Wellbeing Support for Marketing Managers

Wellbeing budgets are going up. Yet for many marketing managers, mental health is going in the opposite direction.

Marketing Week’s 2025 survey found 58.1% of marketers felt overwhelmed in the past year, with 50.8% reporting emotional exhaustion and nearly half saying they no longer enjoy work that once engaged them. A UK Chartered Institute of Marketing survey reports 56% fear burning out in their current role, rising to 59% among 25–34-year-olds. In advertising and media, calls to NABS have risen 35% year on year, with over half primarily about mental health and a further 36% linked to low mood, confidence and work pressures. This is not a marginal issue in your organisation; it is the backdrop to how marketing is currently done.

Yet many HR teams can point to an impressive wellbeing offer.

Access to meditation apps, preventative medicine, menopause support, wellbeing campaigns and flexible working are now relatively common. In market research, 76% of professionals say they approve of their employer’s actions on mental health, and three-quarters who disclosed a struggle at work report a positive, understanding response. Sector bodies are running campaigns, agencies are rolling out extra leave and “unlimited PTO”. On paper, the function has never had more support. And still, 85% of market researchers say they have struggled with their mental wellbeing in the last 12 months, with 77% saying it affected their work.

This distinction matters.

Because if distress remains high while benefits proliferate, the core problem is unlikely to be a lack of programmes. For marketers, the daily reality is an always-on, analytics-heavy environment: live dashboards, campaign cycles compressing, stakeholder demands multiplying. NABS’ wellbeing poll highlights low motivation, anxiety, isolation and pressure of work as the dominant issues. Working from home has helped some, but 40.2% of marketers report it has damaged their mental health; for 18–34-year-olds that rises to 51.6%. Confidence is eroded when feedback slows and one-to-ones drift.

In that context, generic perks feel like a parallel universe. The lever that’s missing sits much closer to the work: how marketing managers are supervised, resourced and given permission to recover.

The higher-education social media manager study is instructive here. Although set in universities, the role it examines is essentially a marketing “team of one”: responsible for real-time channels, reputational risk and constant visibility. On an average day, respondents rated their mental health 6.35 out of 10. In a crisis, that dropped to 4.52; during COVID-19, 4.63. Crucially, 34% said supervisors rarely or never checked in on their mental health, rising to 39% for those lone roles, and 47% felt they did not receive support or resources to protect their wellbeing.

The study doesn’t conclude that these professionals needed more yoga. Respondents pointed to very specific supervisory practices that would improve conditions: clearer guidelines and expectations, greater autonomy and trust, more timely information and updates, more concise communications, hiring additional full-time assistance, and genuine breaks and time off. In other words, wellbeing shifted when managers changed how work was set up, not just what benefits were available.

Marketing mental health guidance reaches a similar conclusion. The first step is not another initiative but making a conscious effort to surface stressors that are “unnoticed or at least undiscussed” in marketing departments. That means training managers to create psychological safety, to ask about workload and impact without defensiveness, and to respond constructively when someone signals they are near the edge. It also means embedding mental health into purpose, objectives and leadership behaviour – not as a campaign theme, but as a design parameter for how targets, timelines and feedback operate.

This is where many HR strategies falter. Wellbeing is delegated to EAPs, apps and policies, while the supervisory system that shapes everyday experience remains largely untouched. Where traditional, hotline-based EAPs tend to sit on the periphery and react to crises, modern, digital-first approaches such as Leafyard’s platform are designed to sit closer to day-to-day behaviour – but they still need to be paired with better line management if they are to make a meaningful dent in marketing distress.

Unlimited PTO illustrates the risk. Agency-focused commentary warns that more leave on paper does little if workloads and expectations make it psychologically unsafe to use. Marketing managers who carry key client relationships or revenue targets often feel that real rest simply pushes a backlog into the future. Burnout then appears as a personal failure of resilience, rather than a predictable outcome of structural design.

A more effective approach treats mental fitness for marketers as both preventative and embedded in the flow of work.

For example, instead of only signposting a generic digital wellbeing library, HR can help marketing leaders co-create function-specific “wellbeing pathways”: agreed norms for campaign planning, crisis response, debriefing and recovery. The marketing mental health guidance describes frameworks that include bespoke pathways, a trauma response system and tiered support for issues beyond work. Translating that into your context might mean formalising who steps in during social media storms, how long people can be in “crisis lead” mode, and what protected downtime follows.

Digital tools can reinforce these pathways if they are designed around habit formation and structured programmes rather than one-off consumption. A platform that offers multi-month journeys with guided video coaching and structured journalling, for instance, allows marketing managers to practise micro-habits – boundary setting, recovery rituals, cognitive reframing – in short bursts that fit between meetings. Five-day experiments on sleep or focus can be aligned with quieter periods in the campaign calendar, making mental fitness training part of how teams prepare for the next peak rather than a bolt-on. Leafyard’s approach to behavioural science and lasting change is one example of how this can be operationalised without adding more “initiatives” to an already crowded agenda.

The advantage of this behavioural-science-led model is that it recognises what marketing managers are up against: fragmented attention, short windows, performance scrutiny. Microlearning that can be completed in under 20 minutes, on any device, respects those constraints. When paired with 24/7, same-day access to accredited counsellors via phone or chat, it also provides a safety net for the moments when pressures spill over, without asking people to navigate complex referral routes while in distress. New-generation EAPs like Leafyard demonstrate that immediate support and habit-building can coexist in a single, accessible system.

For HR, the design challenge is twofold. First, reorient investment so that line-manager capability and workload design are treated as primary wellbeing interventions, not afterthoughts. That includes training marketing leaders in psychological safety, active listening and mental health first response, and holding them accountable for the quality of check-ins, not just campaign results. Second, use analytics that go beyond utilisation rates to track behavioural shifts: are marketing managers forming sustainable habits around rest, focus and boundaries? Are teams in high-risk functions showing improvements in mood, sleep and motivation over time?

Behavioural analytics and board-ready reports that translate these changes into pounds-and-pence ROI can help you defend that shift in emphasis with your CFO. Evidence from organisations using Leafyard – including case studies that track reduced absence, improved focus and measurable savings – shows how data on engagement, recovery and performance can reposition mental fitness as a strategic asset rather than a discretionary benefit.

The misconception to retire is that marketing wellbeing will be solved by more programmes alone. For marketing managers, the true lever sits in how they are led and supported, day to day, under pressure.

The next planning cycle is an opportunity to act. Audit your marketing and insight roles for supervisory practice, clarity, autonomy, communication load, access to additional resourcing and availability of structured pathways for both routine stress and crisis. Then direct your wellbeing budget where the evidence points: towards psychologically safe, well-resourced supervision, reinforced by intelligent, habit-building support. When that becomes the norm, cultures in marketing shift faster than most leaders expect – and platforms such as Leafyard are best used as part of that systemic redesign, not as a sticking plaster.