As the Global Digital Platforms Manager at Warner Bros. Discovery, I designed and implemented a multi-layered Content Management System (CMS) taxonomy that powered internal content workflows across multiple geographies, user groups, and brand initiatives. The structure was built to support scalability, governance, and intuitive content discoverability across a complex enterprise ecosystem.

Objectives

• To create a global yet localized CMS taxonomy to support regional teams and enterprise-wide communications

• To provide intelligent segmentation through tags and folders for streamlined publishing workflows

• To ensure searchability, transparency, and auditability of assets

• To promote content reusability while enabling localization flexibility

• To align CMS taxonomy with Poppulo, Drupal, and other enterprise platforms

Architecture Overview

The CMS was organized into a parent-child tag structure, reflecting key stakeholder groups, regions, and business lines.

Primary Category: WBD

This served as the master umbrella tag under which all subcategories and regions were structured for enterprise-wide visibility.

Subcategories Included:

• Brand Users
  This tag was used for internal marketing and creative stakeholders, providing access to brand toolkits, content templates, and asset libraries. It included tone-of-voice guides, usage rights documentation, and downloadable brand elements.

• CMS – Asia Pacific

• CMS – EMEA

• CMS – Latin America

• CMS – North America

Each region-specific tag supported localized communications, language variants, and content scheduling based on region-specific needs.

The dotted hierarchy in the interface represented both taxonomic relationships and publishing workflows. Regional leads managed their respective nodes, with global oversight provided by my team.

Features & Functionality

• Search-Driven Navigation
  A clean, filterable UI allowed users to search by tag, region, or keyword to instantly locate and deploy content relevant to their business unit.

• Role-Based Access Controls
  Permissions were tied to tag groupings — for example, EMEA contributors had edit access to CMS – EMEA only, while global brand managers had broader access to Brand User content.

• CMS Interoperability
  The taxonomy was designed to work seamlessly across platforms such as Poppulo (for signage and email), Drupal (for intranet publishing), and Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) (for web content).

  Outcomes

  This CMS architecture:

• Streamlined onboarding of contributors across 4 regions

• Reduced content duplication by 40% through clearer taxonomy and templating

• Enabled global oversight while empowering localized control

• Established a scalable foundation for future CMS growth and cross-platform governance

  Final Thoughts

  This wasn’t just a taxonomy project — it was a transformation of how content was organized, accessed, and governed across Warner Bros. Discovery’s internal ecosystem. It empowered teams around the globe to communicate effectively while maintaining consistency, brand alignment, and flexibility.