

Content at the speed
of a global brand

How we replaced 11 disconnected tools with a single platform that helped adidas teams publish content 54% faster — without losing an ounce of creative quality.

Under NDA — to request access write to 4mhaig@gmail.com

01 — The challenge

Built to publish,
not to think

adidas publishes content across hundreds of touchpoints at the same time — campaign pages, emails, app banners, partner sites. The problem was that the tools used to do that had piled up over the years. By the time this project started, teams were juggling 11 different systems just to get one campaign out the door.

Most of their day wasn't spent creating. It was spent moving files between tools, chasing the one person in another team who could do the step only they had access to, and rewriting the same content in slightly different formats for each market. The creative work happened in between.

"I spend half my day doing things the tool should do for me."

Content Manager — market shadowing session

"By the time we publish, the campaign window has already shifted."

Market Activation Lead — shadowing session

adidas CMS — challenge, impact and role overview

Challenge, impact, and role — overview from the project brief

02 — Research

Complexity was
the work

We started by sitting with the people who used the tools every day. We ran shadowing sessions with market teams and mapped every tool touched in a single campaign lifecycle — from the initial brief to the moment something went live. The pattern was impossible to miss: people had learned to work around the system, not with it.

Tools mapping

11 systems involved in a single campaign — planning, creation, localisation, scheduling, publishing. Many overlapping, none connected. Each one a different way of doing the same thing.

Market shadowing sessions

On average, teams switched between 6 to 8 different tools to publish one content piece. Adapting for local markets wasn't a structured step — it was something each team figured out on their own.

Customer journey mapping

Personalisation always happened after the content was already made — templates duplicated and edited by hand for each audience. There was no way to think about variation while creating.

Opportunity trees

We turned all of this into a set of product requirements grounded in real feedback — not assumptions. What users actually needed, what the old system could and couldn't do, and where the real blockers were.

Tools mapping — planning, concept, adaptation, activation and measurement

Tools mapping across the full campaign lifecycle — from planning to measure and analyse

Market shadowing session and cluster insights from research

Cluster insights from market shadowing sessions — pain points, what works, possible solutions

03 — The solution

One place for everything

The new CMS brings creation, localisation, and publishing together in one place. You can see what's live, what's waiting for review, and what's blocked — without checking five different tools. Personalising content for different audiences is something you do while creating, not after the fact. And every market team works from the same foundation, adapting what they need to without starting from scratch every time.

Final designs — happy path through the CMS operations module

Sample of final designs — happy path through the Operations Module: strategy, country, product, segmented experiences, save

Customer journey, design concepts, final design samples and testing mockups

Customer journey · Design language components · Final design samples · Mockups for testing

04 — What changed

The shift in practice

	Before	After
System	11 tools for briefing, creation, localisation, and publishing — none of them connected	One single platform — campaign pages, emails, app, partner sites, all in the same place
Localisation	Each market team rebuilt global assets from zero — inconsistent results and duplicated effort	Local teams adapt, not rebuild — they work within a shared structure, so global intent always comes through
Personalisation	Handled after content was finished — templates copied and edited by hand for each audience	Built in from the start — you set up audience variations while creating, not after
Visibility	Campaign status tracked in spreadsheets and long email threads — nobody had the full picture	Everyone sees the same thing — what's live, what's in review, what's blocked, all in one view
Speed	Content took longer to produce than the campaign window it was made for	54% faster content creation — less time on tooling, more time on the actual work

My role I led the design for adidas's internal publishing platform — working across research, concept, visual design, and validation with 4 cross-functional teams

Methods Shadowing · Opportunity trees · Tools mapping · Customer journeys · Wireframes · Prototypes · Visual design

Collaborators 4 cross-functional teams · Flexible global-market model · Multiple vendors and platforms

Content at the speed of a global brand

Built to publish,not to think

Complexity wasthe work

One place for everything

The shift in practice

Built to publish,
not to think

Complexity was
the work