Telefónica: How we raise its internal training in Growth Marketing

The client

Telefónica is one of the largest telecom operators in the world and one of the most influential companies in Spain’s digital economy. Its digital marketing team works in a sector where channels, measurement and technology change every few months.

That is exactly the problem for an organisation of that size: standard training arrives late. By the time a corporate programme is approved, produced and rolled out, the ground has already shifted. Telefónica wanted the opposite: people executing in the market that same quarter, able to explain what works and what does not with cases from the week before.

The challenge

The brief was not to give a talk. It was to genuinely raise the skill level of a senior team that already knew marketing, across a range that ran from advanced analytics to technologies almost nobody had mastered inside companies at the time.

Three requirements shaped the design of the programme:

• No loose theory. Every area had to end with the team using the tool, not watching slides.
• Genuinely senior level. The content had to add value for professionals already working in the marketing team of a multinational in the sector.
• Cover the frontier. Analytics, paid, automation, blockchain and the metaverse, with the judgement needed to separate what was already applicable from what was still a promise.

How we did it

We designed and produced the whole programme from scratch: 7 training areas and 12 sessions, with close to 975 slides of original material. Each area was delivered in two parts, a 1.5 hour masterclass to build the judgement and a 3 hour workshop to apply it live on the tool.

The 7 areas of the programme

1. Advanced strategy and Growth methodology. The difference between marketing and growth, the Growth Canvas and a step by step process, with cases dissected from Glovo, Dropbox and Brava Fabrics.
2. Data Analytics. The jump from Universal Analytics to GA4, metrics and dimensions, conversion funnels, cohort and audience analysis, RFM model, Data Studio reporting and privacy compliance with first, second and third party cookies.
3. Digital marketing and B2B social media. Content strategy, TOFU, MOFU and BOFU, on-page SEO and local SEO, B2B funnels, lead magnets and lead scoring, account based marketing and social selling with LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
4. Paid campaigns. Google, Meta, TikTok and LinkedIn: account structure, objectives, audience targeting, placements, creative, copy, UTMs, optimisation and spend control.
5. Marketing automation. What to automate and what not to, no-code tools, the CRM as the backbone of the relationship with contacts, reactivation strategies and domain warm-up.
6. Blockchain. How it works, proof of work versus proof of stake, smart contracts, DeFi, wallets and their types, staking, NFTs and spotting scams.
7. Metaverse. What it is and what it is not, platforms and devices, 3D modelling and graphics engines, real adoption figures, companies already present and entry strategy.

Four decisions that changed the outcome

We taught them using their own competitors. The examples in the paid campaigns block were not generic brands: we analysed real campaigns from Orange, Vodafone, Másmóvil and AT&T. Seeing the market from the outside triggers a kind of conversation no invented case can produce.

We launched live campaigns. In the paid workshop we built and launched real advertising on Google, Meta and TikTok during the session itself, budget control included. Nobody left wondering where each setting lives.

We created a token and handed it out. In blockchain we did not explain what a token is: we issued one and distributed it to attendees, who received it in their own wallet after creating it in the session. That is the difference between understanding the concept and having used it.

We taught ChatGPT in 2022. The programme already covered prompt development applied to brand awareness when generative AI was not yet a boardroom conversation. That same judgement is what we apply today in SEO and GEO.

Who delivered the training

We did not delegate it to external trainers or juniors. The sessions were delivered by cronuts’ three founding partners, each on their own ground.

Results

• High internal rating. The training was rated very positively by Ana Treviño, HR lead at Telefónica.
• Immediate application. The workshops and live sessions let the team apply what they learned on their own tools and campaigns, not on lab examples.
• Skills strengthened across the board. Analytics and GA4, B2B marketing and social selling, paid campaign management, automation and emerging technologies such as blockchain, NFTs and the metaverse.

Why this case matters today

Training the digital marketing team of one of the world’s largest telcos is not something you delegate. cronuts’ three partners did it themselves, because the authority to teach something comes from executing it, not from having read about it.

That same judgement explains what we do now. In 2022 we were teaching ChatGPT prompts and wallets when almost nobody used them in marketing. Today we work on SEO and GEO so brands become the source that ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews cite. The technology changes, the method does not: understand early, test for real, and teach only what we have already put into production.