Do-Re-Mi

To quote Broadway legend Jessica Vosk’s venerable 2002 performance as Maria in The Sound of Music:¹

I’ve always felt odd calling myself a marketer. There’s a residue of pretentiousness that still lingers² from my journalism degree insisting that I am still, first and foremost, a writer.

But it’s been 15 years since I’ve set foot in a newsroom or had a consistent byline — so it’s probably time to just acknowledge that I am, in fact, a marketer.

I would like to think I’ve picked up some marketing wisdom in the past decade and a half. So when the opportunity presented itself (i.e. six month of unemployment) I wrote a book: Marketing Isn’t Special.

Its main thesis challenges the ever-increasing trend of marketing being all about disruption, inspiration, and zeitgeist. It instead shows how marketing works best when it’s treated as a disciplined, process-driven business function (just like every other business function) and that the boring fundamentals of marketing (consistency, clarity, alignment) are the actual value of marketing. It gives permission for business leaders and marketers alike to stop chasing fads and start doubling down on what reliably works.

I pitched it to a few dozen publishers and literary agents, who all passed. It was clear from the submission process that they were looking for authors who already had a significant online presence. Fair enough.

But I’m sure the other big reason they all passed was that the book essentially argues that marketing, as a discipline, is broken. I admit that a book leading with “You’re doing it all wrong!” isn’t the most endearing.

(I do address this in the book’s preface, acknowledging that I do, from time to time, dabble in the bombastic, the hyperbolic, and the curmudgeonly. The hope is to be seen as a well intentioned, blunt advocate — not a bitter cynic.)

That said, the questions remain: Would anyone with any interest in, involvement with, or influence over marketing actually buy a book like that? Does a (hilarious) business marketing book with some contrarian opinions have any value?

That’s what I needed to find out.

I started at the very beginning, establishing the most boring business truths there are:

What problem am I trying to solve? What value does what I’m offering bring?

You’d think this step is obvious, but 35% of startups fail specifically because there was no market need for what they were offering. They built something no one wanted.

It’s clear there are problems with the current state of marketing, and plenty of data showing:

And companies spend about $27 billion globally each year specifically on marketing consulting services — looking for a diagnostic and cure for those persistent and expensive marketing dysfunctions which executives and marketers can often sense but not name.

So the problem exists. Does what I’m offering solve that problem? I think so.

According to a 2015 McKinsey report: “When done well, we've seen marketing operations provide a 15 to 25 percent improvement in marketing effectiveness, as measured by return on investment and customer-engagement metrics.” It’s not creativity and vibes or awards, accolades, and the next big thing. Reliable, operations-driven marketing outperforms sporadic brilliance.

A 2024 Gartner survey found: “Only 52% of CMOs and other senior marketing leaders said they were successful in proving the value of marketing and receiving credit for helping meet enterprise objectives.” This executive-executor gap means c-suite and marketers talk past each other; execs think marketing is fluffy, and the people doing the marketing work think execs don’t get it. Both sides lose sight of marketing as a shared business discipline.

Each of those problems, and the myriad that stem from them, can be solved with the right mindset and framework, helping leaders and marketers treat marketing like every other business function — reliable, measurable, and sane.

Can my book solve all of that? Honestly, it probably can. It’s pretty good. Thorough. Data-driven. Once it’s published, you should definitely buy a copy.³

But establishing that simple clarity up front — around what problem I’m trying to solve and if my solution has value — is the foundation for everything that’s going to come after.

Maybe I’ve had a unique lived experience, but I’ve worked at and for multiple companies where asking those most boring business questions (e.g. What are we offering? What value does it bring? Would anyone pay for it?) elicits uncertainty, generalities, contradictions, and confusion.

Every business should go through this process from time to time and do some introspection and validation (just like I did⁴) around products and services, features and benefits, and what problem they’re actually solving. And then, most importantly, make sure everyone is aligned to it.

Otherwise you’ll show up one day and not understand why everyone is singing, “Ti, a drink with jam and bread.”