Shell fuel internal marketing process with Optimizely Content Marketing Platform

Placing innovation at the heart of Shell

With a history that can be traced back to the 19th century, Shell was established in 1907 and has since evolved into an international energy and petrochemical company. Known for its presence in the oil and gas industry, Shell also manufactures and markets chemicals as well as invests in innovative sources of power.

Operating at a global scale in over 70 countries with over 80,000 employees, Shell’s growing teams needed collaboration processes to drive seamless daily operations.

Three years ago, Shell came on board with Optimizely Content Marketing Platform (CMP). This partnership has allowed Shell to empower its teams to be more agile, drive marketing transformation, scale and support business demand and execute an integrated approach resulting in more alignment, efficiency and better brand experiences.

Shell fuel internal marketing process with Optimizely Content Marketing Platform

Operating as a large multinational organization, with thousands of employees, stakeholders and requests brings many challenges and complexities. Prior to partnering with Optimizely, Shell’s marketing tasks were communicated the old-school way via ticketing systems, spreadsheets, and emails.

Not only were Shell’s marketing stakeholders finding it difficult to collaborate, but they were also working in silos without full visibility of their content landscape.

With strict brand compliance and processes to abide by, Shell recognized the problem at hand.

As Shell Brands International CEO & Vice-Chairman Dean Aragon explains, “like so many modern organizations, our success hinges on being able to maximize visibility, enable faster turnaround times, and minimize duplication and waste.”

Shell quickly began its search for an integrated collaboration platform that could unify various brand processes in its complex digital ecosystem, and drive content effectiveness and efficiency without compromising on user experience.

Unifying processes with Optimizely Content Marketing Platform

Once Optimizely CMP was identified by Shell for its industry-leading capabilities in supporting marketing teams to plan campaigns, collaborate on work and produce content, Shell’s teams have been maximizing the user-friendly platform.

At Shell, the intuitive Optimizely CMP is utilized for:

• Shared and integrated planning (planning content & campaigns and managing budgets)
• Streamlining work management and creative services (handling and filtering hundreds of creative requests a month from internal employees and external agencies)
• Asset governance and brand compliance (managing tens of thousands of approvals using CMP and artificial intelligence integrations)

Use case 1: Shared and integrated planning

A company of Shell’s size risks losing visibility when numerous campaigns are happening concurrently.

Figure 1: Shell's Calendar view with filter options on Optimizely Content Marketing Platform.

With Calendars, Shell’s stakeholders have holistic transparency across all regions for better insight and are empowered to facilitate longer-term, cross-agency planning. Filters and permission settings enable employees to toggle between a bird’s eye view and tasks to focus on.

The Campaigns capability has moved ideation into a shared, collaborative workspace easily accessed by Shell’s teams instead of their previous practice of using emails.

Not only has Optimizely CMP increased company-wide visibility on campaigns, but it has also improved collaboration and communication between employees for improved efficiency. Furthermore, budgets also benefit from this holistic approach as Shell’s teams can ensure campaigns are on track.

Use case 2: Streamlining work management and creative services

Figure 2: Shell's Work Requests view on Optimizely Content Marketing Platform.

Hundreds of requests come in from internal employees and external partners every month.

Work Requests automatically route and collectively prioritize inbound requests from a global set of stakeholders. It serves as the single-entry point for brand approvals and project creation. Submissions are routed accordingly, validated and a corresponding project is created with an assigned project manager.

The project manager further uses Optimizely CMP to handle budgeting, asset creation, and other tasks pertaining to the campaign with flexible options to customize processes.

Within Work Requests, there is also an intuitive UX to request work provided to stakeholders with capacity.

Use case 3: Asset governance and brand compliance

Figure 3: Shell's Tasks & Workflows view on Optimizely Content Marketing Platform.

It goes without saying that an international organization like Shell will require strict brand compliance to ensure unity in its marketing materials.

At one point, over 40,000 communication assets were sent for approval within just eight months.

Tasks & Workflows enable Shell’s teams to monitor and govern the production of assets with proper review and brand approvals. This capability provides Shell with a streamlined approach for ensuring compliance across all content activity.

In addition, Shell partnered with Optimizely to integrate a machine vision technology to screen for brand compliance. This AI-powered self-checker was introduced to Shell’s agencies and is expected to save millions of dollars across Shell globally.

Shell improves overall productivity and collaboration

Shell has grown leaps and bounds, onboarding seven new teams in 2022 alone. It has also delivered 18 new use cases since 2018 by leveraging Optimizely. One such use case is with Content Calendar, currently piloted by a small group but will likely grow in the near future.

In 2022, Shell experienced a 5% increase in the number of campaigns created on Optimizely CMP and a 20% increase in the number of work requests. Productivity has increased across the board.

Additionally, there has been a 12% increase in users of Shell’s Optimizely CMP since Jan 2022.

Shell also celebrates a big win with the recent completion of its Custom Login Page, specifically built for Shell to provide its internal and external users with a universal brand experience. This is a testament to Optimizely’s flexible and scalable capabilities in unlocking the digital potential of businesses.

Automating for a swifter future

Shell is gearing up to onboard another nine teams onto its Optimizely CMP platform soon, spelling more streamlined communication and collaboration across the company.

With a huge focus on automation in the coming years, Shell is exploring ways to simplify and improve processes by leveraging automation.

Shell displays a true partnership with Optimizely through innovative feature suggestions to accelerate its automation goals.

The team also aims to further enhance its machine vision automation on Optimizely by enabling stakeholders to leverage automation for more accurate approvals based on well-defined brand compliance criteria. This AI automation will also allow the team to automate the way Shell publishes content.

Optimizely and Shell continue to spur each other on the path of growth. As Shell expands its global operations, Optimizely is there every step of the way to facilitate user-friendly ways to execute content marketing.