The original one is better, but the font for your links is extremely malformed in my Chrome for some reason.

Except from that I prefer it, it is less conforming and therefore will stick in my mind for longer, I actually read some of the text on your site, which is more than I usually did.

Tell your client the marketing team suggested that design so that they have a reason to be paid and that any marketing team is actually useless in most cases. Paying someone to tell you your own opinion is a bad method of outsourcing.