Enterprise marketers create content through campaigns, concepts, audiences, channels, formats, approvals, localization, and optimization, but existing tools treated these as disconnected steps. Over two years, I led a sequence of studies to understand how marketers actually create, scale, organize, review, and optimize content across large campaigns. The work evolved from validating an early canvas concept to defining the mental model, product strategy, and interaction principles that shaped Horizon Canvas and later informed the Next Gen Canvas direction.

• Marketers build context gradually

• Creation is non-linear

• Users validate one direction before scaling

• Concepts matter more than channels

• Content creation is collaborative

• Organization and retrieval are core to creation

• AI is trusted when people stay in control