Marketing has a knowledge gap

A new piece of research from Ipsos's "the Marketing Anchors study" dropped last week, and it's the kind of thing that makes you put down your coffee for a moment.

1,226 marketing practitioners across the UK, US, Canada and Australia were given a ten-question assessment on fundamental marketing knowledge. Concepts like STP, ESOV, penetration, media neutrality, brand assets. The kind of stuff that underpins pretty much every campaign brief, budget conversation, and strategic recommendation we've ever made.

The pass mark was set at 7 out of 10.

65% of marketers didn't make it.

Now, this isn't a gotcha moment. Nobody in this industry is purely defined by how they score on a quiz. And honestly, the fact that we're talking about it is part of the point. But the findings are genuinely useful — both for individual marketers thinking about their own development, and for anyone leading or working with a marketing team.

What the data actually shows

The strongest performers in the assessment were on well-known frameworks — the 4Ps, STP. The weakest areas? Concepts tied to growth mechanics and measurement: ESOV, Distinctive Brand Assets, media neutrality, omnichannel. In other words, the stuff that tends to come up in the harder conversations — the ones where marketing has to justify its budget and demonstrate real commercial impact.

Interestingly, it wasn't role, seniority, or age that drove the gap. Whether you were a junior or a director, a specialist or a generalist, the scores were roughly the same. What made the real difference was two things: whether you'd had formal training, and the size of the organisation you work in.

Training is the thing. By a long way.

The headline stat that has been getting the most attention: formally trained marketers are 4.4 times more likely to meet the benchmark than those without formal training. 40% of trained marketers passed; only 9% of untrained marketers did.

And when Ipsos ran a random forest regression to identify the biggest predictors of performance, formal marketing education came out at 10% contribution, more than three times higher than the next factor (company turnover at 3.4%, then number of employees, and marketing resources allocated to brand equity).

Years of experience? It contributes 1.2%. Which is not nothing, but it's nowhere near the weight that formal training carries. The report's conclusion is clear: experience builds judgement, but training supplies the conceptual precision that experience alone doesn't consistently deliver.

There's also a knock-on effect worth noting. Trained marketers don't just score higher, they report stronger confidence in advocating for budget (79% vs 62%), clearer strategic clarity, better team influence, and higher levels of motivation and career satisfaction. The capability gap isn't just an abstract knowledge problem. It's affecting how marketing teams show up inside their organisations every day.

What this means for brands and agencies

If you're a brand-side marketer, the question worth sitting with is: where is your team's knowledge actually coming from? On-the-job learning is the most common development format by far (59-60% of marketers have access to it), but as the data shows, it's not delivering the same results as more structured training. It's a good foundation but it's not enough on its own.

One finding that stood out specifically for smaller organisations: marketers at large enterprises were 1.5x more likely to hit the benchmark than those at SMEs (45% vs 30%). Larger businesses tend to have more formal development pathways, access to broader internal expertise, and more exposure to diverse categories. SME marketers often carry enormous responsibility and frequently do so without the structural support to match.

For agencies, there's something here too. The data shows that access to agency partners correlates with higher performance on the assessment — marketers above the benchmark were significantly more likely to report having training from agency partners and access to consulting support. That's not a small thing. It suggests the work agencies do to educate and upskill the people they work with has a measurable effect. The relationship between brand and agency isn't just about campaign execution — it's part of how knowledge circulates through the industry.

Our take: The agencies and brands that invest in shared knowledge aren’t just being nice, they’re building the shared language that makes the work faster and better.

A few things worth taking away

•       Formal training matters more than years of experience when it comes to foundational marketing knowledge — that's a strong case for investing in structured development, not just learning as you go.

•       The gap is particularly pronounced in SMEs.  If you're a smaller team, external support (whether via agency partnerships, industry bodies, or professional courses) can play a meaningful role in keeping your team sharp.

•       Marketing knowledge is a commercial advantage, not just a professional nicety. The report makes a compelling case that capability connects directly to confidence, budget advocacy, and measurable impact.

•       Continuous learning: through conferences, agency partners, industry engagement is what sustains capability over time. It's not a one-and-done.

The Ipsos Marketing Anchors study was developed in collaboration with Professor Mark Ritson and is worth reading in full. You can find the full report linked here.

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