4 Ways to Restructure for Marketing Effectiveness Post-COVID-19

The Legacy Problem: Internal Structures Over Consumer Logic

Is Your Marketing Structured Around the Consumer—or the Org Chart? Perhaps it’s time to restructure for marketing effectiveness. Here’s why:

Marketing has traditionally been structured around the business, not the customer:

🔹 Brand vs. Digital
🔹 Paid vs. Owned
🔹 Global vs. Local

This internal-first view creates:

❌ Confusing customer experiences
❌ Campaign duplication
❌ Delayed go-to-market

📉 A 2023 Gartner survey revealed that 65% of CMOs believe their current structure holds back marketing effectiveness.

The Post-COVID Reality

COVID-19 accelerated digital behaviours and raised consumer expectations. People now move seamlessly across touchpoints, but many marketing structures haven’t caught up.

We’ve worked with teams running separate brand and digital campaigns targeting the same audience without alignment. The result? Mixed messages, wasted spending, and confused consumers.

Structuring Around the Consumer Journey

The most effective brands are shifting from functional silos to structures that mirror how consumers engage with them. This often includes:

✅ Organising around the customer journey – not internal job titles
✅ Creating cross-functional squads or missions – empowered to deliver end-to-end outcomes
✅ Focusing on shared KPIs – like customer retention, brand uplift, or conversion

Real-world Examples from Go Ignite Consulting via The Engine Room, successfully restructuring for marketing effectiveness.

📈 Chivas Brothers
We worked with Chivas Brothers, makers of some of the world’s most beloved Scotch whisky brands, to transform their marketing strategy with a sharp focus on the consumer perspective. By embedding effectiveness into every stage of their marketing processes and introducing Brand Pulse sessions, we helped continuously monitor and optimise performance.

📈 The AA
We also supported The AA, the UK’s leading breakdown cover and car insurance provider, to better understand its brand performance, particularly from a brand awareness perspective. A key part of this work was integrating and aligning internal teams to co-create a unified measurement framework focused on customer needs.

We helped identify critical pain points in their effectiveness approach and designed a framework that tracked customers’ journeys through their decision-making process.
The result? This delivered a more insightful understanding of behaviours and preferences while resolving internal alignment challenges.

As Will Harrison, Group Marketing Director at The AA, put it:

“Nick expertly navigated the organisational dynamics and helped align the team on the path forward, enabling The AA to implement the right program to unify different approaches and perspectives.”

These examples illustrate how aligning team structures – embracing restructuring for marketing effectiveness at the forefront – with customer journeys can significantly improve agility, collaboration, and overall effectiveness.

❓ Key Questions to Ask

• Are we structured to reflect how consumers engage with us? Would restructuring for marketing effectiveness shift the needle for our business and brand?
  
• Where are teams duplicating work or misaligned?
  
• Do we have full-funnel visibility?
  
• Are we measuring collective impact or just siloed success?

How to Restructure for Marketing Effectiveness

1. Start with a customer journey structure and map
   ➤ Identify handoffs, overlaps, and friction points
   
2. Pilot cross-functional working
   ➤ Create a pod for a key product, campaign, or market
   
3. Set shared goals and outcomes
   ➤ Align KPIs across teams
   
4. Build in regular reviews
   ➤ Adjust structure and roles as your business evolves

Why Structure Impacts Marketing Effectiveness

When your structure reflects how consumers think and behave, your marketing becomes:

⚡ Faster
🤝 More collaborative
📈 More impactful

Restructuring doesn’t mean scrapping everything. However, it does require a shift in mindset—from a function-first to a consumer-first approach.

Need Support Restructuring Your Marketing Team for Better Results and Effectiveness?

At Go Ignite, we help organisations review and redesign their marketing operating models for better alignment, agility, and performance.

📞 Let’s talk or explore how we work.
💬 Or join the conversation, in June 2025, in London for The Ignition Room ‘Relaunch’ Huddle, for marketing leaders focused on effectiveness, so you can taste the value and expertise our paid Membership can offer.