Building Growth Capability in Large Corporates and Private Equity Portfolio Companies

In an era of accelerated disruption, marketing is no longer a support function: it’s a strategic growth engine. For UK businesses with revenues above £500 million, including private equity-backed portfolio companies, the calibre of your marketing leadership is becoming a defining factor in long-term value creation.

Whether the goal is to unlock new market segments, prepare for a liquidity event, or reinvigorate a legacy brand, businesses are increasingly recognising that modern marketing capability must be built with precision, speed, and commercial impact in mind.

Across both mature corporates and PE-backed environments, the ask of marketing has changed.

No longer confined to campaigns and communications, today’s marketing leaders must influence pricing, product, customer experience, and capital allocation. In high-value, time-sensitive environments – especially those targeting double-digit EBITDA growth – marketing needs to act as a strategic function that directly supports revenue and enterprise value.

This requires leaders who can:

• Translate marketing activity into measurable commercial outcomes
• Operate cross-functionally across sales, product, tech, and finance
• Build scalable infrastructure to support sustained growth or exit planning
• Respond dynamically to shifting customer and investor expectations

Private equity-owned businesses operate under unique constraints: finite hold periods, pressure to unlock growth quickly, and an imperative to improve multiple levers of value creation.

In this context, marketing leadership must be:

• Change-ready: comfortable entering underinvested or under structured functions and building from the ground up
• Outcome-driven: able to show rapid commercial traction, often within 12–18 months
• Aligned to investment thesis: supporting topline expansion, customer acquisition, and margin protection in line with investor expectations

Many high-performing portfolio companies appoint a marketing transformation lead or fractional CMO during the early phase of PE ownership. Someone capable of building the strategic roadmap, aligning marketing to the broader value creation plan, and setting up the capability to scale effectively.

In contrast, large corporates often have existing marketing infrastructure, but may be hindered by fragmentation, under-leveraged data, or a lack of alignment between brand and business strategy.

Common pain points include:

• Slow integration of digital tools and AI-led decision-making
• Siloed marketing and commercial functions
• Underwhelming performance from legacy campaigns or product portfolios

Across both corporates and PE-backed businesses, the most effective marketing leaders share a distinctive set of capabilities:

• Commercial fluency: They understand how to grow margin and market share, not just impressions or followers.
• Customer-centricity: They know how to use segmentation, insight, and CX design to move the revenue needle.
• Change leadership: They can restructure teams, shift culture, and bring key stakeholders with them.
• Digital depth: They understand how AI, automation, and data can be leveraged for scalable performance.
• Board-level credibility: They speak in outcomes, not activity, and they win trust across the C-suite.

These are leaders who move beyond brand storytelling and into business transformation.

The most common mistake we see in large-scale marketing appointments is hiring for proximity to category or channel knowledge, rather than for strategic agility and change capacity.

Instead, organisations should focus on:

• Clarity of purpose: What problem is the hire being brought in to solve?
• Strategic alignment: How will the role connect to growth, valuation, or customer outcomes?
• Organisational readiness: Is the business structurally and culturally prepared for a modern marketing leader to succeed?

A misaligned or under-supported CMO will deliver little more than incremental change. A well-chosen and empowered leader, by contrast, can reshape trajectory, unlocking value across customer acquisition, brand premium, and long-term loyalty.

For large corporates, marketing may already exist, but is it driving shareholder return? For PE portfolio companies, the right marketing leadership may be the difference between a strong exit and a stalled asset.

In both contexts, growth doesn’t happen by chance. It’s built by leaders who can think commercially, execute boldly, and align brand, customer, and capital into a single value narrative.

If you’re rethinking how marketing fits into your next growth chapter, now is the time to make the hire that moves the dial.