KINESSO, a subsidiary of Interpublic Group (IPG), serves as the data and technology arm of one of the world’s largest marketing companies. With a mission to empower IPG agencies through cutting-edge software, KINESSO launched the KINESSO Academy—an online learning platform designed to equip IPG employees and partners with the skills needed to maximize the impact of KINESSO’s products.

A Bold Mission: Reimagining Education for Growth

Soon after joining KINESSO, Sean Barry and Trevor Miranda, leaders of Product Enablement, focused on a collective mission to recalibrate their education strategy by creating a consistent curriculum across audiences. But in order to do so, they needed a Learning Management System (LMS) that could deliver personalized learning experiences at scale, both internally and externally, and streamline the overall learning experience and development of all learning content. 

KINESSO Meets Intellum 

In order for the Product Enablement team to achieve their objective, it became mission critical to find a new learning solution. From the start, they were on a search for a solution that could: 

• Personalize content delivery for different roles
• Integrate seamlessly with their existing tech stack
• Provide a consistent learning journey for all users
• Enable easy customization to accommodate frequent branding updates
• Offer robust integration options to support evolving business needs

When they discovered Intellum, two key factors solidified their buying decision: 

1. Industry Validation: Some of KINESSO’s trusted technology partners, including Google and Meta, were already leveraging Intellum’s platform–and doing so very successfully.
2. Evolve Integration: the seamless integration with Evolve, Intellum’s content authoring tool, was an absolute game-changer, allowing for effortless content creation and deployment without the hassle of importing and exporting.

Having had a positive experience using Evolve, and with the possibilities Intellum presented, it was only a matter of time before KINESSO began implementing its enablement strategy to drive product adoption.

Laying the Foundation

In addition to the focus on product enablement and adoption, standardizing data and centralizing reporting was also a key priority for KINESSO. Therefore, the team chose to pilot the KINESSO Academy with Taxonomies, KINESSO’s metadata management tool, which creates and maintains naming conventions across the advertising campaign life cycle, reducing manual effort and enabling automated reporting.

It was clear to the Product Enablement team that increasing Taxonomies adoption would positively impact this company-wide initiative, since effective data management and clear reporting both start from a place of consistent naming. If the time to value of Taxonomies tool decreased, then KINESSO’s array of other marketing tools would flourish as a result. From an enablement perspective, this tool was the ideal starting point for building out new learning content and driving business outcomes through education. 

Goal Achieved, with Numbers to Show

The success of the Taxonomies training within KINESSO Academy was both immediate and measurable. Launched in June 2024, the Academy drove a significant increase in certified users and improved product adoption:

• 900% increase in user certifications, growing from 84 to 839 certified users.
• An average 44% reduced time to value (TTV).

Looking at the average on-page time-to-action among users who had started the certification, it took:

• 7m 36s to generate their first name (vs. 12m 16s in the control group)--a 42% decrease in TTV
• 37s to create their first workbook (vs. 54s in the control group)--a 31% decrease in TTV
• 38s to create their first template (vs. 1m 30s in the control group)--a 58% decrease in TTV. 

With respect to key action rates, among users who completed the certification:

• 58.5% generated a name (vs. 34.2% in the control group)
• 37.1% created a workbook (vs. 10.9% in the control group)
• 33.2% created a template (vs. 9.9% in the control group)

Finally, in terms of overall product adoption, the certification initiative has so far had the following impact:

• 9.6% relative lift in users who generate names
• 38.5% relative lift in users who created a workbook
• 36.4% relative lift in users who created a template

The results indicate that certified users are completing their training and actively applying their knowledge, but also driving improved product usage and proficiency. 

It’s important to note that the training group for this certification initiative represents roughly 17% of the total user base for Taxonomies. Scaling the training initiative to reach the remaining 83% of users will presumably have a significant impact on Taxonomies adoption and increase user success in other products.

“The Intellum platform has been a big part of our success when it comes to our broader enablement strategy. It offers an end-to-end solution for content production, curriculum management, collaboration, events, and insights. Bringing all of these aspects of our work together, centered around a single system, has been a game changer.” - Sean Barry

What’s Next For the KINESSO Academy 

Inspired by this potential, KINESSO is set to expand the Academy to international markets, beginning with LATAM and EMEA regions. Currently, 70% of users in KINESSO’s Global Capability Centers have completed certifications, and plans are underway to translate learning content into multiple languages, starting with Spanish.

KINESSO’s journey with Intellum is far from over. As they scale globally, the Academy will continue to be a critical component of their strategy for empowering users, driving product adoption, and fueling growth across the IPG network.