How structured conversations with commercial and market leaders unlock the honest, forward-looking insights that surveys and dashboards simply cannot deliver.

“There is a certain moment in every round table discussion — usually about 40 minutes in — when the conversation shifts. Participants stop presenting polished positions and start speaking candidly.”

This is the impression I had when I facilitated this month a round table dinner for a leading digital marketing company.

A Marketing Director from the automotive segment admits that their biggest challenge is not the competitive landscape but implementing a new TOM (Target Operating Model) for their marketing & communications teams. A private banking Leader describes how their marketing function is caught between compliance constraints and the hyper-personalisation clients now expect. A senior Communications Manager in radio & media sector leans forward and says what they all suspected: “We are not in a media crisis, we are in an attention crisis.”

These are the moments that no survey captures. And they are precisely why I believe structured round table discussions remain the most underused and most valuable method for building genuine market intelligence — particularly when the strategic question is: what will marketing and commercial models need to look like in two to three years?

Why round tables — and why now? 

The standard customer research toolkit — online surveys, NPS tracking, focus groups, analyst reports — has a fundamental limitation: it measures what people are willing to say on record, in structured formats, in response to predefined questions. It is backward-looking by design, and it lacks the dynamic tension that surfaces real strategic thinking.

Round table discussions operate differently. When you bring together commercial and marketing leaders from different sectors and give them a well-framed agenda and genuine peer parity, something remarkable happens: they think out loud. They challenge each other and rethink the assumptions baked into their own planning. And in doing so, they generate insight that is prospective and nuanced.…

For capitalM, these sessions have become a cornerstone of how we help clients think about strategic marketing and target operating model (TOM) design. The structured informality of the format — facilitated but not scripted, cross-sector but not generic — creates exactly the conditions where honest insight emerges.

Five themes that demand strategic attention 

• 01  From campaign thinking to always-on relevance. Leaders across differen sectors described the growing inadequacy of campaign-centric marketing models. The shift to strategic, continuous customer engagement — underpinned by real-time data and AI-assisted personalisation — is no longer aspirational.
• 02  The reorganisation of the marketing function itself. Multiple participants noted that the hardest part of building a fit-for-future marketing capability is not technology — it is structure. Who owns customer insight? Where does brand sit in full marketing organisation? How does marketing governance work when channels are fragmented and accountability is blurred?
• 03  AI as an operating model question, not a tool question. There was broad consensus that the productivity gains from AI in marketing are real — but the strategic risk is treating AI as a collection of features rather than a fundamental redesign of how marketing work is organised and resourced.
• 04   The talent gap is structural, not cyclical. The skills required for modern B2B and B2C marketing — data fluency, commercial judgment, creative strategy, platform operations — are evolving faster than organisations can hire or develop for them. Several leaders described this as their most acute constraint.
• 05   Demonstrate value to the boardroom. There was shared frustration with the gap between marketing metrics and strategic impact. The ability to demonstrate marketing’s contribution to business value — not just campaign performance — is increasingly a prerequisite for marketing’s seat at the leadership table.

From insight to strategic action

Some of the topics that emerged from this workshop are already shaping how I approach strategic marketing engagements, next to key resources from leading analysts like Gartner. When I facilitate sessions on target operating model (TOM) design for marketing functions, or when we help leadership teams define their commercial strategy for the next planning cycle, these round table insights could provide the foundation that desk research cannot.

More than that, they provide permission — the confidence that the challenges a leadership team is wrestling with are real, structural, and shared by peers across their industry landscape. There is strategic value in knowing you are not alone in this situation/challenge, even when the solution remains specific to your context.

Start a conversation about your marketing strategy 

If your organisation is approaching a strategic marketing review, a commercial reorganisation, or a change in target operating model for the 2027 planning horizon, I would be glad to explore whether a structured round table format as part of a broader market intelligence programme would work.

Interested in a free intake discussion? Contact me to fix a date and explore options.