Bridge F61 opinion.
We regularly publish opinion pieces that reflect the new and exciting possibilities of AI in brand and marketing value creation. If you would like to collaborate with us on producing some content, please get in touch.
The end of the FTE Benchmark
For decades, one of the most reliable metrics in a Private Equity turnaround was the FTE (Full-Time Equivalent) benchmark. If you wanted to know if a marketing department was bloated, you compared its headcount to its revenue and looked for the industry average. It was a crude but effective way to find fat to trim. Increasingly, as the agentic era evolves, this benchmark metric doesn’t surface the efficiency wins on the table.
Marketing’s Moneyball Moment
Why is marketing the only board-level discipline that still relies on gut feel? The days of marketing being a dark art are over. We have built a platform that treats marketing with the same clinical rigour as an engineering audit. We call it Marketing System Efficiency (or MSE).
We’ve built a service that is essentially Moneyball for marketing.
The CMO That Never Sleeps
As a team of practitioners, we saw the AI revolution coming and realised we had two options: we could ignore it and hope our experience kept us relevant, or we could dismantle our own business model and start again.
We chose to dismantle it. We took the collective "scar tissue" from forty Private Equity assignments and coded it into an engine. The result is Marketing System Efficiency (MSE).
Defining Good in a World of Marketing Chaos
I once interviewed a partner at a major US firm who admitted they don’t even consider marketing during acquisitions because they’ve never found a way to quantify it. For an industry obsessed with numbers, that is a curious statement, especially when portfolio companies spend up to 30% of their OPEX on marketing.
BF61 and The Marketing Lab: a powerful partnership for the Middle East
We are proud to announce that The Marketing Lab has become the first official sales partner of Bridge F61 brand and marketing diagnostics services, with an exclusive licence to sell into GCC and the broader Middle East.
Why human experience still matters in the age of AI-driven brand design
Since 2018 we’ve honed our Private Equity experience into a series of value creation levers that show areas of excellence and improvement across any business: what you need to focus on, and what you need to leave well alone.
AI isn’t the death of marketers, but it is the death of lazy marketing
The marketers who thrive are the ones who embrace the new power early and learn to use it with humanity and purpose. Those who cling to the old models become obsolete.
Going public with Private Equity
To the Private Equity community: demand the same degree of accountability from your brand and marketing turnarounds as you do from finance, HR and even from sales.
Pattern recognition in Private Equity
Since 2018 we’ve honed our Private Equity experience into a series of value creation levers that show areas of excellence and improvement across any business: what you need to focus on, and what you need to leave well alone.
PE value creation: right audience, right insight
Never before has it been easier or more affordable to employ high quality research and data practices in your strategy. But the strategic value of information lies not in its existence but in its application to decision-making.
Unlocking the value in PE people
The most effective value-creation plans begin with conversations, not dashboards. It is through dialogue, curiosity, and attention that leaders discover the hidden potential in their teams.
Growth Marketing – the New Paradigm
During our careers we have seen three major paradigms dominate marketing. Now in 2025 it’s possible that marketing has come full circle, and can once again be seen to be inexorably linked to business performance, and more specifically growth.