What 17 Marketing Managers Taught Me in 2017 — and What It Reveals About the Evolution of Marketing Teams in 2025
By Cristina Coroiu, originally researched in 2017 — now at AISQ and ChiefContent.com
Back in 2017, I posted a HARO query that began with a simple question:
“How many members does your marketing team have?”
That single sentence sparked one of the most fascinating mini case studies I’ve ever done. Seventeen marketing managers responded — open, thoughtful, and candid about how their teams worked, what roles they filled, and the challenges they faced when running campaigns.
At the time, it felt like a meaningful peek into how marketing operated behind the scenes: a mix of creativity, coordination, and constant pressure to deliver results. But as I re-read that research today, in 2025, what strikes me most is how profoundly the context has changed.
Marketing hasn’t just evolved. It has transformed — technologically, operationally, and philosophically.
What was once a conversation about team size and collaboration tools is now a global dialogue about AI co-workers, hybrid automation systems, and marketing orchestration at scale.
In this updated reflection, I’ll take you through the key findings from my 2017 study — what we learned then — and how those same insights look through the lens of 2025.
2017: The Starting Point
The original research was small by today’s standards — just 17 companies, ranging from startups to established agencies and NGOs.
- 6 companies had 5–20 employees.
- 7 companies had between 21–100.
- 4 companies had over 100 employees.
On average, their marketing departments included 7.5 team members.
Every company had content writers. Most had social media specialists. A few had SEO experts or PPC managers. Only 17.6% had a dedicated project manager.
At the time, that felt like a snapshot of a growing industry learning to organize itself — balancing strategy and execution, experimenting with digital tools, and discovering what “marketing alignment” meant.
The most advanced collaboration tools in their stack were Slack, Trello, and Google Drive. Remote work was still a curiosity — only 5 of 17 companies were fully remote.
Back then, “remote-friendly” was seen as an advantage. In 2025, it’s the baseline.
2025: The Era of Orchestrated Marketing
Fast forward eight years. The average marketing “team” no longer fits the definition we used in 2017.
Today, the structure of a marketing department resembles a living ecosystem — where humans, AI agents, and automated processes work in tandem.
Marketing Team Sizes Have Flattened
Despite larger budgets and broader reach, most marketing teams in 2025 are leaner than before. A team of seven can now operate like a team of thirty once did — thanks to AI systems handling content creation, audience segmentation, and performance tracking.
Roles like AI Campaign Orchestrator, Prompt Strategist, and Automation Architect didn’t exist when I first published this study. Yet they now sit at the core of most successful marketing departments.
The conversations I had in 2017 revolved around “who writes the content” and “who manages the ads.” In 2025, the question has shifted to “who trains the AI and validates its strategy.”
AI doesn’t replace marketers — it expands their capacity. But it also demands new skills that didn’t exist back then: model fine-tuning, dataset supervision, ethical review, and data storytelling.
Then vs. Now: The Human Structure of Marketing
In 2017, we focused on job roles:
- 100% of companies had content writers.
- 76.4% had social media specialists.
- 64.7% had SEO experts.
- 17.6% had project managers.
Everything else — from analytics to email — was “shared work.” People wore multiple hats.
Today, that overlap still exists, but the nature of overlap has changed.
Instead of multitasking humans trying to master every channel, we have AI-linked roles that handle cross-functional tasks.
For example:
- AI handles social listening across thousands of conversations daily.
- Content generation tools draft outlines, repurpose blog posts into short videos, and even localize content in real time.
- Predictive analytics platforms model campaign outcomes before they launch.
The modern marketing manager no longer needs to coordinate who writes and who optimizes — they coordinate how AI tools collaborate across the funnel.
This shift has introduced a new class of marketers: those who think in systems, not silos.
Remote Work Has Matured Into Async Collaboration
In 2017, I wrote that remote teams “perform just as well as those who share an office.” At the time, that statement felt progressive.
Today, it’s self-evident — but also incomplete.
The modern challenge isn’t remote work. It’s asynchronous collaboration: how to keep global teams aligned when work never happens at the same time, and AI agents run tasks while humans sleep.
Project management is no longer defined by daily stand-ups and email threads. Teams now rely on AI summarizers, context-driven dashboards, and autonomous workflow tracking. Tools like Notion AI, ClickUp Brain, and Monday’s automation layer handle what used to be entire project manager roles.
What remains deeply human is strategic alignment. The best teams in 2025 still hold quarterly deep-dives, culture reviews, and real-time collaboration sessions — not to manage tasks, but to synchronize intent.
Because when everything else can be automated, clarity of purpose becomes the ultimate competitive advantage.
The KPI Paradox
In 2017, one of the biggest frustrations marketing managers expressed was around KPIs.
“Knowing which metric to measure can be a challenge in itself,” said Carlo Borja from Time Doctor.
“Establishing budgets is usually our biggest hold-up,” added James Nuttall of Roman Blinds.
“Clients often want results right away,” shared Emily Sidley of Three Girls Media.
I remember being struck by how universal those issues were. Every marketer wrestled with expectations, attribution, and proving value.
In 2025, we’ve solved part of that puzzle — but introduced new ones.
AI-driven analytics platforms now map every micro-interaction: scroll depth, hover time, sentiment, tone engagement, and predictive purchase intent. Campaign dashboards display probabilities instead of raw metrics.
Yet even with this data richness, the question remains: what really matters?
Marketers no longer debate what to measure, but why to measure it. The abundance of automated insight has forced teams to rediscover the strategic heart of KPIs — not as numbers to report, but as behaviors to influence.
The most advanced teams I’ve worked with at AISQ frame success not as “traffic up 20%” but as “audience resonance achieved.” They blend machine precision with human narrative.
It’s a return to meaning — powered by machines.
The Enduring Truth About Collaboration
Even as everything has changed — tools, roles, data, speed — one thing remains exactly as it was in 2017:
It’s still all about the people.
The marketers I spoke to back then talked about communication, trust, and alignment. Those themes haven’t aged a day.
The difference is that in 2025, people collaborate not just with each other, but with intelligent systems that amplify (and sometimes challenge) their decisions.
The new skill isn’t “teamwork” — it’s team-systems fluency: knowing how to orchestrate AI, automation, and human creativity into one coherent rhythm.
Companies that master this orchestration outperform competitors not because they have better tools, but because they use them together better.
Revisiting the 2017 Takeaways
When I first summarized my case study eight years ago, I identified three major themes:
1. Remote Work
“Remote work is not an issue for companies nowadays because they all work online and rely on collaboration tools.”
That observation now feels quaint. We’ve gone from “working online” to living within digital ecosystems. The boundary between company and cloud has dissolved.
2. Job Roles
“Content creation remains the number one priority.”
True then, and still true now — but the definition of “content” has expanded. Content isn’t just text or visuals; it’s interactive experience.
AI tools like Synthesia, Runway, and Jasper now enable teams to create thousands of adaptive assets that evolve based on audience feedback.
The “content writer” of 2017 has evolved into a “content system architect” — someone who configures, trains, and oversees how AI generates brand stories.
3. Campaigns
“Education is still a big problem for marketers who work with clients.”
That line could be copied and pasted into 2025. The tools have changed, but the human gap — explaining what marketing really does — remains constant.
Clients may understand automation now, but they still struggle to grasp nuance: long-term strategy, brand value, audience psychology.
And just like in 2017, the best marketers remain teachers.
What This Evolution Means for Marketing Leaders
Looking back, I realize that the 2017 study wasn’t just a report about team structures. It was an early signal — a quiet foreshadowing of what was coming.
- We were already thinking about distributed work.
- We were already fighting for alignment in increasingly digital teams.
- We were already overwhelmed by data and searching for meaning.
AI didn’t erase those challenges. It accelerated them.
The leaders who thrive today aren’t those who “adopt AI,” but those who design organizations that think with AI.
They understand that marketing’s future isn’t about bigger teams or faster campaigns — it’s about building systems of intelligence that continuously learn, adapt, and serve customers better.
A Final Reflection
When I first published this study, I closed with a thank-you note to the 17 managers who took the time to share their experiences. That gratitude still stands.
Their words captured a snapshot of marketing at a pivotal moment — a time when we were just beginning to connect global teams, experiment with automation, and learn what collaboration meant in a digital-first world.
In 2025, I see their insights as the foundation of the modern marketing discipline. The same curiosity, experimentation, and drive that fueled those small teams back then are now powering entire AI-augmented ecosystems.
And even though everything around us has become more complex, one truth endures:
Great marketing will always start with people — their empathy, their creativity, and their willingness to learn what’s next.
That’s what those 17 managers taught me in 2017.
And that’s what continues to guide me today.
Author Bio:
Cristina Coroiu is a senior content strategist and researcher. Also the Branding Officer of AISQ.com;. She originally conducted this study in 2017 and now works with AISQ and ChiefContent.com, exploring the intersection of AI, marketing, and human creativity.
