Marketing Transformation Isn’t a Toolset - It’s a Mindset

It’s tempting to think of transformation as a fixed moment in time - a launch date, an announcement, a go-live milestone. But the reality is more complex. Most marketing teams aren’t going through one change. They’re navigating multiple, overlapping stages of transformation simultaneously.

Walk into any marketing team today and the chances are you won’t find one transformation underway - you’ll find three, four, or even five - and all at various stages. It might be the rollout of a new CRM platform, a revised agency model that’s reshaping roles, performance media shifting in-house, and a new brand strategy that’s ready to launch. But is this all? More often than not, the next transformation is already being scoped at the business case stage (AI, anyone?). And looming over it all is the general ambition to be more customer-first, more efficient, more collaborative…

At AAR, we sit inside these change programmes every day. 

We’ve learnt that transformation isn’t a tidy, linear thing. It’s a messy mix of overlapping stages: scoping, piloting, implementing, embedding, assessing and trouble shooting - all happening at once across different initiatives. The idea that change happens in a single wave is seductive. But it’s a myth. Most marketing teams are managing transformation in overlapping cycles, not single sprints.

Which is why the tools themselves - however powerful - are never enough.

We’ve seen it many times. And know categorically that without a shift in mindset, even the most expensive tech or elegant process redesign can fall flat. Tools alone don’t change behaviour. People do. The question to ask isn’t just what needs to change - but who, how much, and in what order? 

Change is cognitive and cultural

Transformation fails not because the vision isn’t right, but because the people inside it aren’t ready or enabled. According to the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve:

• 42% of learning is forgotten within 20 minutes
• 56% within an hour
• 66% within a day
• 79% within a month unless reinforced

That’s not failure - that’s human nature. Which means that embedding isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the battleground.

Sequencing education and reinforcement is critical. We often ask: Is this a change where 100 people need to make a 10% shift, or where 10 people need to make a 100% shift? The answer changes everything. The set-up. The pre-sell. The training cadence. The leadership sponsorship. The reward and recognition model.

And yet, many teams are expected to “just get on with it” in systems that haven’t been knitted together. MRM tools that don’t talk to CRM systems. Workflow platforms that sit outside core processes. Teams encouraged to adopt new skill behaviours that haven’t been reinforced, embedded, or coached in. People being told to be compliant to a piece of transformational tech that leads to duplication of work, and the worst kind of change: making them cut and paste from one “kit” to another. 

Success needs scaffolding

One of the biggest risks we see in transformation programmes is an unclear answer to this simple question: What does success look like?

If your business case hinged on efficiency, are you tracking the right performance data to show that it is landing? If you promised cost savings, are you measuring over-spends and root causes - not just absolute spend levels? If compliance was a core measure, are you checking behaviours and rounds of amends to get to 100%?

Transformation needs more than ambition. It needs rigour.

That’s why we focus on three things:

• Purpose, priorities and pace: Are they clear and aligned across leadership and teams?
• Sequenced education: Are the right people getting the right support at the right moment, as and when they need it?
• Embedded performance tracking: Do you have data signals that tell you if change is landing and where it isn’t in the process to enable an informed course correction?

As referenced in AAR’s Evolution of the Marketing Operating Model research, over 60% of marketers cite capability and behavioural change as the hardest part of embedding transformation. And ISBA's research into client-agency relationships reinforces this, with only 16% of respondents saying change programmes feel joined-up across people, process and partners.

Tools are inputs. Mindset is the enabler.

Whether it’s a new agency model, an in-housing shift, or a total operating model redesign, one truth holds: change only sticks when people adopt it.

This is why we always challenge the idea that transformation should be measured solely by launch dates. Adoption matters. Experience matters. Impact matters. 

Our view? It’s not about building the field.

In too many transformations, we see what we like to call Field of Dreams thinking: if we build it, they will come. (VG note - An oldie but a goodie film with Keven Costner - way before Yellowstone fame 😉) 

But that’s not how change works. You have to bring people with you, over time, with reinforcement. Asking, exploring, listening to concerns and suggestions. Working out what's not being said as much as what is.  Working out the blockers as well as the wins. The question isn’t just ‘Did we launch it?’ It’s ‘Did it land?’

And until marketing leaders focus as much on mindshift as they do on toolset, the most powerful transformations may well remain half-delivered, half-finished and with only half the potential realised. 

For a more in-depth chat about how AAR can help, please contact vgillan@aargroup.co.uk or tspong@aargroup.co.uk