Inside Cricket Brand Center: Systems for Scale & Consistency

Role: Senior Brand Communications Manager

Scope: Cricket Brand Center/DAM, national brand governance, creative review systems, training, product naming, and rapid-turn creative support.

Audience: Internal teams, agency partners, national retail stores (Target, Walmart, Best Buy, etc.), Cricket Authorized Retailers across 5000+ locations, sponsorship and events partners (including WWE and Cricket’s MEAC/SWAC college football properties), and millions of B2C prepaid wireless customers nationwide.

Company
Cricket Wireless

Years
2018-2023

Problem:

  • Huge Huge volume of creative across 5,000+ doors and partners with uneven brand consistency.​

  • Slow, fragmented approval processes across brand, legal, and business units, leading to off‑brand executions and timeline risk.​

  • Need for a scalable brand‑enablement model that improved brand recall, reduced churn, and could support the AT&T Prepaid portfolio, the fastest‑growing prepaid portfolio in the U.S. throughout my tenure at Cricket Wireless.

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Results:

  • Supported the Cricket contribution to the AT&T Prepaid portfolio, which remained the fastest‑growing prepaid portfolio in the U.S. throughout my tenure, with stronger brand consistency and recall as key enablers.​

  • Saw the Brand Center review model and office‑hours format adopted as a best‑practice approach across AT&T for creative reviews and brand governance.​

  • Delivered six‑figure savings through streamlined workflows, fewer rounds of rework, and reduced off‑brand creative in the field.​

  • Recognized with a peer‑nominated Cricket Culture Award for collaboration, accountability, and professionalism.

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What I Did:

Digital Asset Management & Brand Center

  • Owned and evolved the Cricket Brand Center (DAM) as the single source of truth for guidelines, assets, and enablement content.​

  • Partnered with AT&T and IBM technology teams to prioritize and implement feature updates, UX improvements, and routing logic within the Brand Center platform.​

  • Defined taxonomy, permissions, and governance so internal teams, agencies, and Authorized Retailers could self‑serve on‑brand assets quickly and confidently.

Real-Time Creative Review System

  • Designed and launched daily “office hours” review calls for ~200 invitees, giving internal teams and agencies direct, real‑time access to brand guidance.

  • Provided live feedback on customer‑facing creative so teams left each call with clear, actionable direction and approvals, dramatically reducing revision loops.

  • Became the go‑to internal resource for urgent creative needs, often turning same‑day assets and shepherding them through legal approval thanks to deep knowledge of brand, legal, and regulatory requirements.

Brand Center Review Workflow & Governance

  • Helped architect and implement the Brand Review workflow with IBM, the AT&T Technical Development Team, and the AT&T Brand Team inside the online Cricket Brand Center, ensuring creative was routed correctly based on time sensitivity, channel, and legal requirements.​

  • Collaborated closely with legal and business unit stakeholders to codify rules for advertising, trademark, and line‑of‑business reviews, adding brand review as a standard checkpoint rather than an ad hoc step.

  • Personally owned the majority of brand reviews, with colleagues stepping in only when out of office, ensuring a consistent voice and standard across thousands of assets.

Scale, Enablement, Training & Naming

  • Reviewed 6,000+ creative assets during tenure, protecting quality and consistency across retail, digital, sponsorship, and partner executions.​​

  • Created ongoing enablement content—including newsletters, case studies, videos, and live training sessions—to keep internal teams and partners informed about brand updates and best practices.

  • Led brand voice training for the multi–J.D. Power award‑winning customer service team for two years, aligning call center conversations with external brand promises.

  • Managed product and offer naming conventions in later years, ensuring every new name met brand, legal, and trademark requirements and flowed seamlessly through the Brand Center review system.​

"Kayla is a wonderful cross-functional partner. She is very responsive and has a key eye for Cricket Brand details. She listens to our ideas and help to find the right brand elements to fulfill our design ideas. Very thankful for Kayla and her expertise."

— Direct Quote From Anonymous Senior AT&T Leader Peer-to-Peer Feedback

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