Marketing is not run by everyone. It is seen by everyone.

Why marketing attracts so many opinions, and why strong leadership is not about shutting them out

A recent image circulating on LinkedIn made a point many marketers will recognise immediately.

Finance. Run by experts. Legal. Run by experts. HR. Run by experts. Operations. Run by experts.

And then there is marketing: apparently run by everyone.

The image was funny because there is some truth behind the frustration. A CEO sees a competitor campaign and suddenly wants to rethink positioning. Someone thinks the logo should be bigger. A colleague has discovered a tactic that worked brilliantly for a completely different company and wonders why we are not doing the same thing.

Then, after weeks of new ideas, tweaks and changing priorities, someone asks:

Why does marketing feel so unfocused?

I understand the frustration. But I see the underlying issue slightly differently.

Marketing is not run by everyone. Marketing is seen by everyone.

And that distinction matters.

Marketing has a visibility problem, but it is a good problem to have

Most people inside a company cannot immediately judge the quality of a financial model, the architecture of an IT system or the wording of a complex legal agreement.

Marketing is different.

People see the website. They see the campaign. They read the LinkedIn post. They watch the video. They notice the colours, the headline, the event booth and the new tagline.

And because they can see it, they can react to it.

That does not make them marketing experts. But it does make marketing one of the most visible functions in an organisation.

The same is true externally. Customers, competitors, candidates, partners, analysts and journalists experience parts of a company through its marketing.

Being exposed to opinion is therefore not evidence that marketing is being taken less seriously. In many ways, it is evidence of marketing's importance.

A marketing function nobody talks about might have a very different problem.

The visible output is only a fraction of marketing

There was another important point in the discussion that followed my LinkedIn comment.

People often judge marketing through what they can see. But what they see is only the surface.

Behind a campaign might sit months of market research, customer conversations, segmentation, competitive analysis, positioning decisions, content development, budget allocation, channel strategy, data analysis, technology, lead management and alignment with sales.

The advertisement is visible.

The reasoning behind it usually is not.

This explains part of the tension.

Someone commenting on a headline may believe they are discussing a headline. The marketing team may know that changing it affects positioning, differentiation, campaign architecture and several other assets already in market.

A "small tweak" is not always small.

This is why marketing leaders also have an internal communication responsibility. We need to make enough of the thinking visible that colleagues understand that marketing decisions are not simply matters of taste.

Listening does not mean surrendering decision-making

This is where I think the debate becomes more interesting.

Should marketing listen to everyone?

Yes.

Should every opinion influence the strategy?

Absolutely not.

There is a major difference between having a voice and having a vote.

Sales can bring invaluable information from customers. Product teams understand capabilities and development priorities. Legal sees risks marketing might overlook. Customer success understands recurring frustrations. Leadership brings the broader corporate perspective.

Ignoring those voices would make marketing weaker.

But expertise still matters.

I would not expect to walk into Finance, look at a spreadsheet for five minutes and tell the CFO how to restructure the company's financial planning.

Marketing deserves the same professional respect.

Cross-functional input should inform marketing decisions. It should not automatically become marketing decisions.

Marketing leadership therefore requires boundaries

The solution is not to build a wall around the marketing department and tell everyone else to stay out.

That would be equally problematic.

The better approach is to establish clear decision rights.

My own principle is simple:

Listen broadly. Decide clearly. Stay aligned.

Listen to the organisation because good ideas and important signals can come from anywhere.

Decide clearly because somebody ultimately needs to be accountable for positioning, brand, campaigns and marketing performance.

Stay aligned because marketing cannot become a sequence of reactions to whoever expressed the latest or loudest opinion.

This is particularly important for CMOs and Heads of Marketing.

Our job is not to defend every original idea at all costs. Strategies should change when the evidence changes. Markets move. Customers change. Competitors act. New information emerges.

But there is a difference between being adaptable and being reactive.

Changing direction because customer evidence shows that your positioning is wrong is good marketing.

Changing direction because somebody happened to see an interesting competitor advertisement that morning is something else.

Feedback needs context

One useful discipline is to ask what sits behind the feedback.

When someone says, "I don't like this campaign", the conversation should not end there.

What specifically concerns you? Does it conflict with what you hear from customers? Does it create a reputational risk? Does it contradict our positioning? Do you believe the target audience will react differently? What evidence are we seeing?

Once feedback moves from personal preference to business context, it becomes much more valuable.

"I don't like blue" is an opinion.

"Our largest customer segment consistently associates this message with a different product category" is insight.

Strong marketing organisations learn to distinguish between the two.

The CMO's job is not to eliminate opinions

This is perhaps where I differ most from the original depiction.

I do not want colleagues to stop discussing marketing.

I want people to care about our brand.

I want the sales team to challenge whether our messaging reflects what customers are saying.

I want product leaders to question whether we are representing our capabilities correctly.

I want employees to feel connected to what the company stands for.

That engagement can be an enormous advantage.

The challenge is making sure participation does not turn into fragmentation.

Because ultimately, the market does not experience the organisation as twenty different internal opinions.

It experiences one company.

One brand. One positioning. One message. One market presence.

Creating that coherence from many perspectives is one of the most important responsibilities of modern marketing leadership.

Being in the spotlight is part of the job

Marketing will probably always attract more immediate opinions than many other functions.

That comes with the territory.

You need enough confidence to defend decisions when necessary, enough humility to recognise when someone else has a better insight and enough discipline to tell the difference.

The goal should not be to make marketing invisible to everyone except marketers.

Quite the opposite.

Marketing should be visible. It should be discussed. It should be challenged.

But being open to challenge does not mean running the department by committee.

Marketing professionals must remain accountable for turning market understanding, company strategy and cross-functional perspectives into a coherent direction.

Because marketing may be seen by everyone.

But it still needs to be led by marketers.