Beyond the Platform: Why Marketing Capability is the Ultimate Business Transformation

"Let’s start with something we can all agree on: people and their skills matter for business performance."

With these words, Rose Keen, Content and Insight Director at Econsultancy, opened the May edition of the Capability Leaders Forum. It was a sentiment that anchored the day’s discussions, setting the stage for a deep dive into the evolving mandate of marketing departments in 2026. As businesses navigate an increasingly volatile market, the consensus among industry leaders is clear: the divide between market leaders and their competitors is no longer defined solely by capital or technology, but by the strategic depth of their internal talent pools.

However, as the forum explored, simply "investing in people" is no longer a silver bullet. While expenditure on Learning and Development (L&D) continues to rise across the enterprise sector, the efficacy of these programs remains inconsistent. The challenge for modern marketing leaders is not providing access to knowledge, but ensuring that this knowledge translates into measurable behavioral change and tangible business outcomes.

The Strategic Imperative: Bridging the Relevance Gap

The forum brought together a powerhouse panel of industry experts to dissect the mechanics of effective capability building. The panel included Abi Willstead, Head of Brand & Marketing Excellence at Specsavers; Dan Southern, Director of Marketing Capabilities at Kimberly-Clark; Michelle Atkinson, Head of Marketing Capability at Carlsberg Britvic; and Paul Davies, Managing Director at Econsultancy.

The Problem of Disconnection

The primary theme of the session was the "relevance gap." Econsultancy’s latest research indicates that a staggering 80% of organizations struggle to pivot their workforce skills in response to emerging needs. When training programs are disconnected from the day-to-day realities of a marketer’s role, engagement plummets and the return on investment (ROI) vanishes.

Abi Willstead of Specsavers highlighted that the true test of any curriculum is not the completion rate of an e-learning module, but the application of that knowledge in a high-pressure environment. "Whether the learning is really transferring through to the day-to-day is one of the key challenges," Willstead noted. If a marketer learns a new framework but finds that internal processes, cultural barriers, or rigid legacy systems prevent them from implementing it, the organization gains nothing.

The Half-Life of Modern Skills

The pressure to remain relevant is exacerbated by the pace of technological disruption. While junior team members often see mastering GenAI—such as video generation tools or the orchestration of autonomous AI agents—as a fast track to career advancement, leaders must manage the volatile nature of these tools. As Rose Keen pointed out, "The half-life of many skills has never been shorter. The leading tool today may not hold that position in a month’s time."

Chronology of a Learning Strategy: Foundations vs. Evolution

The forum identified a critical shift in how successful organizations now categorize their training efforts. Rather than treating all skills as equal, forward-thinking teams are adopting a bifurcated approach to their curriculum, separating "Evergreen" skills from "Evolving" skills.

1. Building the Foundation (The Evergreen Tier)

Evergreen skills are the bedrock of the marketing profession—strategy, brand positioning, customer psychology, and financial acumen. These are timeless capabilities that remain relevant regardless of the platform or the software du jour.

Michelle Atkinson of Carlsberg Britvic emphasized this dual approach: "I look at the brand-building programme we’re launching. We are looking to land those core skills that marketers need. But alongside those, we have leadership skills and we have future skills."

By focusing on these core pillars first, organizations "raise the floor," ensuring that every team member has a baseline of competence that makes them resilient to market shifts.

2. The Shift to Agility (The Evolve Tier)

Once the foundations are secured, organizations can afford to be more aggressive with "Evolve" skills—those that shift with market trends, new technology, and changing consumer behavior. Specsavers’ strategy, as outlined by Willstead, followed this trajectory. By leaning into foundational skills first, they created a stable environment where they could then strategically layer on more experimental, high-growth capabilities.

3. The Critical Thinking Pivot

Perhaps the most significant takeaway from the panel was the role of critical thinking in the age of AI. There is a palpable fear that over-reliance on AI agents will lead to a decline in human judgment. Dan Southern of Kimberly-Clark noted that this risk is actually driving a new focus in his capability programs. "As our workflows become more reliant on artificial intelligence and LLMs producing outputs, we’ve got to make sure that the marketers within our community have very strong critical thinking skills," Southern stated.

The goal is not to have marketers who can prompt an AI, but to have marketers who possess the judgment to evaluate whether the AI’s output is actually useful, on-brand, and ethically sound.

Data and Disparity: The "Library vs. Gallery" Dilemma

A central tension identified by the panel was the difference between providing access and driving engagement. Many organizations mistakenly believe that by purchasing a subscription to a Learning Management System (LMS) and filling it with courses, they have "built capability."

Paul Davies, Managing Director at Econsultancy, provided a compelling analogy: "I like to use the analogy of a library versus a gallery. If you walk into a library and you don’t know what you’re looking for, it is confusing. But a gallery, where everything is curated for you, is a better experience."

Why Passive Learning Fails

Data shared at the forum suggests that many companies see a sharp decline in engagement within six to twelve months of launching a new learning platform. This is often because the content is presented as a "library"—a vast, uncurated repository of information.

True engagement requires:

• Curation: Filtering content based on specific team roles and career paths.
• Contextualization: Delivering training at the moment of need.
• Curiosity: Fostering a culture where learning is viewed as a competitive advantage, not a mandatory chore.

As Michelle Atkinson aptly put it: "Nobody wants to learn how to change a tyre until they get a puncture. Then you want to learn how to change a tyre real quick." The lesson for leaders is clear: training should be "just-in-time" rather than "just-in-case."

Implications for Future-Proofing the Enterprise

The concluding session of the forum focused on the long-term implications of these findings. When Dan Southern arrived at Kimberly-Clark 18 months ago, he inherited a landscape of isolated content—information that existed, but which had failed to spark a genuine desire to learn.

From Consumption to Agility

The transition from an "isolated content" model to a "learning agility" model is the ultimate goal. For Southern, this meant shifting the focus from "content delivery" to "excitement." To create a high-performing team, leaders must make their staff curious, incentivizing them to seek out new knowledge because they see it as a tool for their own success.

Capability as Transformation

Perhaps the most profound insight of the day came from Paul Davies: "Capability programmes are transformation in disguise."

This statement serves as a warning and an opportunity for business leaders. If a company views a capability program merely as an HR function—a series of training workshops—they will likely fail to see the results they desire. However, if they view it as a fundamental transformation of how the organization operates, learns, and reacts to the market, they will find the keys to long-term survival.

Key Takeaways for Marketing Leaders

For those looking to overhaul their own capability programs, the consensus from the Forum is as follows:

1. Prioritize the "Evergreen": Do not sacrifice core marketing principles in the rush to adopt new, flashy tools. Foundation first, innovation second.
2. Curate, Don’t Accumulate: Audit your learning materials. If your internal resources look more like a cluttered library than a focused gallery, you are likely losing your audience.
3. Embed Critical Thinking: As AI takes over manual tasks, the value of the human marketer shifts to strategy, ethics, and high-level judgment. Train for this.
4. Align with Reality: Every skill taught must have a clear line of sight to a specific task in the marketer’s day-to-day workflow. If you can’t map it to their job, remove it from the curriculum.
5. Build Agility, Not Just Knowledge: The most valuable skill in 2026 is the ability to learn and unlearn rapidly. Build programs that reward curiosity and self-directed growth.

As the marketing landscape continues to shift under the weight of technological and cultural change, the ability to build and sustain internal capabilities will be the ultimate differentiator. The message from the Econsultancy forum is simple: the era of "check-the-box" training is over. The era of strategic, performance-aligned capability building has begun.

To participate in the ongoing conversation and attend the next Capability Leaders Forum, visit Econsultancy’s event page to secure your seat.