Working cross-functionally to establish product marketing OKRs | Rebecca Geraghty, VP of Product Marketing at Publicis Media

What It Covers

Rebecca Geraghty, VP of Product Marketing at Publicis Media, shares how she built a five-person product marketing team from scratch and established cross-functional OKRs using agile frameworks, flexible goal-setting, and collaborative priority-setting that empowers each team member to co-own their objectives.

Key Questions Answered

• •Agile Goal Architecture: Structure product marketing goals as large epics — broad, overarching objectives — then break them into weekly deliverable subtasks. This mirrors agile product development and allows teams to maintain strategic direction while staying responsive to shifting priorities, avoiding the rigidity of fixed annual plans that no longer reflect how technology and SaaS markets move.
• •Pausing Goals Is a Strategy: When priorities shift, formally pausing an in-progress goal preserves the work already invested rather than abandoning it. Geraghty frames this as a feature, not a failure — the groundwork remains available to resume later, allowing the team to redirect focus toward what matters most in the current moment without losing prior momentum.
• •Cross-Functional PMM Scope: Product marketing at Publicis Media interfaces with product, support, program operations, scrum masters, and end users simultaneously. To manage this, Geraghty anchors every project by returning to one question: what problem are we solving? This single filter cuts through ambiguity and keeps cross-functional work aligned regardless of how many teams are involved.
• •Team Empowerment Through Knowledge Centers: Rather than delegating top-down, Geraghty builds each team member into a knowledge center — someone who understands their products, users, market, and internal processes deeply enough to co-set priorities. As members ramp up, the goal shifts from receiving direction to meeting leadership in the middle to define goals collaboratively.
• •Messaging Effectiveness Test: Effective messaging passes a real-time resonance check with the audience. If the listener shows confusion or disengagement, the message has failed regardless of its sophistication or effort invested. The target signal is visible comprehension — a nod, a spark of recognition — confirming the message clearly communicates the problem being solved and the action available.