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Speaker 1: CMOs now have to completely fight for budgets. The relationship

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Speaker 1: with the customer has changed drastically. I think for a

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Speaker 1: long time, freelance was a dirty word. I think that

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Speaker 1: the dependence on the holding company relationship has changed drastically.

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Speaker 1: And so back to the smarter CMOs I know rethinking everything,

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Speaker 1: they have figured out what capability suits the tactic.

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Speaker 2: And so.

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Speaker 1: If budgets aren’t guaranteed and you need to do more

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Speaker 1: with less, it is really rethinking, what do I need

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Speaker 1: to get done? And what is the best method to

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Speaker 1: get that piece of work done?

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Speaker 3: Welcome to today’s episode of Free of Commerce.

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Speaker 2: I’m Sarah Hofstadter.

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Speaker 4: And I’m Rachel Tippegraph. And this is a show that

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Speaker 4: talks about what’s relevant in commerce for the world’s biggest brands.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Free of Commerce.

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Speaker 4: Sarah, what do you think the most common job is

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Speaker 4: within a CPG marketing team?

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Speaker 2: What do you think is the most common role?

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Speaker 3: Most common role, I guess, theoretically would be brand manager,

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Speaker 3: I guess, because brand manager includes marketing as a part.

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Speaker 2: Of the function.

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Speaker 3: Then all these different like large companies, you never know

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Speaker 3: what’s in-source versus out-source.

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Speaker 2: Companies have such different reliance on their partners. I think it’s,

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Speaker 2: probably the most needed role might be the orchestrators.

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Speaker 4: Oh, you’re just going right there.

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Speaker 1: I don’t know.

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Speaker 3: I mean, I look at it and I’m like, wow,

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Speaker 3: there’s within any marketing organization, it’s almost like there’s a

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Speaker 3: CMO on the top and then you’ve got like divisions

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Speaker 3: and those divisions can be, you know, somebody responsible for

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Speaker 3: media and somebody responsible for analytics and some responsible for

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Speaker 3: brand development. And then anytime anything happens or needs to change,

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Speaker 3: you got to go all the way down and then

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Speaker 3: you got to go all the way back up. So

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Speaker 3: if something’s going to change with the brand architecture, you

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Speaker 3: go up, Back up to the CMO, you go across

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Speaker 3: to the media.

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Speaker 2: Person or the creative person and you go back down.

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Speaker 2: It’s complicated.

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Speaker 3: And what makes all that work are like junior people

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Speaker 3: like project managers.

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Speaker 2: So maybe that’s the more common one. I don’t know.

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Speaker 2: What do you think?

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Speaker 4: I agree with your assessment for like traditional CPG organizations.

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Speaker 4: It’s probably brand manager. If I think outside of that category…

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Speaker 4: Project managers, social media teams, I honestly see a lot

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Speaker 4: of inefficiency there within large portfolios of companies.

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Speaker 2: Is that because of where they sit organizationally? Help me

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Speaker 2: unpack that.

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Speaker 4: I think it’s this idea of capacity. Let’s say you

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Speaker 4: have multiple brands under a portfolio, and then all of

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Speaker 4: a sudden, the social media manager felt overwhelmed. And the

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Speaker 4: next thing you know, you hired a social media manager

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Speaker 4: for every brand, but every brand isn’t made equal. And

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Speaker 4: just all these inefficiencies that exist.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that’s a very good point. And then especially… over.

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Speaker 3: The COVID fog of war, if you will, the overhiring

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Speaker 3: became a bit of a problem as well. So if

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Speaker 3: there was a problem or somebody left, they were just like,

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Speaker 3: I don’t know, gap filling that was happening that didn’t

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Speaker 3: really have much of a reason. Easy to say that

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Speaker 3: after the fact, but it definitely has that, right?

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Speaker 4: Yeah, no, absolutely. So what’s interesting is that we have

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Speaker 4: a shared friend who has built a business around helping

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Speaker 4: cmos build modern day marketing organizations through a marketplace for

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Speaker 4: fractional talent in housing and yeah i mean mostly i

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Speaker 4: guess in housing and freelance projects.

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Speaker 2: So with that let’s have her onto the show.

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Speaker 4: About to bring the founder lara onto the show who

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Speaker 4: really has her finger on the pulse of what’s happening

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Speaker 4: within the talent marketplace today.

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Speaker 3: Today, we are happy to have Laura Vandenberg, CEO and

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Speaker 3: founder of Assemble, which you may not have heard of Assemble,

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Speaker 3: but you definitely have heard of Laura because she is

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Speaker 3: sitting at the intersection of so much, which we will.

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Speaker 2: Be unpacking today.

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Speaker 3: Now, Assemble is the artist formerly known as Publicist or Publicist.

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Speaker 2: I don’t even know.

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Speaker 3: It doesn’t really matter anymore because the name of the

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Speaker 3: company is Assemble. So Laura, you have built your company

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Speaker 3: around this idea that brands should not rely on any

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Speaker 3: one agency or internal team.

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Speaker 2: To do everything.

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Speaker 3: What was it that pushed you to rethink how marketing

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Speaker 3: talent should be assembled?

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Speaker 1: Thank you both so much for having me. And look,

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Speaker 1: it’s a great question to jump right into. So my background,

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Speaker 1: I was a marketer first. I was a practitioner. And

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Speaker 1: so I had lived in the world of agency and

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Speaker 1: then enterprise and then high growth startups. And I really

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Speaker 1: saw that so many companies were just adhering to the

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Speaker 1: status quo. And I spent years watching brands lock themselves

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Speaker 1: into relationships that were really designed for a different era,

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Speaker 1: whether that was a retainer built around a monthly fee

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Speaker 1: and an account team that rotates every 18 months or

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Speaker 1: an internal hire that potentially takes six months to interview

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Speaker 1: for and then onboard and then six months to figure

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Speaker 1: out if they’re the right fit or not. I found

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Speaker 1: that the work was always moving faster than the structure.

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Speaker 1: And over the last two years, really, and 2024 and

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Speaker 1: 2025 were really pivotal because the smartest CMOs I know

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Speaker 1: were forced to rethink everything. Every strategy has gone out

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Speaker 1: the window when it comes to hiring. And I think

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Speaker 1: what emerged from that was a really honest question. What

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Speaker 1: is the output that we need? And then what is

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Speaker 1: the best method to get that work done? Is it

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Speaker 1: an agency? Is it a full-time hire? Is it a

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Speaker 1: freelance hire? Is it a vendor? Is it a gentic?

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Speaker 1: And so the decoupling and separating the job from the

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Speaker 1: work is the most important shift that we’re seeing in

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Speaker 1: marketing organizations now. And I think that Assemble was built,

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Speaker 1: and I don’t think I realized when I was building

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Speaker 1: this six years ago, but Assemble was built to sit

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Speaker 1: at the center of that. It’s not who is on

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Speaker 1: your team, but it is whether the system is designed

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Speaker 1: to to get to the correct capability fast enough.

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Speaker 4: You mentioned 2024 and 2025. So what happened prior? Is

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Speaker 4: it because of the pandemic and then people overstaffed and

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Speaker 4: then they couldn’t meet their numbers? Just give us sort

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Speaker 4: of the macro backdrop that you think forced this change.

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Speaker 1: So I think a couple of things. I think, first

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Speaker 1: of all, everyone was adhering to the status quo. Long

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Speaker 1: gone are the days where you were getting a 3%

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Speaker 1: confirmed budget for guaranteed headcount where you had a very

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Speaker 1: repeatable job description and you would just hire that person

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Speaker 1: and maybe the salary would increase slightly. Going back to

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Speaker 1: decoupling the job from work, CMOs now have to completely

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Speaker 1: fight for budgets. The relationship with the customer has changed drastically.

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Speaker 1: I think for a long time, freelance was a dirty word.

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Speaker 1: I think that the dependence on the holding company relationship

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Speaker 1: has changed drastically. And so back to the smarter CMOs

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Speaker 1: I know rethinking everything, they have figured out what capability

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Speaker 1: suits the tactic. And so if budgets aren’t guaranteed and

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Speaker 1: you need to do more with less, it is really rethinking,

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Speaker 1: what do I need to get done? And what is

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Speaker 1: the best method to get that piece of work done?

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Speaker 1: And so- holding companies or retainers are moving to more project-based,

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Speaker 1: whether it’s production or comms or some media. I also

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Speaker 1: think that agentic and technology is pushing some full-time roles

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Speaker 1: into not being needed at 100%. And we’ve seen that

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Speaker 1: block recently. I am very much of the belief that

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Speaker 1: not many roles go to zero. I think a lot

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Speaker 1: of roles go to 75% or 50% or 25%. And

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Speaker 1: an example of that is When we started the business

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Speaker 1: during the pandemic, we never saw a media role. No

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Speaker 1: media buyers, no media strategists, no media planners. Now, we

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Speaker 1: see them all the time because technology can do part

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Speaker 1: of the job. It can do all of the job.

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Speaker 1: And I don’t think we’ll ever see it do the

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Speaker 1: full scope. But I think that we’ll see a lot

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Speaker 1: of those generalists in the middle being pushed to a freelancer.

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Speaker 1: And then another point that you mentioned, which I think

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Speaker 1: is really interesting, is we are still undoing the overhiring

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Speaker 1: from 2020. Absolutely.

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Speaker 4: And so you have this front row seat to how

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Speaker 4: CMOs want to build their team today and potentially the

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Speaker 4: next two, three years moving forward. When you look at

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Speaker 4: the current landscape, where do you think these teams are

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Speaker 4: currently overbuilt and where do you think that they’re underbuilt?

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Speaker 1: Oh, it’s a really good question. And I think the

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Speaker 1: imbalance is pretty consistent. Most organizations are overbuilt in those

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Speaker 1: generalist middle layers, people that are just managing process. And

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Speaker 1: I think where teams are completely underbuilt is the operational layers.

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Speaker 1: It’s usually the last hire. It’s usually we’re bringing ops

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Speaker 1: folks in a marketing team in to fix everything. But

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Speaker 1: as CMOs are doing reorgs almost twice a year at

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Speaker 1: this point, one of the most critical roles that need

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Speaker 1: to be hired upfront is and we’re seeing a big

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Speaker 1: spike in it, is almost like a COO of a

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Speaker 1: CMO’s team. And they can take different titles. It could

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Speaker 1: be like a chief administrative officer, a chief of staff,

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Speaker 1: a head of marketing operations. And that is really someone

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Speaker 1: to design the architecture and the systems. So that process

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Speaker 1: layer of where is being overhired, I think those generalist

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Speaker 1: project managers, we will see a lot of those roles disappear.

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Speaker 1: Very interestingly, Another big spike in roles that we’re seeing

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Speaker 1: right now is brand, which I love because it is something.

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Speaker 1: that I just don’t think technology will ever be able

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Speaker 1: to take away that taste and tenacity of a human.

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Speaker 1: But I think that there is a huge imbalance in

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Speaker 1: that messy middle of just status quo of that’s how

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Speaker 1: we’ve been hired and promoted pretty much forever.

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Speaker 3: Let’s unpack the part about that marketing COO, because I

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Speaker 3: think it’s really interesting. There are some CMOs that we’ve

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Speaker 3: had on the show that I think are just so

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Speaker 3: operationally freaking awesome. Not because they themselves are so operational.

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Speaker 3: I mean, they are, but they put a lot of

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Speaker 3: structure and leadership in place to make it work versus

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Speaker 3: hiring these like PMs.

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Speaker 2: That get things done.

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Speaker 3: And so their responsibility, the people that they hire are

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Speaker 3: at a very senior level, like their COO or chief

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Speaker 3: of staff that is really building out and rebuilding and

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Speaker 3: rethinking this whole architecture.

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Speaker 2: But most, most are not.

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Speaker 3: Either they leave it to their agencies or they just

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Speaker 3: expect the work to just flow. When you look at

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Speaker 3: the way marketing has been organized from the CMO down,

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Speaker 3: versus how the work is getting done. Like, where do

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Speaker 3: you think that disconnect happens when you don’t have that

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Speaker 3: COO or chief of staff or master architect, if you will?

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Speaker 1: I mean, I think you’ll find that they’re the companies

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Speaker 1: that are reorganizing twice a year, because what often happens

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Speaker 1: is they’ll get, whether it’s a consultant or, you know,

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Speaker 1: an external third party to come in and they leave

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Speaker 1: them to execute. They do the work and they tell

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Speaker 1: them what to do. And there are these fantastic decks

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Speaker 1: and then it stops. Right now, the CMO is almost

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Speaker 1: needing to be an architect or a re-architect of work

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Speaker 1: and how they’re leading systems. And I think the biggest

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Speaker 1: issue we’re having right now is, I don’t think it’s

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Speaker 1: a talent problem. I don’t think it’s an agency problem.

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Speaker 1: I don’t think it’s a vendor problem. I think it’s

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Speaker 1: a systems problem. And so kind of to get back

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Speaker 1: to your question, those CMOs that are very operational, I

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Speaker 1: think they are, the systems are working. And so work

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Speaker 1: is having to be redesigned completely. And I think the

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Speaker 1: ones that aren’t thinking like COOs, they’re just completely behind

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Speaker 1: right now.

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Speaker 2: I totally agree.

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Speaker 3: I think there’s an insane amount of work that happens

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Speaker 3: that is invisible or actually more importantly, I think there’s

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Speaker 3: just an insane amount of work that is not getting

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Speaker 3: done because the flow itself is invisible. Unless you’ve got

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Speaker 3: somebody who understands how the sausage is made or how

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Speaker 3: the sausage making has changed, you’re still going to have

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Speaker 3: a tremendous amount of inefficiency no matter who comes in

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Speaker 3: and assesses your organization.

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Speaker 1: I completely agree with you. And on that, there are

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Speaker 1: these brand new roles that we’ve seen pop up on

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Speaker 1: the platform that I didn’t even know existed or I

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Speaker 1: didn’t even know were a part of marketing. Q1 of 25,

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Speaker 1: the number one hired skill set on our platform was

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Speaker 1: a process improvement analyst. How fascinating.

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Speaker 2: Say more. What does that person do?

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Speaker 1: It’s a different skill set at different companies, but it’s

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Speaker 1: almost a creative technologist who is going beyond the org

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Speaker 1: chart because the org chart, I mean, it’s a static

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Speaker 1: document that doesn’t tell you anything. It doesn’t tell you

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Speaker 1: who’s a budget owner. It doesn’t tell you who’s owning relationships.

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Speaker 1: And so it’s almost someone that is bringing that org

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Speaker 1: chart to life to ensure that all of the budgets

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Speaker 1: and the relationships with the customers and the tactics to

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Speaker 1: get there are completely intertwined. And then that person often

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Speaker 1: ladders up into that COO at a brand, if you will.

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Speaker 1: But it usually is someone with almost like a technical

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Speaker 1: PM background, often someone that doesn’t come from marketing, which is,

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Speaker 1: I think, really important.

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Speaker 2: How do you find those people?

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Speaker 1: Assemble.

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Speaker 4: I want to get into assemble in a second, but

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Speaker 4: I guess I’m sitting here and I work with brands,

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Speaker 4: but I haven’t worked at a brand in 13 years.

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Speaker 4: So what I know from my time then is now

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Speaker 4: irrelevant in terms of how these brands are functioning internally.

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Speaker 4: But I’m thinking about my own business. For us, Salesforce

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Speaker 4: is our core system. If revenue isn’t in there, if

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Speaker 4: customer tickets aren’t in there, then there is no source

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Speaker 4: of truth and there’s no accountability across the teams. So

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Speaker 4: if I’m understanding you correctly, are you saying there is

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Speaker 4: no core… operating system, like a single piece of technology

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Speaker 4: where multiple flows of work can come through. So there’s

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Speaker 4: transparency and connectivity and accountability within these marketing organizations.

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Speaker 1: Rachel, that’s a really good question. And at most companies, yes,

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Speaker 1: there is the single source of truth, but a lot

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Speaker 1: of the time it’s not intuitive technology that serves a

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Speaker 1: marketing organization. And so it turns into the wild west

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Speaker 1: that different teams and working on disparate technologies often that

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Speaker 1: don’t speak to each other. And so going back to

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Speaker 1: the importance of this process improvement analyst, yes, that is

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Speaker 1: absolutely their objective of trying to weave everything together because

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Speaker 1: it’s critical.

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Speaker 5: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: It’s funny. I’m seeing this role also at software companies.

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Speaker 4: You called it a creative technologist.

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Speaker 5: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: It’s like an internal solutions engineer to connect all of

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Speaker 4: these disparate systems. So here you are at Assemble. And

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Speaker 4: you’re being tasked with finding this next generation of talent.

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Speaker 4: And I don’t mean age, it’s like roles and responsibilities

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Speaker 4: that modern marketing organizations need. How are you finding the talent?

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Speaker 1: So there has never been more unbelievable marketing and creative

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Speaker 1: talent in the industry right now. At the beginning of

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Speaker 1: the company, we launched May of 2020, which was a

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Speaker 1: wild time to launch any company. But we, and when

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Speaker 1: I say we, it was my CTO and I at

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Speaker 1: the time, we launched at the time where it was

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Speaker 1: the whiplash of layoffs from the pandemic. And so we

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Speaker 1: found ourselves as almost this landing pad for people who

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Speaker 1: found themselves out of a job, not true freelancers at

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Speaker 1: the time. So we got a great tailwind there of

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Speaker 1: building community of people who found themselves out of work.

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Speaker 1: Fast forward, you know, five or six years, we’ve had

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Speaker 1: amazing referral networks, we’ve had incentives, we’ve had, you know,

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Speaker 1: great relationships with industry bodies. But Now, great talent comes

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Speaker 1: to us for a few reasons. One of my pain

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Speaker 1: points when I was hiring talent in the 2000 teens

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Speaker 1: was I didn’t think that MSPs were designed for marketing.

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Speaker 1: A marketing role is very different to an engineer or

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Speaker 1: an accountant where you have a binary skill set. We

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Speaker 1: love to live in the gray. At the same time,

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Speaker 1: I didn’t think that the current solutions, which were big

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Speaker 1: staffing agencies, I didn’t think that they empowered talent because financially,

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Speaker 1: they were just skimming rates off the top. And so

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Speaker 1: I wanted to provide economic and creative opportunity to those

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Speaker 1: in the marketing workforce. And so a lot of people

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Speaker 1: came to us because we’re a closed marketplace where they

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Speaker 1: knew that the best brands were using us. So the

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Speaker 1: jobs were really premium. It wasn’t like a LinkedIn where

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Speaker 1: there’s just a bunch of passive candidates who may or

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Speaker 1: may not be interested in a role. And so we

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Speaker 1: wanted to create this very engaged system where there were

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Speaker 1: great jobs and great talent who were available, who were

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Speaker 1: true freelancers. So yeah, that’s how we’re finding the talent.

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Speaker 2: That’s fantastic.

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Speaker 3: And clearly you’re going in a lot of different places

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Speaker 3: to make sure that these organizations are as optimized as possible.

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Speaker 2: This is a podcast about commerce and bravery. No question. Bravery, check.

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Speaker 2: Now let’s check the box on commerce.

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Speaker 3: As you think about this modern marketing organization, Commerce has

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Speaker 3: been in one of these places that sometimes sits outside

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Speaker 3: of marketing writ large. It’s sitting in the commercial organization.

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Speaker 3: It could be sitting in analytics and business analytics. When

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Speaker 3: it’s in a marketing organization, where do you think the.

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Speaker 2: Talent should or should not be residing?

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Speaker 3: And how upskilled should anybody in marketing be as it

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Speaker 3: relates to the role of digital commerce, regardless of vertical?

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Speaker 1: What we find at Assemble is a lot of organizations

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Speaker 1: are still operating in a brand first model. And that

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Speaker 1: gap between how people are shopping is really widening. And

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Speaker 1: so one of the things we spoke about at MarketingOS

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Speaker 1: is commerce and content have completely collapsed into each other.

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Speaker 1: We know that the consideration phase is happening on podcasts,

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Speaker 1: on TikTok, sometimes in a creator’s comment section, but not

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Speaker 1: in a funnel that marketing has designed. And so At MarketingOS,

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Speaker 1: a summit that we recently hosted is we spoke about

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Speaker 1: the funnel a lot and the marketing teams that are

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Speaker 1: still arguing between top and bottom of funnel, that structure

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Speaker 1: needs to still separate from brand to performance and both

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Speaker 1: from commerce. So there are different teams, different metrics, different

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Speaker 1: agency relationships and different budget owners, but there’s this juxtaposition

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Speaker 1: because The consumer is still moving through all of this

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Speaker 1: in a single scroll. And I think the customers that

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Speaker 1: get it right realize where their customers are rather than

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Speaker 1: operating kind of the former marketing organization model. Does that

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Speaker 1: make sense?

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Speaker 4: Yeah, we face it every single day. Ultimately, we think

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Speaker 4: the organizations that are winning are the ones where names

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Speaker 4: can change, whether it’s CMO or chief growth officer or

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Speaker 4: chief commercial officer, but they end up owning both. But structurally,

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Speaker 4: that has to change. We got to ask you our

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Speaker 4: famous last question, which is what’s the bravest thing you’ve

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Speaker 4: ever done?

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Speaker 1: I was thinking about this and it’s so interesting. because

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Speaker 1: I don’t think it was brave at the time, but

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Speaker 1: I moved to New York at 21 after college from

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Speaker 1: Australia with no visa, with no friends, with no apartment

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Speaker 1: and just figured it out. And here I am 13

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Speaker 1: or 14 years later and, you know, I have a business,

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Speaker 1: I have a son, I have a family here. And

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Speaker 1: it didn’t feel brave at the time, but looking back,

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Speaker 1: I’m like, how the hell did I pull that off?

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Speaker 1: And so it was an amazing decision, a very brave

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Speaker 1: decision that paid off, but it has to be that.

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Speaker 5: No doubt.

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Speaker 3: I think that sometimes the things that we do at 21,

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Speaker 3: it may be the benefit of not having to overthink

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Speaker 3: things because at 21, how much do we really overthink?

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Speaker 3: But look at what it has done to change the

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Speaker 3: trajectory of everything.

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Speaker 2: In your life. It’s pretty extraordinary, as are you, as

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Speaker 2: are you. We are so thankful that you joined us today, Laura.

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Speaker 3: I like that we got into the heart of it

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Speaker 3: all because it really brings forward some of the biggest

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Speaker 3: critical issues that are plaguing us today.

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Speaker 2: There’s a lot of conversation about tech.

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Speaker 3: And data and tools and not enough about how work

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Speaker 3: gets done and the talent that’s necessary to get it done.

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Speaker 2: So thank you very much for highlighting this for all

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Speaker 2: of us.

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Speaker 1: It was so much fun. Thank you for having me.

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Speaker 4: If you like what you heard and you want to

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Speaker 4: think about talent from someone who’s within an organization, go

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Speaker 4: check out an episode we recorded a few months ago

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Speaker 4: with Andrew Letterman from Mondelez. If you like what you heard,

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Speaker 4: tell a friend, write a review. Thanks for listening.

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Speaker 1: Thank you.

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Speaker 5: Hi, I’m Jackie Cooper, Global Chief Brand Officer at Edelman

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Speaker 5: and the host of Touch of Truth, a new podcast

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Speaker 5: launching on the Adweek Podcast Network. My dad gave me

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Speaker 5: this incredibly smart piece of advice. Meet everyone once. As

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Speaker 5: a result, I’ve met some of the most fascinating and

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Speaker 5: inspiring people on the planet. Now on Touch of Truth,

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Speaker 5: we’re coming centre stage and sharing the mic to experience

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Speaker 5: stories of truth, insights and visions for the future that

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Speaker 5: will challenge your way of thinking. Touch of Truth is

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Speaker 5: available wherever you listen to podcasts. New episodes come out

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Speaker 5: every Tuesday. I do hope to see you there.