The business has outgrown its marketing setup.
A lean, capable function that owns how the brand grows. Flexible enough to plug in partners, strong enough not to depend on them.
It usually shows up as a feeling before it shows up in a plan. Everything important is outsourced, or a small team is executing tasks without anyone holding the strategy, and the founder is still the de facto CMO years after that stopped being sustainable. The business has ambitions the marketing function wasn't built for.
Neither standard answer fits. Hiring a big team is slow, expensive, and usually premature, and outsourcing everything buys activity while surrendering ownership of the strategy, the data, and the knowledge of what actually works for your brand.
There’s a third option: a lean internal function that genuinely owns how the brand grows, designed to plug in partners and contractors where it makes sense without ever depending on them.
How do we build a marketing function that scales with us, without a big hiring round or outsourcing everything?
Who this is for Founders and CEOs thinking about the organisation, not a campaign. The most senior conversation in the work, and usually the most strategic.
Our Process
The function is designed to operate without us by the end of the engagement: until then, we're inside the work sitting in your channels and your planning sessions for as long as the build needs.
- 01
Design
The function shaped to your stage and ambition. Structure, roles, the build/buy/partner lines, and the operating rhythms or workflows underneath.
- 02
Embed
Inside the work. Strategic frameworks, embedded leadership through the transition, and the reporting and tooling that has to sit beneath all of it.
- 03
Transfer
Capability transfers as we go. By the end, the frameworks, the thinking, and the tools all live in your team, and we deliberately step back (or continue as a close partner and advisor).
Capability Review
An honest assessment of the current function against where the business is heading, plus the blueprint and sequenced build plan for the marketing operation you’d be running if you’d started with the right foundations.
- Assessment of the current function against the growth ambition: skills, systems, data, decision-making
- Function blueprint covering structure, roles, and operating rhythms
- Build, buy, and partner recommendations
- A sequenced build plan with priority order
- Marketing Tech stack review and implementation support
A clear picture of where the function is today, where it needs to be for the next stage of growth, and the sequenced plan to bridge the gap. What to hire, what to outsource, what to build internally, and in what order.
The tooling is part of the function: reporting infrastructure, AI-enabled workflows, and insight tools built for your business and owned by your team, along with the knowledge to run them.
The function we hand over is a system your team understands as deeply as the people who built it, not a black box that only we can maintain.
We were looking for someone to help develop and execute a strategy and over time coach our team to implement it ourselves. Fraser was the best part - he is really experienced, very knowledgeable, calm and a great person to collaborate with.
If the function needs to grow up faster than the headcount can
A 30-minute conversation about where the function is, where it needs to be, and what to build first.
Book a 30-minute call