The problem with treating marketing as the department that makes things look good.

In too many organisations, marketing receives the brief after the product, price, audience and timeline have already been decided. Its role is reduced to naming the promotion, producing the artwork and finding a way to make the announcement attractive.

The conversation often begins with the channel. We need radio. We should place a newspaper spread. Put something on social media and launch it next week. Marketing is expected to run off into the races without first establishing whether the requested activity can solve the business problem.

This may produce good-looking work. It does not produce the full value of marketing.

Marketing is responsible for understanding customers, shaping demand, defining value and connecting what the business offers to what the market is prepared to choose. Those responsibilities belong near the beginning of a decision, not at the end of it.

What exactly are we bringing to market? Why now? Who do we expect to buy it? What do we know about them? What problem does it solve? What are the commercial targets and how will we judge whether the activity worked?

Those questions are not designed to complicate the process. They are there to ensure that the business is solving the right problem before it invests in communicating the answer.

When marketing is brought in late, important questions surface late as well. Is the audience genuinely interested? Is the proposition meaningfully different? Does the price fit the value being promised? Is the customer journey easy enough? Does the launch timing make sense?

Creative execution cannot repair weak answers to those questions. The business can invest in products customers do not want, promotions that erode value or messages that expose a lack of strategic clarity. Marketing is then blamed for failing to sell a decision it had no role in shaping.

The cost is not merely a disappointing campaign. It can include wasted media, discounted inventory, lost confidence and the mistaken conclusion that the market is unresponsive when the offer was never properly built around the customer.

Giving marketing a stronger role does not mean allowing the department to control every commercial decision. It means ensuring that customer and market judgement are present alongside finance, operations, sales and leadership. Each discipline sees a different part of the opportunity and risk.

This also demands more from marketers. A seat at the table cannot be defended only with taste, trends and engagement figures. Marketing leaders must understand margin, growth priorities, operational constraints and the economics of the business. They must translate customer knowledge into decisions leaders can act on.

They must also be willing to educate. People often prescribe marketing tactics based on what they know or what they have seen done before. The marketer’s job is not to guard the discipline territorially. It is to explain the reasoning well enough for the wider team to help build a stronger solution.

Good involvement is practical. Marketing does not need to attend every meeting or delay every decision. It needs access at the points where customer insight, positioning, demand and the route to market can still affect the outcome.

The best creative work still matters. It can make a strategy memorable, distinctive and emotionally compelling. Creativity becomes more powerful when it is attached to a sound commercial choice rather than asked to disguise a weak one.

If marketing is expected to influence revenue, it must be allowed to influence the decisions that revenue depends on. Marketing earns its place in the room by contributing judgement, not merely by taking instructions.