Signature Playbook: one version of the truth for every launch

What it is

The rollout deck for the playbook names four functions that owned a part of every signature launch: merchandising, sales and Nike direct, brand, and demand planning. Its slide on the starting point is titled "Where we are today", under the heading of consolidation.

The playbook was rolled out to the North America Basketball team on January 16, 2013. Its stated reasons were tool consolidation, informed business owners, simplicity, visibility and sharing success in a timely manner.

What Khounlavong did

• Conceived the playbook and drove its adoption. His fiscal 2014 mid-year review lists "Conceptualization & Adoption of Signature Playbook as Common Practice".
• Steered a teammate to build the tool itself. His fiscal 2013 review credits that teammate with developing it under his direction.
• Set one standardized tool to hold the product details for every launch: style number, story, allocations and launch dates, the stores that received allocations, and sales results by day one, week and season.
• Assigned each function its part. Merchandising owned seasonal set up and updates to price and flow. Sales and Nike direct reported weekly results. Brand entered the support type and activation dates. Demand planning entered buy dates.
• Ran a weekly Monday morning meeting on the playbook. The rollout deck walks through one launch as the example: a release on January 19, weekend results entered by Nike direct, a team review at 8am on January 22, notes published to the cross functional team, wholesale results entered on January 23, and the next review on January 28.
• Defined retail performance through a category scorecard by launch type: energy, heat, seasonal and foundation.
• Put a visual flow chart in place in fiscal 2012 to show how product stories moved through a season. A footwear visual line plan template in his files, dated January 2013, lays models out by price and flow date with a last year comparison beside each model.
• Tied product flow to a calendar of sport and cultural moments, from the start of the NBA season and Christmas Day to the NCAA tournament, the playoffs and back to school.

Results

• His fiscal 2013 review records the playbook as implemented and adopted, with the weekly meeting running.
• His fiscal 2014 review records the playbook meetings continuing, to keep the team speaking with one voice.
• By November 2014 the weekly playbook meeting was the standing review for launch strategy after each seasonal sales meeting.
• The moments calendar was adopted across Nike Basketball in North America and used as the model for the global launch calendar. A global holiday 2014 launch calendar in his files uses the same weekly layout with game moments and the retail calendar. The seasonal line plan itself was driven by the global team, with the geographies influencing it; the moments calendar was layered on top of it.
• The same documents list what the playbook changed: earlier influence on product creation, shared ownership, fewer tools and one version of the truth.

At a glance