Dr. Martens evolves its iconic brand with Asana
Dr. Martens’ Creative Services team covers everything from store window displays to social media posts. They use Asana to streamline the whole creative production process, improving consistency and collaboration across countries, reducing time spent on manual work, and increasing transparency into workloads.
When Doctor Klaus Märtens injured his foot in the Bavarian Alps, he had no idea the boot he designed to support his ankle would become a classic. But once shoe manufacturer R. Griggs bought the UK patent rights, the brand became a British style emblem.
Highlights
Challenge
Historically the Creative Services team managed incoming creative requests in a spreadsheet.
It was headache-inducing to track and assign work this way, and new briefs came in from all directions: meetings, emails, and hallway conversations.
There was no holistic view of projects end-to-end, or an accessible place to see team workloads.
Solution
The team uses Asana to standardize and automate the creative request process.
Designers in the UK and the rest of Europe use Asana to manage their work and communicate about creative assets, helping them stay consistent and increasing team accountability.
Leaders and stakeholders can see the creative team’s workload in Asana, allowing them to plan better for the future.
Outcome
Improved consistency in the Dr. Martens brand across countries by connecting global marketing teams.
Reduced time spent on ”work about work” by centralizing marketing assets.
Created the ability to forecast bandwidth by making team workloads transparent and tracking peak work months.
Made project plans visible to cross-functional teams for more accountability and collaboration.
It's been brilliant for cross-team collaboration. My colleagues can easily loop me in on work and say, ‘Hey, is this in line with global expectations?’ That's been really helpful.”
How Asana helps Dr. Martens work smarter
Producing consistent creative at scale
The Creative Services team at Dr. Martens communicates the season’s creative tone and direction, providing assets, artwork and guidelines to help creative teams in other countries bring the stories to life in their region. They also fulfill creative requests from departments around the business and collaborate with external agencies, making sure everything is on-brand and in line with the company vision.
With Asana, the team created a streamlined request process to move faster and manage creative workflows at scale. The platform also improved visibility across regions, helping designers stay consistent and increasing team accountability.
Streamlining creative production across regions
Before Asana, lack of transparency led to duplicate work when stakeholders didn’t know they were making overlapping requests. It was also difficult to see team bandwidth and track who was accountable for which milestones, leading to a lot of back-and-forth to negotiate deadlines or reassign work when a designer went out of office.
Asana gave Creative Services the transparency they needed to solve these challenges, enabling the team to collaborate and bring creative assets to life across regions.
A streamlined request process speeds up production
The team uses Asana forms to standardize incoming creative requests.
Automations instantly assign a creative request to the best designer for the job, and leaders are notified so they have a view of work coming in.
Managers no longer need to manually trawl through new projects, which saves time and lets the creative team get started on assets faster.
Improved visibility keeps global teams in sync
Asana projects represent major initiatives or brand stories. For example, the “AW21” season or a theme like “Urban Protection” gets its own Asana project. This system makes it easier to find tasks related to a specific channel, housed in an overarching initiative.
Thanks to the team’s Asana project structure, creative assets are easy to find because they’re grouped by initiative and marketing channel. Designers across regions can quickly check whether a creative asset is consistent, and everyone has access to a repository of past creative briefs.
There’s now a holistic view of each project and its progress, which has improved relationships with stakeholders and increased team accountability.
Better reporting helps leaders plan for the future
Requests are captured in Asana throughout the year, so leaders can use Asana reporting to identify last year’s busiest months and anticipate resource needs in advance.
A stakeholder or manager can see what creative assets designers are working on and bump high-impact projects to the top of the list, while individual designers use Asana’s “my tasks” to plan out their work on a daily basis.
One of the biggest benefits of Asana has been visibility into my team's workload—not just for me, but also for our stakeholders to better understand what we're working on and how we can best prioritize.”
Suited and booted to step into the future
Even for a brand as timeless as Dr. Martens, there are always new things to look forward to. With large campaigns and product releases on the horizon, the Creative Services team will enable their designers and marketers to continue to produce industry-changing work. They plan to expand their use of Asana forms, dashboards, and portfolios to become even more efficient, and Stacey’s ambition is to bring the US and APAC creative teams onto Asana to help everyone collaborate on one cohesive global brand.
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