I think it's a culture thing. There are good marketers and there are terrible marketers.
In programming, there is a culture of calling people out for their bullshit. In most other business cultures, it's a bit less belligerent.
In programming, there is a culture of calling people out for their bullshit. In most other business cultures, it's a bit less belligerent.
Marketing can be every bit as confrontational, but it's usually more passive aggressive. You'll rarely get called out in a meeting, but you'll get outmaneuvered or back-channeled after the meeting is over.
The field is incredibly political. When I worked in marketing, I felt like I was a character in "Game of Thrones." The constant alliances, shifts, backstabbings, feints, etc., were exhausting. Obviously, a great deal of this depends on company culture. But as general disciplines, marketing and sales seem to attract political types.
Given the choice between the two styles of confrontation, I'd much rather have it out in the room, all agendas laid bare on the table, than have to play GoT every day. But that's just a personal preference.
The passive aggressiveness in the industry is suffocating.
The problem with the discipline of marketing is that it's often a complementary discipline. It's sort of like the Steve Nash or Magic Johnson of company operations: if it's performing well, it's enhancing the performance of everyone else on the team.
In certain industries, by contrast, marketing rules the roost. The consumer packaged goods (CPG) business, for instance, is directed by marketing. A marketer at a CPG firm, known commonly as a Brand Manager, is exactly that: he or she is running almost every aspect of a major brand. Accordingly, the performance of brand managers is (relatively) easy to measure. You've got sales, margins, market share, etc., and all of them tie fairly directly to your business decisions. Brand management is akin to general management, and many brand managers would argue that what they do is full-spectrum marketing; everyone in marketing in other industries is just performing a subset of what the brand manager does.
Still not sure if it applies universally, but generally acknowledge it can be the catalyst for a great product to get widespread adoption.
This sounds fucking awful.
I think a company where sales and marketing becomes more about politics and less about analysis and creativity is doomed to fail (or at least not achieve its real potential).
My daily struggle is to quantify my accomplishments, it really is too easy to dismiss the "marketing guy".