Report: Creative Personnel are Finding Difficulty Aligning with Marketers

Marketers and in-house creative management often have to work closely together, but new research suggests that there are still obstacles keeping them from optimizing their time together. Specifically, each team would like to see better leadership from one another.

InSource and In Motion Now recently conducted the “2019 In-House Creative Management Report” and discovered that only 64 percent of marketers think that creative leadership is effective. On the opposite end of the spectrum, just 54 percent of creative personnel think that marketing leadership is effective.

Although there are still clear struggles between creative and marketing teams, the situation has improved over the past year. The majority of respondents (47 percent) say that the relationship between marketing and creative personnel has improved over the last 12 months. Only 17 percent say that the relationship has not improved.

Sales and Marketing Still Struggle to Find Alignment

The creative team is not the only one that marketers have struggled to work with in the past – the sales team has found difficulty aligning with marketers as well, according to previous research.

InsideView published “The State of Sales and Marketing Alignment in 2018: How Leading B2B Companies Drive Growth by Aligning Teams and Go-to-Market Teams” and found that there are still three major obstacles that keep sales and marketing from aligning: a lack of accurate/shared data on target accounts and prospects (43 percent), communication (43 percent) and measuring with different metrics (41 percent).

When marketers were questioned on what they need most from sales personnel, the leading response (30 percent) was consistent use of systems. About 22 percent said better lead follow-up, while 19 percent cited feedback on campaigns.