/63-campaign-retrospective-global

name: 63-campaign-retrospective-global
description: "Use when a campaign has ended and the team needs a structured retrospective: a scorecard of results versus target, what worked / what did not / why with evidence, surprises, lessons written back into the playbook and Brand Hub, and action items with owners. Trigger on 'campaign retrospective', 'campaign retro', 'post-mortem', 'campaign debrief', 'what worked what did not', or 'lessons from the campaign'."
metadata:
  version: 1.0.0
  category: operations
license: MIT
triggers:
  - "campaign retrospective"
  - "campaign retro"
  - "post-mortem"
  - "campaign debrief"
  - "what worked what did not"
  - "lessons from the campaign"
  - "campaign wrap-up"
output: "File .md — full retrospective: scorecard, what worked / did not / surprises, process review, playbook and Brand Hub updates, input for the next campaign, action items with owners"
related:
  - 07-marketing-report-global
  - 60-launch-playbook-global
  - 02-campaign-brief-global
  - 34-ai-marketing-os-global
  - 65-team-performance-review-global

Campaign Retrospective (Global)

> A retrospective is not for assigning blame — it is how the team and the system get better after every campaign. The best insight comes from failure, but only if it is safe to speak honestly. A retro with no action is wasted time: every lesson must become one concrete change in the playbook, the Brand Hub, or the process.

Information gathering

Ask up to 4 questions:

1. **Which campaign, and over what dates?** Name, start and end dates, original objective. 2. **Final data:** revenue, leads, CPA, ROAS, spend — final numbers versus target. (If a report already exists from `07-marketing-report-global`, use it as the input.) 3. **Who attends the retro?** Content, performance, design, sales, leader? 4. **How long ago did the campaign end?** Run the retro within 5 days of the end, while memory is fresh.

Principles

1. **Mandatory after every major campaign.** No skipping because the team is busy. No retro means paying tuition without learning the lesson. 2. **Record only claims backed by data.** "Creative A felt strong" is not an insight; "creative A hit $18 CPA against a $28 account average" is. 3. **No individual blame.** Talk about systems and process. Everyone has the floor. 4. **Every lesson becomes one concrete change** — to the playbook, a template, the Brand Hub, or a process — with an owner and a deadline. 5. **Document so it still makes sense in 6 months** — and link the retro into the next campaign's brief.

Workflow

1. Prepare (before the session)

• Pull final data: revenue, leads, CPA, ROAS, spend, timeline adherence, budget variance.
• Send the data to the team before the meeting — the meeting is for discussion, not for reading numbers.
• Book 60 minutes with a named facilitator (usually the leader). For distributed teams, pick a time that works across the relevant timezones and require written pre-reads from anyone who cannot attend live.

2. Campaign scorecard

| KPI | Target | Actual | % achieved | vs previous campaign | |-----|--------|--------|------------|----------------------| | Revenue | | | | | | Leads | | | | | | CPA | | | | | | ROAS | | | | | | Spend | | | | | | Timeline (on schedule?) | | | | | | Budget (within plan?) | | | | |

Overall verdict: **Success** (>90% of KPIs) / **Mixed** (60-90%) / **Miss** (<60%).

When comparing against category benchmarks, use the right region and industry row in `references/benchmarks-global.md` — and adjust for seasonality before declaring a CPA increase a failure, since Q4 media costs run materially above Q1.

3. What worked (repeat next time)

| # | What worked | Evidence (numbers) | Why it worked | How to apply next time | |---|-------------|--------------------|---------------|------------------------| | 1 | | | | | | 2 | | | | | | 3 | | | | |

Name the winning patterns explicitly:

• Content angle: which angle converted best
• Creative format: video / image / carousel — which performed
• Audience: which segment responded
• Timing: which day or hour performed best
• Channel: best CPA and ROAS

4. What did not work (avoid next time)

| # | What failed | Evidence | Root cause | Decision: stop / fix / retest | |---|-------------|----------|------------|-------------------------------| | 1 | | | | | | 2 | | | | |

Root cause must go past the symptom. "The ads were bad" is not a root cause; "audience overlapped with the previous campaign > frequency rose above 4 > CTR fell below 1%" is.

5. Surprises

• **Positive surprises:** what beat expectations, by how much, why — what do you take from it?
• **Negative surprises:** what came in worse, by how much, why — how do you prevent it?

6. Process and execution review

| Item | Assessment | Problems hit | Improvement | |------|------------|--------------|-------------| | Brief quality | | | | | Timeline adherence | | | | | Team communication | | | | | Review and approval process | | | | | Launch-day execution | | | | | Data and tracking setup | | | |

Biggest process bottleneck: the single thing most worth fixing next time.

7. Team callouts

Record specific contributions: [Name] — [the specific contribution and its positive impact on the result]. Recognize publicly, correct privately.

8. Playbook and Brand Hub updates plus action items

| Document to update | What changes | Owner | Deadline | |--------------------|--------------|-------|----------| | Launch playbook (`60-launch-playbook-global`) | Add or amend step: [X] | Leader | | | Campaign brief template | Adjust section: [Y] | Leader | | | Brand Hub — customer insight | Add new insight from this campaign: [Z] | | | | Brand Hub — KPI framework / internal benchmarks | Update the benchmarks you actually achieved (CPA, CVR) | | | | Winning creative library | Store the winners plus the reason they won | | |

Every action item needs an owner and a deadline — never "the whole team will handle it."

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