Marketing Insanity: Expecting Better Results From Teams that were Never Trained
Companies spend millions on research, media, creative, technology and production — then leave the most consequential decisions to marketers who were never taught how those disciplines work together.
By Robert Douglas
We have been noticing something across marketing organizations.
More accurately, we have been experiencing it.
It reveals itself during conversations about audience strategy. During creative reviews. Inside media recommendations. When production decisions are made. And when campaigns fail to perform as expected.
The problem is not that marketers are unintelligent. Nor is it that they do not care.
The problem is that many have never been properly taught how modern marketing actually works.
They may understand their company, product or category. They may be proficient in a particular channel. They may know how to manage a budget, prepare a presentation or move a project through an organization.
But far fewer have been given a comprehensive education in how consumer insight, business strategy, brand positioning, creative development, media planning, production and measurement work together to produce growth.
Yet they are expected to make consequential decisions across all of them.
That is not simply a talent problem.
It is a training problem.
We have experienced the disconnect firsthand
This is not a theory we developed by reading industry surveys.
Left Off Madison has experienced the capability gap firsthand—across startups and global corporations, and across categories including beauty, food, consumer goods, and automotive.
We have worked with intelligent, committed marketing professionals who have been placed in positions requiring them to make decisions they were never adequately trained to make.
We have seen teams struggle to distinguish a business objective from a marketing objective—or a marketing objective from a media KPI.
We have seen creative assets expected to build awareness, generate traffic and close a sale simultaneously, without recognizing that each task requires a different message, structure, format and measure of success.
We have seen audience research treated as a collection of demographic facts rather than a source of genuine human insight.
We have seen creative evaluated according to personal preference or internal hierarchy rather than strategy, consumer relevance and the job the communication must perform.
We have seen media brought into the process after the creative work is finished. And we have seen production decisions made before anyone has determined where, how or why the content will be consumed.
We have also seen individual marketers given responsibility for strategy, creative, media, production, ecommerce, analytics and agency management—despite having developed their careers primarily within only one or two of those disciplines.
These are not incapable people.
In many cases, they are capable professionals working inside organizations that expanded their responsibilities without expanding their education.
The result is a predictable disconnect: companies expect integrated marketing decisions from people whose experience and training have largely been fragmented.
Agencies recognize that disconnect because we experience its consequences: unclear briefs, contradictory feedback, misaligned assets, inefficient spending, unnecessary rounds of revision and campaigns asked to perform jobs they were never designed to do.
But agencies share some responsibility, too.
Too often, we quietly compensate for the capability gap. We rewrite the brief. Correct the strategy. Restructure the media plan. Rework the creative. Adapt the production.
We fix the immediate assignment without explaining why the original approach was unlikely to work.
Perhaps it is time for agencies to do both: deliver the work and transfer the knowledge behind it.
The expectations have grown faster than the capabilities
The modern marketer is expected to be part strategist, researcher, creative director, media planner, data analyst, technologist, financial steward and organizational diplomat.
At the same time, each of those disciplines has become more complicated.
Media has fragmented. Consumer behavior changes constantly. Privacy regulation is reshaping targeting and measurement. Retail media has become an ecosystem unto itself. Production now stretches from television commercials to creator content. Artificial intelligence is changing how nearly every marketing task gets done.
The World Economic Forum estimates that 39% of workers’ core skills will change by 2030. That is not a distant future. It is happening during the planning cycles marketers are managing today. World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report 2025
Marketing is feeling that disruption acutely.
In a 2025 survey of more than 3,500 marketers, 56.9% identified a performance-marketing skills gap. Marketers also reported gaps in social media skills at 46.1%, ecommerce at 41.3%, and content and copywriting at 40.6%. Marketing Week Career & Salary Survey
The American Marketing Association reached a similar conclusion. Its study of 1,279 marketing professionals identified the largest competency gaps in digital marketing, data and analytics, proving ROI, and data privacy and compliance. AMA 2025 Marketing Skills Report
These are not emerging specialties somewhere on the edges of marketing.
They are central to how marketing decisions are made, budgets are allocated and marketing’s value is demonstrated.
Companies try to hire their way out of the problem
When a capability gap becomes visible, the default response is often to hire someone who appears to possess the missing experience.
That can help. But hiring is not a substitute for organizational learning.
Every new employee brings experience from a limited number of companies, categories, agencies, channels and business situations. Their résumé may demonstrate exposure to an area without necessarily proving mastery of it.
Someone who managed a media agency is not necessarily a media expert.
Someone who approved creative is not necessarily skilled at evaluating creative.
Someone who received audience-research presentations may not know how to distinguish a meaningful insight from an interesting statistic.
Someone who participated in a successful campaign may not understand which decisions actually made it successful.
This is not necessarily intentional misrepresentation. It is the natural limitation of learning marketing almost entirely through individual job experience.
Most marketers are taught how marketing works at the companies where they happen to work. If those companies have weak processes, fragmented disciplines or inexperienced managers, those deficiencies can be passed from one generation of marketers to the next.
The industry keeps recycling experience without consistently building expertise.
Hiring can add a capability.
Education can build an organization.
We invest in platforms more readily than people
Companies spend enormous amounts on data, technology, research, agencies, media and production. But they often devote comparatively little attention to teaching their teams how to make better decisions with those resources.
The imbalance is becoming even more dangerous with AI.
Gartner reports that CMOs are allocating an average of 15.3% of their 2026 marketing budgets to AI, yet only 30% say their organizations are ready to scale AI capabilities. At the same time, overall marketing budgets remain essentially flat at 7.8% of company revenue. Gartner 2026 CMO Spend Survey
Companies are investing in more powerful machinery without always ensuring that their teams know how to operate it—or possess the judgment required to evaluate what it produces.
Technology can make marketing faster.
It cannot, by itself, make marketers wiser.
In fact, the easier it becomes to generate research summaries, strategies, creative concepts, media recommendations and content, the more important it becomes to know whether any of it is actually good.
AI does not eliminate the need for marketing education.
It makes marketing education more urgent.
Training is still treated as an employee benefit
Professional development is frequently positioned as something an employee may pursue if time permits.
It is rarely treated as part of the company’s growth infrastructure.
ADP Research found that only 17% of workers strongly agree that their employers are investing in the skills they need for career advancement. In North America, the figure was only 18%.
The business consequences are significant. Employees who believe they receive the training they need are 3.3 times more likely to describe themselves as highly productive and nearly six times more likely to recommend their company as a great place to work. ADP People at Work 2025
Training, therefore, should not be categorized as a perk.
It is a productivity, retention and performance investment.
And in marketing, it may be one of the most overlooked growth investments a company can make.
Agency collaboration should be a marketing competency
There is another capability that receives remarkably little attention: knowing how to work effectively with an agency.
Marketers are evaluated on budgets, deadlines, campaign results and internal stakeholder management.
But how often are they evaluated on whether they created the conditions that enabled their agency to produce exceptional work?
Did they provide a clear business problem?
Did they give the agency access to the right people and information?
Did they invite strategic counsel early enough to influence the outcome?
Did they involve media and production before the creative direction was finalized?
Did they consolidate internal feedback?
Did they distinguish personal preference from consumer evidence?
Did they give the agency sufficient permission to challenge existing assumptions?
Did they create trust—or merely manage deliverables?
These are not “soft” considerations. They directly influence the speed, quality, efficiency and effectiveness of the work.
The ANA and 4As have found that formal client-agency relationship management can produce better communication, greater efficiency, stronger work, increased speed and improved ROI. Yet even among the best-practice-oriented marketers surveyed, only 66% reported having a formal relationship-management program. ANA/4As Business Case for Relationship Management
If effective agency collaboration contributes to business outcomes, it should be taught, measured and included in marketer performance reviews.
An agency cannot produce its best work if the client organization does not know how to enable it.
And a client should not be expected to know how without someone teaching them.
Perhaps agencies need to do more than deliver the work
Traditionally, clients hire agencies to develop strategies, campaigns, content, media plans and production.
Perhaps that definition is too narrow.
The best agencies should not merely provide answers. They should help clients become better at asking questions, evaluating options and making decisions.
That does not mean teaching clients to replace their agencies.
It means creating better-informed partners who understand what strong marketing requires—and who can recognize the difference between genuine expertise and convincing theater.
At Left Off Madison, this idea feels particularly relevant to who we are.
We were born on Madison Avenue. Our senior leaders received the foundational education, training and mentorship that came from working inside some of the world’s most established agency organizations.
We then spent decades applying those disciplines across companies, categories, cultures, business models and economic environments.
Today, we bring strategy, creative, media and production together for ambitious marketers who need to accomplish more with less.
Perhaps the next expression of our “massive experience” should be sharing more of it.
What a Left Off Madison curriculum could include
This should not be another collection of inspirational webinars or generic presentations filled with marketing terminology.
It should be built around the real decisions marketers are required to make every day.
A potential curriculum could include:
Turning business objectives into marketing objectives
Finding actionable consumer and cultural insights
Distinguishing information, observation and insight
Building a differentiated brand position
Writing a brief that inspires rather than constrains
Evaluating creative ideas objectively
Matching message, format and length to the marketing task
Understanding the distinct roles of awareness, traffic and conversion
Connecting brand building with performance marketing
Understanding media economics, KPIs and attribution
Integrating media and production earlier in the creative process
Managing production budgets without diminishing the idea
Interpreting data and challenging misleading conclusions
Using AI without surrendering strategic judgment
Proving marketing’s contribution to business growth
Building a more productive client-agency partnership
Integrating strategy, creative, media and production from the beginning
The program could begin with a marketing-capability assessment to identify where the most consequential gaps exist.
From there, Left Off Madison could offer customized workshops, leadership sessions, departmental training, live assignments, office hours and practical application to current business challenges.
Rather than teaching media through hypothetical examples, we could evaluate an active media plan.
Rather than discussing briefs abstractly, we could rewrite a real one.
Rather than presenting creative best practices, we could teach teams how to evaluate the work currently in development.
Rather than providing another AI demonstration, we could help marketers develop the judgment and governance needed to use AI responsibly.
The goal would not be to issue certificates for sitting through a presentation.
The goal would be to improve the quality of the next decision.
Could an academic partner make the idea stronger?
There may also be an opportunity to build this with an academic institution.
The Fashion Institute of Technology, based in New York City, is known primarily for fashion, but its Advertising and Marketing Communications program provides a rigorous education across integrated marketing communications, advertising strategy, media planning, creative execution and production. Its curriculum is developed by practicing professionals and an advisory board of industry leaders. FIT Advertising and Marketing Communications
FIT also provides customizable company training in marketing, data analysis, technology, design and product development—with programs ranging from one day to an entire semester. FIT Company Training Options
A collaboration could combine academic rigor with Left Off Madison’s real-world experience: enduring marketing fundamentals paired with current business cases, practical tools and the realities of getting modern marketing made.
We are not announcing such a partnership today.
But it is an idea we are exploring.
The next campaign may not be the most important deliverable
Clients will always need agencies to create strategies, ideas, media plans, content and campaigns.
But perhaps the most valuable thing an agency can help create is a more capable marketing organization.
One that understands the fundamentals.
One that can connect the disciplines.
One that recognizes great thinking.
One that knows how to challenge its agency — and how to enable it.
One that makes fewer expensive decisions based on convention, hierarchy or personal preference.
And one that can accomplish more with less because it has learned how to make better choices.
Maybe the next thing clients should ask their agencies to produce is not another campaign.
Maybe it is a better marketing organization.
So, we would like to ask marketers directly:
What are your thoughts? Should Left Off Madison offer education and training for marketing teams? If so, what is the first subject you would want us to teach? Send your reply to hello@leftoffmadison.com today.
