Greg has spent his career in analytics and research roles at Siemens, Kodak, AT&T and now Coca-Cola. He has seen the industry evolve from back-office analytics to fast, connected insight. 

When he describes the old ways of tracking campaigns, it’s painfully familiar. “It was very typical for a monthly cadence to be in place. That meant you would field research for a month, then you would wait probably two weeks for an agency to take that information, digest it, put together some PowerPoint reports and send it back.” 

By the time that deck was written, reviewed, and circulated, six weeks had passed. In many cases, “your campaign might even be over at that point,” says Greg. 

That lag creates a simple business problem. Insight arrives too late to affect the work already in the market. At best, it informs the next campaign. At worst, it gets filed away and forgotten while teams move on to the next brief. 

Coca-Cola recognized that this simply did not fit a modern, digital-first media environment. Campaigns move faster. Creative changes more often. Stakeholders expect answers now, not in a quarter’s time. 

“What we needed was to take weeks and cut it down to either days or hours,” explains Greg. 

Excite was Coca-Cola’s answer to that challenge. It is the company’s global, near-real-time tracking system for live campaigns. 

Greg describes it as one of the “hallmark programs” that his team runs. At its core, Excite delivers two major advantages. 

First, it gives Coca-Cola a consistent way to track advertising and experiences across the markets that matter most. In the past, tracking was done “on a very country-specific or region-specific basis.” With Excite, they now have “a consistent approach across over 50 different countries.” 

That level of consistency lets Coca-Cola compare performance across markets and brands instead of stitching together dozens of local trackers. 

Second, Excite changes the speed and format of measurement. Instead of relying on a monthly research cycle and a delayed slide deck, Excite is built around continuous data collection, automation, and dashboards. 

“We changed up to an approach that was going to be driven by technology, coming into a dashboarding system that is democratized, open to all of our associates in the company to access and see results, which are coming in very, very quickly.” 

The aim is “close to real-time telemetry on how our campaigns are doing.” 

In practice, that means data flows from research partners into Coca-Cola’s own data environment, then into interactive dashboards that stakeholders across the organization can use.  

Every tracking system has to choose what it cares about. Greg explains that when they designed Excite, they started from the decisions their internal stakeholders needed to make.  

“We really took a very close look at what the key questions and the key types of decisions were that our marketing clients within Coca-Cola would need to be able to answer.” 

Those questions fall into three broad buckets. 

First, the impact of campaigns on people. Greg describes three simple dimensions: “One is what I would call awareness. Secondly, is one of resonance with consumers. Third is one of driving consumer action.” 

Within each area, there are specific metrics and diagnostics, but the frame is easy for non-researchers to grasp. Are people noticing us, are we connecting with them, and are we shifting behavior? 

Second, Excite looks at touchpoints. It is not enough to know that a campaign is working. Teams also need to know where it is working, and why. 

“We need to be able to understand, according to touchpoint, which particular touchpoints are most effective in driving each of the different campaigns that we have going on. And very importantly, why. How do touchpoints work together to complement one another?” 

This becomes more important as Coca-Cola invests more beyond classic TV. Greg notes that the company has shifted a lot of funding from television into digital and experience-based activity, so their tracking has to follow that. 

Third, Excite cuts results by people, culture, and occasions. Coca-Cola is very explicit that it is a “human-centric company.” The same campaign can play very differently across audiences, cultures, and occasions. 

“It is very important for us to be able to answer all of these different questions according to different types of individuals, audience segments, and cultures across countries. And for different types of occasions.” 

The result is a measurement system that helps teams answer questions like: 

• Which creative assets are working for whom 

• Which touchpoints are driving awareness vs action 

• How the same idea plays across countries, cultures, and drinking occasions 

All while a campaign is still live.

Real-time tracking isn’t just faster reporting. It changes the decisions teams can make. 

Having near-real-time campaign tracking is not just a technical upgrade. It shifts the way decisions get made. The most obvious change is the ability to adjust campaigns in flight. Greg describes the main use cases:  

• Understand which creative assets are working better than others, and “upweight those assets which are going to be better performing” 

• See which channels and touchpoints are working best for a specific brand and campaign 

• Build “meta learnings” that show broader patterns across markets and occasions 

Those meta learnings have a very practical use. Not every country can run always-on research. By aggregating learnings across 50 markets, the global team can support smaller markets in a smarter, more evidence-based way. 

“As much as we would like to be able to have research always on everywhere, the reality of it is sometimes you have to be able to extrapolate.” 

Speed also changes the relationship between research and the rest of the business. When data is delayed and locked in PowerPoints, it naturally becomes a slow, expert-only tool. When data is live, in a dashboard that anyone can access, research becomes part of the day-to-day working environment. 

Greg describes three important features of this shift: 

• Data is “driven by data rather than driven by PowerPoint slides” 

• There is “democratization of data,” so people across the company can see and explore results 

• The system is flexible and customizable, so teams can drill down into what matters for their market or brand 

Coca-Cola operates on a huge scale, with a large portfolio and a global networked organization. Most brands do not have that level of resource. The good news is that many of the principles behind Excite are transferable, even if your budget and team are much smaller. 

• Start from decisions, not metrics 

Greg’s team began by asking internal clients what decisions they needed to make and what information would help them make those decisions. Any brand can start there before designing a tracker or dashboard. 

• Move data into your environment 

Whether you have a full data lake or a simpler setup, the idea is the same. Ask partners to deliver data into a structure you control, then build simple, role-based views for marketing, media, and insight teams. The format matters as much as the content. 

• Shorten the cycle where it matters most 

You may not be able to move everything to daily or hourly reads, but you can identify a few critical campaigns or markets where speed would unlock real value and start there. 

• Use simple shared frames 

Awareness, resonance, and action is a model anyone can understand, even if the diagnostic metrics underneath are more detailed and complex. 

• Combine “always on” insight with smart extrapolation 

If you cannot track everywhere, combine learnings from your stronger markets to guide teams with limited data. 

This is also where a partner like Delineate can help. Delineate works with brands that want real-time, decision-ready insight without building a complex in-house infrastructure. 

By combining live brand and campaign tracking with strong data quality controls, Delineate helps brands move from lagged reporting to the kind of agile, evidence-based approach Coca-Cola has built. 

Greg describes his career in analytics as “like riding a wave.” That wave has taken marketing insight from slow, siloed functions into something much closer to the front line. 

The shift he describes is bigger than any single program. It is about moving from waiting weeks for a view of performance to getting signals while campaigns are still running. It is about replacing static decks with shared, always available data. And it is about connecting creative, media, audience, and occasion in a way that lets teams act, not just reflect. 

Most brands will not build a system that mirrors Coca-Cola’s approach. They do not need to. The more important step is accepting the basic premise: if your measurement only tells you what happened long after the money is spent, you are missing most of the value. 

Starting small, moving data out of slides and into systems, and shortening feedback loops where it matters most are all realistic, achievable shifts. With the right partners and a clear view of the decisions you need to make, you can move from asking “How did that campaign do” months later to answering “What should we do now?” while the work is still live. 

Delineate helps brands move from lagged reporting to real-time brand and campaign tracking, so your teams can make smarter decisions while it still counts – Get in touch today! 

Listen to the complete Research Revolutionaries episode with Greg Pharo for all the context, stories, and insights he shared.