CreativeOps can’t scale alone — fusion teams make it happen

Today’s studios face a complex mandate: deliver more content across more channels to more audience segments faster and with fewer resources. It sounds impossible, but it isn’t if organizations can move beyond fragmented structures and instead integrate teams and technologies into a unified, collaborative model.

Fusion teams offer an operating model beyond traditional cross-functional collaboration or temporary project groups. These multidisciplinary units bring together marketing and technology specialists to manage creative processes. Instead of being measured by separate departmental KPIs, they’re accountable to business outcomes — unlocking greater speed, agility and creative scale.

Why traditional models no longer hold

Over the past decade, creative operations have evolved from an overlooked back-office function into a critical driver of marketing efficiency, quality assurance and scalable content production. Yet they are often isolated from key strategic inputs and decision-making.

• Marketing strategy and brand teams define messaging. 
• MOps manages scheduling. 
• IT oversees platform selection. 
• Analytics teams track effectiveness. 

They all:

• Speak a different language.
• Use separate toolsets.
• Report through distinct management layers. 

That leaves creative operations burdened by misaligned objectives, limited context and poor integration. The result is friction, specifically: 

• Slower pipelines.
• Stalled campaigns.
• Underutilized martech investments.
• A widening gap between creative operations and the marketing teams they support.

Dig deeper: Closing the gap between creative and marketing performance

Understanding fusion teams

Fusion teams aren’t temporary project groups or cross-departmental committees. They are permanent, integrated teams made up of specialists from multiple disciplines: 

• Creative operations.
• MOps.
• Brand strategy.
• Analytics.
• IT. 

They have clear, shared outcomes, such as customer acquisition, brand building, personalized content at scale and everything in between. The teams operate autonomously from start to finish, without the friction of internal handoffs.

They are designed with dual leadership, intentionally combining strategic business oversight with operational execution. Success is measured by shared business outcomes such as speed, quality, reuse rates, and overall ROI. Rather than merging all capabilities into generic roles, fusion teams have the right talent around well-defined objectives.

The central role of CreativeOps

To succeed, they need a strong core to anchor the team. Creative operations may not lead strategy but are the essential execution engine — translating strategic, data-driven inputs into scalable, high-quality creative output.

Without a solid creative operations core, fusion teams stall. Strategy fails to convert quickly into assets. Martech platforms remain siloed and underutilized. Legal and brand compliance issues escalate. By contrast, embedding creative operations deeply into the fusion team structure delivers substantial benefits in agility, quality control, rapid scalability and personalization.

Real-world examples confirm the impact of well-integrated creative operations within fusion models. 

• Walmart reduced creative cycle times by more than 30%, leading to growth in online revenue. 
• Procter & Gamble saw a 17% drop in creative costs and a 38% improvement in successful product introductions. 
• Certification provider Kiwa saved over $20 million by centralizing creative production governance under a creative operations-led approach.

Dig deeper: How AI can revolutionize creative impact measurement

Effectively bringing it all together

Fusion teams are frequently used for the misalignment of data and technology ownership.

Typically, different teams control separate parts of the martech stack. 

• MOps may manage CRM and campaign automation tools.
• CreativeOps relies on digital asset management systems, content templating, creative automation and workflow management platforms. 
• Analytics teams operate independently with separate business intelligence systems. 
• IT and procurement often lead martech purchasing decisions based on surface-level requirements — without understanding other teams’ operational nuances and needs.

Fusion teams address these problems head-on. By integrating creative operations, MOps, IT, and analytics expertise, martech platforms can be properly deployed and embedded into robust, collaborative processes. 

The tools used in CreativeOps play a vital role in ensuring these systems don’t exist in isolation. Instead, they communicate effectively and deliver practical value across the entire creative lifecycle — from creation to personalized delivery at scale in support of marketing initiatives.

Building a functional fusion team

A high-performing fusion team, built around a cohesive and integrated martech stack, is typically structured around several critical roles:

• CreativeOps lead: Oversees production, tools, quality and resourcing.
• Campaign manager/MOps lead: Owns campaign timelines, targeting and performance goals.
• Brand strategist or content lead: Ensures messaging aligns with brand objectives.
• Data/analytics partner: Connects performance signals to creative input.
• IT integrator or martech specialist: Manages technical setup, platform connections and compliance.

Supporting roles may include:

• Designers.
• Copywriters.
• Localization specialists.
• CRM managers.
• Legal compliance reviewers.
• Content QA teams. 

These roles operate within the fusion team’s regular workflow — eliminating traditional handoffs. Regular stand-ups, shared KPIs, retrospectives and continuous feedback loops ensure ongoing alignment and agility.

Dig deeper: Creative misalignment is the silent killer of marketing ROI

Why fusion teams matter now

The pressure on marketing to deliver at scale is increasing, especially as generative AI rapidly reshapes content creation. Modular, personalized content strategies and real-time campaign execution require a responsiveness that traditional structures struggle to meet.

In this environment, isolated creative operations can’t keep pace, disconnected martech platforms can’t reach their potential, and marketing operations can’t meet objectives when execution consistently lags behind strategic intent.

Fusion teams are a practical, proven solution. They align skills and accountability around clearly defined objectives — rather than legacy org charts. Using them lets CreativeOps evolve from a functional necessity into a strategic enabler, driving speed, personalization and scalable content delivery.

Fusion teams must be built on a foundation of insight

The path to effective fusion teams doesn’t start by naming a new working group or reassigning job titles — it starts with clarity. Too often, organizations rush into forming cross-functional teams, hoping collaboration alone will unlock the value of martech and broader marketing efforts. In reality, fusion teams must be grounded in a deep understanding of where current martech, data and workflow limitations are holding back results.

That begins with a foundation of insight: a fact-based assessment of your current operating landscape. 

• Where are content bottlenecks emerging? 
• How do we deliver personalization at scale? 
• Which martech systems are underused, duplicative, or creating friction between marketing and creative ops? 
• Which data sources are isolated and what processes cause handoff delays or rework?

This diagnostic approach helps avoid the trap of fusion-washing — superficially forming new teams that inherit the same blockers and inefficiencies as before.

It’s also important to recognize that martech is not neutral infrastructure. Fusion teams don’t automatically fix fragmented technology. Instead, they inherit both the strengths and weaknesses of your existing stack. 

For fusion models to succeed, teams must:

• Challenge outdated workflows.
• Recommend tooling improvements.
• Prioritize integrations or process changes that unlock the most value across the entire function.

The real opportunity lies in co-designing the operating model itself. Successful fusion teams are both practitioners and architects. They work together to improve how martech platforms, data and creative processes fit into day-to-day practice. 

This goes beyond working around deficiencies — it means creating and refining feedback loops that connect campaign goals, creative outputs, martech performance and business results. Teams must have a mandate to surface bottlenecks, experiment with new workflows and jointly roadmap fixes that support shared KPIs.

Feedback loops — not handoffs — are essential. Fusion teams thrive when operational and technical improvements are owned collectively and not passed between departments. Success comes from:

• Ongoing, transparent evaluation of what’s working and what’s not.
• Closing gaps through continuous iteration, rather than relying on new structures alone.

In practice, this means:

• Starting with a consultative assessment to map martech, process and data friction points affecting creative and marketing outcomes.
• Using that diagnostic insight to jointly define priorities for workflow redesign, integration, or capability uplift.
• Ensure that every fusion team has a voice, not just in execution but also in co-creating the solutions that make collaboration work.
• Treating martech as a living part of the operating model — improved incrementally alongside process and people, not in isolation.

Fusion teams only deliver on their promise when built on:

• Validated insight and shared ownership of both constraints and opportunities.
• A commitment to continuous improvement across human and technical dimensions.

Dig deeper: Should creative operations report to creative or MOps?

The strategic imperative

Fusion teams are here to stay. They offer a practical structural response to a pressing marketing challenge. Without them, organizations risk falling behind in an industry undergoing disruption at an extinction-level scale.

With speed, personalization and creative scalability defining competitive advantage, fusion teams provide a clear structural path to sustainable operational effectiveness. They transform complex, fragmented operations into cohesive systems — enabling marketing teams to move with agility, precision and purpose.