To keep pace with rapid product changes, Notion dissolved the central CMO organization. It created two focused teams: "Storytelling," which sits close to product, and a "go-to-market" function serving sales. This decentralizes marketing and increases speed.

Shifting the content team's mindset from a "marketing function" to an in-house "media company" prioritizes audience entertainment and value over product stories. This builds a genuine audience first, mirroring successful B2C media models, which can then be monetized.

Instead of a single centralized growth team, ElevenLabs creates dedicated "sharded" growth teams for each product line (e.g., consumer app, creator tools). These pods act as mini-CMOs for their product, supported by a horizontal team of channel specialists like SEO and performance marketing leads.

Modern content must serve three functions: driving immediate demand, building long-term influence to stay top-of-mind, and generating organic impressions that have an "equivalent value" to what the paid media team would otherwise have to buy. Most teams only focus on one or two.

To foster creativity while staying on-brand, HubSpot provides "creative guardrails" instead of rigid mandates. They define the audience persona, taste profile, and content verticals, then trust their expert creators to operate freely within those parameters, balancing creative freedom with strategic alignment.

Unlike the traditional view of content as either top-funnel (brand) or bottom-funnel (conversion), HubSpot strategically positions its media like The Hustle in the "mid-funnel." This allows a single asset to generate broad brand awareness while simultaneously converting high-quality sales leads.

To avoid the day-to-day content treadmill, HubSpot's media team uses six-week sprints. Cross-functional "SWAT teams" are assembled to solve a specific problem or pursue a major growth opportunity, forcing bigger swings and preventing incrementalism.

The company focuses on being present in potential customers' lives during the 95% of the year they aren't making a purchasing decision. This content-led approach, described as "a form of inception," builds brand affinity and ensures HubSpot is top-of-mind when the buying window finally opens.

Modern social teams are in-house production studios, not just channels for posting links. They should be resourced and structured as a central "media entity" or "content heartbeat" of the company. This group's output should fuel not only social feeds but also paid ads, sales enablement, and broader marketing campaigns.