When people set out to build a marketing organisation, they usually start with the org chart. Boxes, lines, roles. I think that is the wrong order. A marketing organisation should be designed from the decisions it has to make, and from the question of who can make those decisions best, with which knowledge.
This matters more than it seems, because structure shapes behaviour. An organisation set up by channel thinks in channels. One set up by product thinks in products. The structure quietly decides which questions get asked and which do not. Whoever designs it deliberately is also designing the brand.
- A marketing organisation should be designed from its decisions, not from the org chart.
- In marketing, impact is created mainly at the interfaces.
- New structures do not solve leadership problems.
- The core of the brand belongs in-house, rarely needed specialist knowledge can stay external.
- A stable core with flexible edges seems to me the most robust model.
Table of contents
What a marketing organisation really is
Formally, a company’s organisational structure describes who receives decisions from whom and to whom they are passed on. It maps responsibility and authority. For a marketing organisation this perspective is a good starting point, but it falls short. In marketing, most of the impact is not created along the lines but between them.
Campaigns emerge from the interplay of strategy, creative, media, data and retail. None of these disciplines can produce anything meaningful alone. A good marketing organisation is therefore above all a system of interfaces, designed so that collaboration is easy and responsibility is still clear.
I distinguish three levels. The first is the stance: what is marketing for in this company? The second is the structure: which teams exist, how are they cut, who reports to whom? The third is the processes: how does a campaign move from idea to execution, and who decides at which point? Many reorganisations focus on the second level and neglect the first and the third. Then the org chart changes, but the work does not.
This distinction comes from practice. At the agency oddity I built a creative team for dm-drogerie markt from 7 to 22 art directors. The main task there was to organise growth so that the work did not fall apart into individual jobs. Later, at the department store Breuninger, I was responsible for the three areas of marketing, content and production with a team of 37. The structure was the smaller issue. What mattered was clarifying the processes between the three areas so that separate responsibilities became shared work on the brand.
There is also a fourth level that is rarely designed explicitly: culture. It shows in how openly teams talk about mistakes, how much curiosity is allowed and how criticism of one’s own work is handled. A structure can support a good culture, but it cannot replace it. I have often seen two teams with the same setup work in completely different ways, because the attitude of the people in them was different.
Where building a marketing organisation fails in practice
The most common reason is that structure is used to solve a problem that is really a leadership problem. When teams do not work well together, the cause is rarely the line in the org chart. It is unclear goals or missing trust. A new structure only shifts such problems.
A second reason is following role models that do not fit. There are many models of how large companies organise their marketing. They are often made for a size, a business model and a culture that have little to do with one’s own. In my experience, mid-sized brands in particular tend to overload themselves with structures developed for corporations.
In fashion, the rhythm of work has also changed a great deal. A few large collections and campaigns used to set the pace. Today a brand has to deliver content continuously, for many channels and in many formats. An organisation built for large one-off projects comes under pressure. It helps to understand the path from briefing to delivery as one connected content supply chain and not as a sequence of separate jobs.
A third reason is that capabilities are built too late. Data, technology and digital channels are often treated as add-ons rather than as the core. Then specialist teams form at the edge, with too little influence on the decisions that matter. Data and technology belong where decisions are made, not in a corner of their own from which they only supply input.
What this means for a brand
A well-built marketing organisation protects the brand from fragmentation. When it is clear who is responsible for the overall picture, many people can work in many places without the brand losing its contour. This role does not have to sit with a single person, but it has to be assigned unambiguously.
For the brand, good structure also means speed. Not because everything is decided faster, but because fewer decisions travel upwards unnecessarily. Teams that know the frame within which they may decide for themselves work more calmly and more boldly. That frame does, however, have to be named explicitly. An unspoken frame leads teams to have every question signed off, just to be safe.
An important question is which capabilities should sit in-house and which can come from outside. I believe everything that makes up the core of the brand should be anchored inside: strategic thinking, a feel for the brand voice and the ability to judge creative work. For content production an in-house agency can make sense if volume and continuity justify it.
But anyone who, like me at Breuninger, leads an in-house team of 37 should not organise it by agency logic, with jobs, tickets and coordination through intermediaries. An internal team is strongest when it works close to the brand’s decisions and is not treated as a service provider in its own house. Specialist knowledge that is rarely needed, on the other hand, can stay external.
Finally, the technical foundation is part of the organisation too. A martech stack is not purely an IT topic. It shapes how teams work, which data they see and how quickly they can act. Planning organisation and technology separately often produces two systems that do not fit together.
What I would do differently when building a marketing organisation
I would start with the most important recurring decisions and clarify for each one who makes it, who is involved and who only needs to be informed. Only then would I think about teams and roles. This order prevents structures that look logical on paper but help nobody in daily work.
I would also start smaller than planned. An organisation is easier to expand than to shrink. Creating too many roles too early generates coordination effort that is hard to take back later.
And I would invest more time in the transitions. Reorganisations rarely fail because of the target picture, they fail on the way there. People need to understand why something is changing, what it means for them and how they find their place in the new structure. That takes conversations, not just announcements.
Where I am unsure is how stable a marketing organisation should be at all. Markets, channels and technologies change so quickly that any structure can be outdated after a few years. At the same time, people need reliability to work well. I suspect the answer lies in a stable core with clear responsibilities and flexible edges, where teams can regroup depending on the task. But I am not entirely sure about that.