Trapped Between Marketing Strategy and Results

With 2027 budget planning cycles already underway, retail marketing leaders aren't short on ambition or strategy. Tighter budgets, leaner teams, and the growing complexity of managing campaigns across digital and physical channels are making it harder than ever to turn strong plans into consistent results.

Countless retailers are quietly rethinking their agency relationships. Levi's made headlines in June 2026 when it moved away from its traditional agency of record in favor of a project-based model, a shift growing numbers of brands are making as they seek greater specialization across channels. Managing multiple specialized partners creates its own complexity, and that challenge is where marketing execution partners and systems thinking become essential.

Building for the Execution Challenge

Marketing execution (aka managed services) systems thinking for marketing functions, or omnichannel execution, is the process of turning strategy into reality by managing the sourcing, production, and delivery behind marketing campaigns across channels. Retail marketers work to reach the right person, in the right place, at the right time, and execution determines whether that strategy holds. The decisions retail leaders make at the planning stage directly affect what campaigns get produced and at what cost. Building execution into the planning process early gives retail marketers the opportunity to identify inefficiencies, improve visibility, and set realistic timelines before budgets are locked.

Annual planning creates a natural moment to reassess vendor relationships. Within the marketing execution and managed services category, two distinct types of providers exist. Production-biased providers offer competitive pricing but sometimes prioritize production over the client experience. Fee-driven procurement providers maintain vast supplier networks with broad sourcing capabilities, though back-end fee structures can inflate true market costs over time when transparency is not built into the relationship. Vendor-agnostic models allow programs to shift across suppliers based on performance or changing needs, reducing risk and maintaining continuity. Planning season is also the right time for marketing and procurement teams to align on campaign needs and pricing to confirm accuracy and eliminate hidden markups.

Greater transparency in production partnerships means full visibility into supplier quotes, selection, and final pricing tracked from sourcing through delivery. Centralizing execution management aligns brand guidelines, workflows, and delivery timelines under one structure. Production partnerships built on open pricing models reduce inconsistency, errors, and delays that fragment campaigns and drive up costs. Retailers with stronger operational alignment are better positioned to control spend and improve performance across every channel.

Building for Better Outcomes

Staffing pressure is accelerating the need for more flexible approaches to campaign delivery. Retail marketing teams face growing demand to do more with fewer internal resources, and fragmented workflows drive higher costs, slower turnaround times, and inconsistent quality. Domestic, offshore, and hybrid production models allow creative teams to scale output based on campaign needs without adding headcount, freeing internal teams to focus on higher-value creative work. As campaign complexity grows and internal capacity stays flat, building execution capacity into the plan becomes essential.

Retail brands that make execution strategy part of their 2027 planning process from the start will improve speed to market, cost control, and campaign consistency. Common execution challenges include high-volume creative adaptation tasks that strain in-house teams as well as visual merchandising demands for brands moving from direct-to-consumer models into brick-and-mortar environments, where location-specific signage, displays, and permits add layers of complexity. Centralizing execution management aligns brand guidelines, production workflows, and delivery timelines under one structure. Stronger planning eliminates the costly gap between intention and delivery, leading to measurable improvements in return on investment. Marketing leaders who bring execution to the planning table early are better positioned to deliver on their campaigns and their budgets.

Brad DeHart is senior vice president of customer growth at Continuum, a marketing execution and creative services partner.