Welcome back to The Catalyst. In this issue, Director of Brand Management, Kristin Braud, unpacks one of the most common (and costly) marketing challenges: the Strategy-Execution gap—the disconnect between what teams plan for and expect to achieve, and what actually makes it to market.
Earlier this year, IBM released a CMO report sharing that most marketing operating models are structurally incapable of keeping up with today’s pace of execution. Just 19% of CMOs in the report "describe their business functions as highly integrated, relying on seamless end-to-end workflows."
There's a common disconnect between what marketing teams expect and plan for vs. what they actually deliver in market: the Strategy-Execution Gap.
Unfortunately, this often leads to lost revenue (according to Gartner, companies where leaders report drag in collaboration and marketing execution are 37% less likely to exceed revenue and profit objectives) and the C-Suite questioning the value of marketing.
Without a rethinking of how your marketing works across functions, even the best strategies will die in planning decks or lose their value due to breakdowns in execution. Many high growth potential companies falter because of this gap.
The strategy-execution gap
I work with companies in highly technical industries and in demanding fields. I consistently see marketing leadership confront execution challenges that impede their ability to quickly get to market or produce at the volume expected by company leadership (and this year, often on leaner budgets). It’s not that the GTM strategy isn’t sound. It’s that the execution—especially cross-functional execution—lags.
It's no secret that the economy is on edge. Surging oil prices, inflation, tariffs, and policy shifts mean potential market vulnerabilities and headwinds. To mitigate risk, it's critical for companies to get to market with speed and the right positioning to capture market share and build loyalty that will pay dividends in the long run.
In recent months, I’ve been in conversations with marketing leaders across industries who are all running into similar challenges:
The answer: better cross-functional integration from strategy to planning and then in-market creative. Not just tech stack integration (though that matters), but true integration across strategy, marketing, sales, and creative.
According to a recent PwC survey of CMOs, "In a market that rewards speed, hesitation can cost growth." Critically, that speed to market comes from integrating cross-functional workflows, so the strategy flows through the in-market creative assets.
In an integrated model (like ours at PlatinumBlack), a GTM campaign is not passed from team to team. It's owned, built, and executed as a tightly connected workflow, moving from audience understanding to message creation, into core asset development, then scaling into a structured mix of assets by funnel stage, all orchestrated across the customer journey with defined timelines, measurement frameworks, and continuous optimization.
This process is designed to deliver both volume and variability in-market: a system where high-impact primary assets anchor a campaign, supported by a deliberate layer of derivative content tailored to channels, audiences, and moments. By eliminating handoffs and keeping teams engaged from strategy through execution, timelines accelerate while ensuring every asset is connected across the funnel.
Here's what that might look like for your team.
Start with shared inputs, not sequential handoffs
Architect content as a system, not a series of outputs
Keep strategy embedded through execution
Design for precision and speed simultaneously
Test in market, not in meetings
If functions are properly integrated, the result is fewer handoffs, faster timelines, and greater precision, because the same team that defines the strategy stays accountable for bringing it to life.
The marketing teams that will outperform and deliver on expected goals through the end of 2026 will be the ones that operate as unified growth engines, connecting strategy, marketing, execution, and measurement.
