Case study: How Komet USA embraced agile marketing

It’s been just over a year since Komet USA, an American-based subsidiary of the German company that manufactures dental instruments, has been practicing agile marketing. I had the pleasure of training their marketing team in 2022, and I recently had a chance to catch up with their CEO (and former head of marketing), who made it all possible. 

Mercedes Aycinena learned about agile when she previously worked at a specialty pharma services company and found it effective for prioritizing work. Today, the entire marketing team at Komet USA embraces agile, and it’s also spreading to the rest of the company, including sales, finance, logistics and human resources.

“We love how agile marketing allows us to prioritize and work towards key goals and not just do ad hoc things. Our efforts are aligned to the strategy and we’re not just chasing our tails all day long,” said Aycinena.

The culture at Komet USA used to be much more reactive, and with a small team of marketers, it was difficult to manage work requests and still give employees a life outside of work. Now, Aycinena has led the whole organization with a focus on only three things that they can accomplish in the next month. Everyone’s aware of key goals, so prioritizing the right work is easy.

“Agile allows us to implement a culture of work-life balance. When people go home, they have a little more peace of mind. That’s why I’m in favor of agile,” said Aycinena.

Transparency has vastly improved since using agile marketing. Before, people would have to say what they were doing, whereas today, they know all of the projects and tasks and who’s working on what. In the past, marketers would have to tell stakeholders, “It’s coming,” and things would fall through the cracks. With agile, there’s a lot more trust and credibility in marketing.

Dig deeper: Agile marketing: What it is and why marketers should care

How they started agile marketing

After training everyone in agile marketing, they immediately hit the ground running. They looked at each person’s role on the team and determined what they could contribute. Next, they worked together to find a cadence for agile meetings they’d regularly observe. While they don’t adhere to a strict framework, they utilize three-week sprints and have huddles two or three times a week.

The team learned they weren’t preparing their marketing backlog in enough detail ahead of their sprints. To remedy this, they now have a regular collaborative planning session with stakeholders ahead of the team’s planning meetings to align on priorities around large projects.

Establishing a prioritization system that works

Another big change is their intake process. Before agile marketing, sales team members would email individual marketers with one-off requests. Now, marketing work gets funneled through product managers versus everyone getting whatever people ask for. It all goes into a single prioritized backlog of work, which is transparent to everyone on the team. 

“Marketers were wearing so many hats and doing so many projects that agile was a lifesaver,” said Aycinena. “Our work style changed, but in the best way possible,” she says.

The marketers at Komet USA use the following method for prioritizing requests, according to Jordan Russell, senior specialist for digital marketing and ecommerce, who manages the agile process:

• Any ads/articles with deadlines from strategic partners get first priority.
• All other requests go in order of alignment with business goals.

“There are three large strategic goals and sales strategies are attached to those. Everyone’s aware of these goals. They were too generic before. We didn’t have any before except to increase brand awareness or market share,” explained Aycinena.

The sales team hasn’t pushed back on this new way of working. Even if they can’t get everything they want, they understand the large workload put on marketing. With agile marketing, a business case is needed for work requests and feedback is given before it even gets into the backlog.

Next steps in their agile journey

Embracing agile marketing is a continuous learning journey. In the near future, the marketing team is looking to incorporate a testing and learning approach. They’re also working with departments outside of marketing. Today, those expanded areas have a mindset of prioritization, enabling a more formal agile approach in their future.

Dig deeper: A new way to navigate agile marketing

Advice to marketers looking to start agile marketing

If you’re a marketing leader looking to get started with agile marketing, here’s what Aycinena suggests:  “Go for it! Agile is a great framework and mindset to prioritize what’s important for the company and to help your teams get organized, and ensure that your efforts are valuable and in the right direction, as well as improving work/life balance. 

“It’s pretty easy to start and you can begin small and then expand. It’s not really rigid — you can adapt it to get the benefits without a massive investment in time and tools,” she added.

Dig deeper: Getting Started with the Agile Marketing Navigator