Marketing is the first function to absorb the shock when a company goes through change.
Unclear goals and frozen budgets during transitions compound the damage. Set both early.
A fractional CMO brings the outside perspective and senior stability your team cannot generate from inside the storm.
Marketing doesn't do well with change.
Marketing is like cats — we like our structure, our habits, our food, our owner. When everything shifts inside a company, the marketing function is almost always the first to feel it.
But why?
It's hard to navigate marketing during times of change. Ours is a job highly reliant on planning and organisation. The moment that structure disappears, it becomes an avalanche: we know it and we feel it.
When we talk about planning and organisation, we also refer to budget management, KPIs, and goals. During transitions, visibility over budget gets murky, and goals can feel either unachievable or completely disconnected from reality.
Marketing also plays a central role in employer branding and in the sense of belonging that holds a company together. When that sense of belonging erodes, keeping the ship on course becomes significantly harder.
Navigating uncertainty is already hard enough. Providing your marketing team with clear, realistic goals and a protected budget gives them direction when everything else feels in flux. Cats don't do well when they don't know where they're going — it usually means they are going to the vet.
Assess where your team stands and provide support accordingly. Help team members who are disengaged find their path, whether that means rediscovering their motivation or moving on. Disengagement is contagious and does no one any favours. Conversely, your motivated team members are the ones who need your attention most right now. Do not let them get lost in the noise.
Fight for a positive culture every day. Negativity attracts negativity. It is not some abstract principle, it is a spiral that companies enter faster than they expect. A constructive environment is what keeps creativity and resilience alive when the pressure is highest.
Welcome external contributors: part-time CMOs, advisory board members, specialist designers. Show your team that something new is being built. A team that has been through the grind often struggles to generate fresh energy from within — not because they are not capable, but because they are exhausted. That is not a weakness. It is a signal.
At iytro we have an insider view into marketing change management.
We won't claim we have seen it all, but we have been present at most stages of a company's life. Earth, Wind and Fire could be a fun way to sum it up.
We worked with companies in hyper-growth who needed to avoid a premature CMO hire. We worked with companies going through layoffs who needed a fresh marketing perspective to rebuild momentum. We worked with large teams, small ones, and companies with no marketing function at all. None of them enjoy change. No marketer wakes up ready to tear down years of work and start from scratch. It is hard.
Refreshing — or more accurately, fully redoing a brand identity after a decade is a significant undertaking. To lead this kind of change, the CMO needs to embody the change itself. People tend to be energised by a rebranding project, which is a genuine asset. The challenge is the sheer scope: every page of the website, every asset, every event, every centimetre of the previous identity needs to move. That is not a one-person job. The advantage of a composable marketing set-up is that you can bring in the right specialist for each piece (art director, designer, developer, brand and content lead) without the overhead of a full team on payroll.
When you are organising marketing for a 150-person company, the team structure rarely looks like a startup's. Over time, headcount grows — and sometimes slows — without any clear reason. When restructuring, the goal is one thing: lean and efficient. A five-person team, sometimes three, can produce excellent results while protecting EBITDA. Bigger is rarely better.
Difficult times bring lower motivation and disengagement — which is exactly what a company does not need during difficult times, and yet here we are. People are human. They want to pay their bills, yes, but they also want to belong to something larger than themselves. There is nothing more effective than an ambitious new project to bring a team back together. Some will stay. Some will not. Some of those who leave are actually doing the company a favour. That is the honest reality of change management, and often the starting point for a full marketing reset.
Navigating change in marketing is not just a strategic exercise. You are not just changing a marketing strategy: you are changing how people belong to a group called a team, and ultimately, a company. That is a culture change. Not a walk in the park.
Don't postpone difficult conversations, they are the ones that will make your company grow. Talk to iytro.
