I’m a marketer who fell into the ‘empire-building’ trap. Now I know a bigger head count doesn’t mean better marketing.
BuildOps CMO Colin Piper once managed a 130-person marketing team. Now he thinks smaller marketing departments can do more.
Colin Piper, the CMO of BuildOps, shared his experience with an "empire-building" trap in marketing. Once at Autodesk, he led a large marketing team but realized it was inefficient and detracting from their core business. After Autodesk's marketing department underwent modernization, Piper left the company and moved to BuildOps, where he adopted a leaner, AI-driven approach.
He explained how the team grew to over 130 people globally, leading to unwieldy meetings and decisions taking longer than necessary. To tackle this, he introduced program managers to coordinate between teams, but even they became a symptom of an overextended marketing department. Larger organizations tend to have more passion projects, which can be less aligned with key marketing goals.
Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the marketing landscape, making it possible for smaller teams to achieve the same results as larger ones. At BuildOps, Piper and his leadership team use AI to streamline processes, enabling them to launch a campaign from inception to market in less than six weeks. This efficiency trend is becoming more prevalent in marketing, prompting companies to question the necessity of large marketing departments.
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