Imagine our flagship SaaS product experiences a sudden, 20% drop in daily active users (DAU) over 48 hours, with initial reports suggesting a performance degradation impacting a core feature. As an Associate Product Marketing Manager, outline your immediate steps to diagnose the problem from a market and user perspective, how you would collaborate with engineering and product teams, and what communication strategy you'd propose to internal stakeholders and affected customers.

CIRCLES Framework: 1. Comprehend: Verify DAU drop, identify affected feature, confirm performance degradation. 2. Identify Customer: Segment impacted users, analyze recent changes (releases, campaigns). 3. Report: Initiate war room with Product/Engineering. 4. Communicate: Draft internal stakeholder brief (impact, initial findings). 5. Launch: Coordinate with Product for root cause analysis (RCA), Engineering for fix. 6. Evaluate: Monitor recovery, user feedback. 7. Summarize: Prepare post-mortem, update customer communication plan. MECE principle for stakeholder communication: Internal (leadership, sales, support), External (affected users, general user base).

Upon a 20% DAU drop, I'd immediately activate a 'Crisis Response' protocol. First, I'd use the CIRCLES framework: 1. Comprehend: Verify the DAU drop via analytics, pinpoint the core feature, and confirm performance degradation reports. 2. Identify Customer: Segment impacted users by usage patterns and recent activity to understand the direct impact. 3. Report: Initiate an urgent cross-functional 'war room' with Product and Engineering leads to share initial data and user reports. My role is to provide the market and user perspective. 4. Communicate: Draft an internal stakeholder brief (leadership, sales, support) outlining the confirmed issue, immediate impact, and ongoing diagnostic steps. 5. Launch: Collaborate with Product on root cause analysis (RCA) and Engineering on immediate remediation. I'd prepare a tiered communication strategy: proactive status updates for affected customers, and a general announcement for the broader user base, emphasizing transparency and resolution timelines. 6. Evaluate: Monitor DAU recovery and user feedback post-fix. 7. Summarize: Conduct a post-mortem, updating all stakeholders and refining future incident response plans.