Has the Influence of the Marketing Function Declined?

(David Packard, the co-founder and former Chairman and CEO of Hewlett-Packard, once said, "Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department." This post explains why Packard's view is accurate but why it's also not necessarily an indictment of the marketing function.) 

A Perceived Loss of Influence

There is a widespread perception in the marketing community that the marketing function has been marginalized at many companies, that the influence of the marketing organization is not as broad or as strong as it once was.

Marketers frequently cite two circumstances as symptomatic of marketing's diminished stature and influence.

First, marketers often describe the lack of influence in terms of the 4Ps of the marketing mix. They note that in many companies, the marketing function is responsible for designing and executing promotional activities and programs, but has little influence over product, price, or place.

Marketers have also observed that senior marketing leaders often don't play a prominent role in the formulation of their company's business strategy.

Recent surveys by Marketing Week and McKinsey & Company have shown that one or both of these circumstances exist at many companies.

So, has the influence of the marketing function actually declined over the past several years, as many marketers believe? Or, is this perception the result of an inflated view of marketing's influence in the past?

To answer these questions, we need to take a brief tour of marketing history beginning about seven decades ago.

The Emergence of the Marketing Concept

In the 1950's, companies began to adopt a new guiding philosophy for achieving business success. This philosophy came to be called the marketing concept, and its core principle was what we might today call "customer centricity."

According to the marketing concept, business leaders should first develop an in-depth understanding of customer needs and wants, and then use that understanding to create products or services that will meet those needs and wants better than competitors. Furthermore, all organizational functions of the company should be aligned on the primary purpose of satisfying customer needs and wants.

Management icon Peter Drucker provided an early statement of the marketing concept as a management philosophy in his 1954 book, The Practice of Management, when he wrote:

"There is only one valid definition of business purpose:  to create a satisfied customer. It is the customer who determines what the business is. Because it is its purpose to create a customer, any business enterprise has two - and only these two - basic functions:  marketing and innovation."

By the 1960's, the philosophical principles of the marketing concept had become well established in business thinking, and many marketing scholars had embraced an expansive view of the role and authority of the marketing function.

In his 1960 marketing textbook, Basic Marketing:  A Managerial Approach, E. Jerome McCarthy, the creator of the 4Ps model of the marketing mix, described the authority of the marketing function in exceptionally broad terms when he wrote:

". . . marketing should determine what products are to be produced (product development, design, and packaging) what prices to charge (credits and collections and pricing policy), and where they are to be available (warehousing and transportation) - as well as selling and advertising."

Other marketing textbooks soon began describing the role and authority of the marketing function in similar terms, and as a result, many marketers came to believe that a powerful marketing function was the norm in well-managed companies.

What Actually Happened

This belief, while widespread, was never completely accurate,* and it's clearly not accurate today. Recent research suggests that the marketing function in most companies does not have the broad authority and responsibilities the marketing scholars of the 1960's described.

A study published in the May 2023 issue of the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science found that only 17% of the companies included in the study had marketing functions that controlled all marketing decisions and set their company's growth agenda.

The influence of the marketing function may have declined in some companies over the past several years, but in most companies, the marketing function never wielded the broad authority many marketing scholars had anticipated.

What actually happened in most companies is that strategy became the preferred way for senior company leaders to make major decisions about the future of their business. And because a sound strategy must address several important marketing issues, senior company leaders began making major marketing decisions as part of the strategy development process.

Therefore, in companies with a mature strategy development process, the marketing function doesn't fully control all marketing decisions. I frequently hear or see marketers complain about "non-marketers" making marketing decisions, and clearly the risk for mistakes increases when the people making marketing decisions don't understand basic marketing principles. However, when marketing is defined broadly, such decision making is probably inevitable and may, in fact, be necessary and beneficial.

Peter Drucker viewed marketing as a general management responsibility. In his 1973 classic, Management Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, Drucker wrote:

"Marketing is so basic that it cannot be considered a separate function . . . it is, first, a central dimension of the entire business . . . Concern and responsibility for marketing must, therefore, permeate all areas of the enterprise."

To maximize the influence of the marketing functions in these circumstances, marketing leaders must develop capabilities and perform activities that are specifically designed to support their company's chosen business strategy and strategy-making process. I'll discuss the ascendancy of strategy in more detail and explain how marketing leaders can accomplish these tasks in my next two posts.

*****

*Marketing functions with broad responsibilities and decision-making authority did exist, primarily in large consumer package goods (CPG) companies that had adopted brand management structures and processes. Proctor & Gamble invented the brand management function in the 1930's, and by the late 1950's, it had been widely implemented by U.S. CPG companies. These companies may have inspired the view of the marketing function advanced by marketing scholars.

Image courtesy of Virtual EyeSee via Flickr (CC).

Looking Back, Looking Forward - 2026 Edition

Source:  Shutterstock

The beginning of a new year is what behavioral scientists call a temporal landmark - a date that is more meaningful than others. Temporal landmarks often prompt us to make significant life changes or commit to pursuing new goals.

If you doubt the power of temporal landmarks, just consider how often we make "New Year's resolutions" to lose weight or begin a regular exercise program.

Like many marketers, I used the final few weeks of 2025 to reflect on what happened during the year and plan for 2026. For the past few years, I've used my first post of the new year to review a few of the major developments that occurred in B2B marketing during the year just ended, and preview some of the topics I'll be writing about in the year ahead.

So, here's a look back at 2025 and a look forward to 2026.

Looking Back - Another "Year of AI"

Artificial intelligence was one of the hottest topics in marketing in 2025, as it was in 2024 and 2023. OpenAI's release of ChatGPT in November 2022 ignited an arms race of epic proportions among the mega-cap technology companies.

As a result, the performance of the large language models that power generative AI has been increasing at an exponential rate, and the number of software applications incorporating AI in some form has exploded.

Despite the obvious importance of the subject, I did not publish a single post in 2025 that focused primarily on AI. I decided to steer clear of the topic because an abundance of information about AI is available from other reliable sources.

If you want to stay on top of what's happening in the AI space, I strongly recommend that your subscribe to Christopher Penn's newsletter. Penn is my go-to resource for insightful and pragmatic commentary on the latest advances in AI. His December 14, 2025 newsletter contains an excellent review of the major developments in AI that occurred in 2025.

Looking Back - B2B Brand Building Gains Traction

After languishing in the shadow of demand generation/performance marketing for nearly two decades, B2B brand marketing seems to be on the cusp of a renaissance. The volume of content highlighting the importance of having a strong B2B brand has increased dramatically over the past couple of years.

The growing interest in B2B brand building can be attributed to several factors. For one thing, many B2B marketers are finding that marketing tactics that worked well only a few years ago have become less effective.

In addition, several recent research studies have provided insights about the real-world B2B buying process that make the value of a strong B2B brand abundantly clear. The most recent research addressing this issue is the 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Study by 6sense, which I wrote about in November.  

We are still in the early stages of the resurgence of B2B brand building, but the momentum is real, and I expect it will continue to build in 2026.

Looking Forward

Each year, I try to identify a small group of issues or circumstances that I believe will play a prominent role in B2B marketing during the coming year. These issues or circumstances will provide the themes for many of my posts here.

In 2026, one set of issues I plan to focus on relates to the scope of authority and responsibility of the senior marketing leader and the marketing organization in a B2B company.

There is a widespread belief in the marketing community that the role and influence of the marketing function are more narrow today than they were in the past. Many marketers describe this issue in terms of the 4P's of the marketing mix.

In Marketing Week's 2025 Career & Salary Survey, over 88% of the responding marketers said they or someone within their team have influence over advertising (promotion). But:

• Only 48.5% said they have influence over product development
• Only 34.1% said they have influence over price
• Only 32.7% said they have influence over place

Others describe the issue in terms of marketing's lack of involvement in the business strategy development process at many companies. For example, in a 2024 survey by McKinsey & Company, only half of the surveyed CMOs said that marketing executives are involved in the strategic planning process at their organization.

In my upcoming posts, I'll discuss this issue, and I'll explore what the role and primary responsibilities of the marketing organization should be in a well-managed B2B company.

Here's to a year of successful marketing in 2026.

Three "Ugly Duckling" Posts From 2025

A couple of weeks ago, I published the list of my ten most popular posts of 2025. I ranked posts based on cumulative total reads, which means that posts published later in the year were at a major disadvantage compared to those published earlier in the year.

Several posts that I published in the second half of 2025 have attracted a significant number of readers, but not quite enough to crack the top ten list. In a way, these posts are like the ugly duckling in the much-loved fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. They just need more time for their popularity to become evident.

Before I close the books on 2025, I wanted to highlight a few of these ugly duckling posts that, with time, will become beautiful swans.

So, in case you missed any of them, here are three posts from this year that are worth reading as you wrap up 2025 and move into 2026.

[Research Round-Up] 6sense Study Provides Critical Insights on B2B Buyer Behavior

Source:  6sense

This post summarized some of the major findings of the 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Study conducted by 6sense. The 2025 study is the third edition of 6sense's B2B buyer experience research, with previous studies being conducted in 2024 and 2023.

All of the 6sense buyer experience studies have provided valuable, and occasionally counterintuitive, insights about the real-world attitudes and behaviors of business buyers.

My post discussing the 2024 edition of the study made this year's top ten list, and I expect this post to attract similar interest over time.

What Has (and Hasn't) Changed in B2B Marketing 

A substantial majority of experienced B2B marketers would probably say that the last two decades have been a period of unprecedented change in B2B marketing.

Over the past twenty years, we have witnessed the proliferation of marketing channels, the explosive growth of marketing technologies, and the appearance of several new marketing techniques.

During the same period, we've also seen the introduction of an array of "new" concepts and models describing the B2B buying process and exploring the role of marketing in the revenue growth of B2B companies.

While it's obviously essential for marketers to keep on top of significant changes in their profession, it's equally important that they remember what things haven't changed.

In this post, I used excerpts from a 1972 book by Frederick E. Webster and Yoram Wind to make the point that many of the core principles of marketing and buyer behavior have changed very little.

Long Live the 4P's

Source:  Shutterstock

The 4P's model of the marketing mix was introduced by E. Jerome McCarthy, a marketing professor at Notre Dame, in his 1960 marketing textbook. McCarthy's model quickly became popular, and it's been a core part of the marketing curriculum at virtually all universities for decades.

Despite its popularity and longevity, the 4P's model has been criticized for a variety of reasons, and several marketing academics and other pundits have offered alternatives that are designed to address the perceived limitations of McCarthy's original model. So, we now have the "7P's," the "7C's," and the "5B's," among others.

A recent salvo of criticism aimed at the 4P's was fired by Joanne Seddon, the CEO of the Marketing Accountability Standards Board, in a article published this fall at WARC.

In this post, I used excerpts from McCarthy's 1960 textbook to demonstrate that most criticisms of the 4P's model, including Ms. Seddon's, are misplaced.

Top image courtesy of Lando Mollari via Flickr (CC).

Our 10 Most Popular Posts of 2025

This will be my last regularly scheduled post for 2025, and I want to thank everyone who has spent some of his or her valuable time reading this blog. My goal here has always been to provide content that readers will find informative, thought-provoking, and useful, and I've been immensely gratified by the attention and engagement this blog has received.

For several years, I've used my last post of the year to share which posts have been most widely read. For this list, I'm only considering posts published in 2025, and I've ranked the posts based on cumulative total reads. Therefore, those published early in the year have a significant advantage.

So, in case you missed any of them, here are our ten most popular posts of 2025.

     1.     Cracking the Code on Strategic ABM Success

     2.     Why We Need a New Model of B2B Marketing 

     3.     The Recipe for Content That Creates Mental Availability

     4.     Thought Leadership or Brand - Which Matters More to "Hidden Buyers"?

     5.     Six Key Steps to Winning CFO (and CEO) Support for Increased Investment in Brand Marketing

     6.     When the Most Important Goal in B2B Marketing Is to be Remembered

     7.     [Book Review] A Playbook for Leading Marketing In a VUCA (Volatile-Uncertain-Complex-Ambiguous) World

     8.     [Research Round-Up] Two Surveys Take the Pulse of Senior Marketers

     9.     [Research Round-Up] A Detailed Look at Real-World B2B Buying

    10.     How to Make Sustainability Marketing Effective Marketing 

Happy holidays to everyone, and best wishes for a great 2026!

Illustration courtesy of Dark Dwarf via Flickr (CC).

[Research Round-Up] 6sense Study Provides Critical Insights on B2B Buyer Behavior

Source:  6sense

6sense published the findings of its "2025 B2B Buyer Experience Study" (the "2025 Study") earlier this month. The 2025 Study is the third edition of 6sense's B2B buyer experience research. Previous studies were conducted in 2024 and 2023.

The objective of the 2025 Study - as with the earlier studies - was to capture insights regarding how B2B buyers actually make business purchases.

Study Methodology and Participant Profile

The 2025 Study was based on two surveys. The primary study received nearly 4,000 responses from B2B buyers. 6sense also conducted a supplementary survey to specifically examine how artificial intelligence and economic uncertainty were affecting B2B buyer behaviors, and that survey produced an additional 766 responses.

Here's an overview of the survey respondents' attributes:

• Respondents represented a wide range of levels and roles in their organization, with nearly half (49%) being VP-level or above.

• Respondents were located in North America (46%), Continental Europe (20%), the UK and Ireland (20%), and Asia-Pacific (14%).

• Nearly half of the respondents (49%) worked for companies having from $10 million to $500 million in annual revenues.

• 80% of the respondents worked for companies providing technology (42%) or services (38%).

• Respondents included buyers of services (41%), software (33%), and physical goods (26%).

What Has Changed

The 2025 Study revealed two significant shifts in B2B buyer behavior compared to the earlier 6sense studies.

Buying Cycles Were Shorter

 Globally, the average length of the buying cycle in 2025 was 10.1 months, down from 11.3 months in the 2024 edition of the study. In North America, the length of the buying cycle was virtually unchanged - 11.1 months in 2025 vs. 11.4 months in 2024.

The shorter average buying cycle was due in part to a change in the mix of purchases represented in the 6sense studies. There were more purchases of physical goods in the 2025 Study compared to the 2024 study, and the buying cycle length for physical goods was shorter than for the other types of solutions represented in the research.

More importantly, the 2025 Study showed that economic uncertainty played a significant role in shortening the average buying cycle. Nearly half of the surveyed buyers (49%) said economic conditions had led to shorter buying cycles.

The study report states:  "Many organizations with approved budgets may have been eager to commit funds quickly, before potential pullbacks due to tariffs, cost-cutting, or other macroeconomic risks."

Buyers Engaged With Sellers Earlier

The second major shift in buyer behavior revealed in the 2025 Study was that buyers initiated contact with sellers earlier in the buying process. In the 2025 Study, the average "point of first contact" between buyers and sellers occurred when buyers were 61% through their buying process. That was down from 69% in the earlier 6sense studies.

Survey respondents pointed to two factors driving the earlier seller engagement.

• 58% of the survey respondents said their need to evaluate how prospective vendors were implementing artificial intelligence in their solutions caused them (buyers) to engage earlier.

• Nearly 62% of the respondents said they engaged earlier because of economic uncertainty.

What Hasn't Changed

The 2025 Study revealed that many of the B2B buying patterns and buyer behaviors identified by 6sense in its prior studies remained largely unchanged. For example, the 2025 Study found that:

• The surveyed buyers evaluated an average of five prospective vendors.

• Buying groups filled four of the five spots on their vendor shortlist on Day 1 of the buying process.

• 94% of the surveyed buyers said they ranked their shortlist vendors according to preference before contacting any vendor.

• 79% of the surveyed buyers said they initiated contact with prospective vendors. They contacted their top-ranked vendor first about 80% of the time, and they ultimately bought from their top-ranked vendor 77% of the time.

An Important Resource

The 6sense study represents a genre of research that we need more of in B2B. Much of the popular research in the B2B space consists of surveys of marketers. While it's useful to know how other marketers are thinking and what they are doing, it's far more valuable to understand how business buyers actually make purchase decisions.

That's what the 6sense study addresses, and I strongly recommend that you take the time to review the full study report.

Why Mission Is the Critical Foundation of Effective Marketing Planning

The fourth quarter of 2025 is well underway, which means many B2B marketers have begun planning for next year.

Marketing planning processes vary considerably across companies. Planning in large enterprises can be quite formal, while the process in smaller companies tends to be less formal.

Whatever your approach to planning, one key to developing an effective marketing plan is to keep your planning process focused on the right things. Fortunately, a proven military planning technique can help marketing leaders keep their planning process on course.

For years, US military commanders at all levels have used a framework called METT-TC as an integral part of their planning process. METT-TC is a mnemonic that is designed to help commanders remember and prioritize what to analyze when planning a military operation.

METT-TC stands for mission, enemy, terrain, troops available, time, and civil considerations. These six factors define the environment in which any military operation will be conducted, and commanders must thoroughly analyze each of these factors to develop sound operational plans.

When I work with a client to develop a marketing plan, we analyze five environmental factors, and I've created a mnemonic for these factors that serves much the same purpose as METT-TC. My mnemonic is MMCC-R, which stands for mission, market structure and dynamics, customer dynamics, competitive landscape, and resources available.

Mission Is "First Among Equals"

These five factors are all important, but mission is clearly the "first among equals" because it provides the "north star" guidance for the rest of the planning process. Mission occupies this pivotal position for two reasons.

First, to deliver maximum impact and effectiveness, all marketing activities must be aligned with and supportive of a clearly defined mission. With every proposed marketing initiative, you should ask:  "How will this initiative help us fulfill our mission?" Obviously, you can't answer this question if you don't have a clear picture of what your marketing mission is.

The second reason is equally important. To be a successful marketing leader, you need the support of your CEO and other senior company leaders. Your chances of gaining and keeping that support will be higher if you and the other members of your company's senior leadership team have a common understanding of marketing's mission.

Therefore, you need to have regular, open, and frank discussions with your senior company leaders about the core mission of marketing in your organization. The goal, of course, is to cultivate a shared understanding of marketing's mission across the entire senior leadership team.

The Core Mission of Marketing

So, what is the core mission of marketing? I'm always skeptical of marketing principles or methods that purport to be universal. Competitive conditions can vary considerably across companies, and that usually requires a company to develop business and marketing strategies that fit its unique circumstances. But, this is the "exception that proves the rule."

Every marketing organization in a for-profit company has a two-part mission, both aspects of which are linked to revenue growth. Marketing must create and run programs that will enable the company to achieve its short-term revenue objectives, and also design and execute programs that will lay the necessary foundation for long-term revenue growth.

The need to focus simultaneously on the short term and the long term is not unique to marketing, but it can be particularly challenging for marketers. For the past several years, marketing leaders have faced increasing demands to prove the value of their activities and programs. Overall, this has been a positive development, but it can have a dark side.

Marketing programs that produce a quick impact on revenue are relatively easy to measure, and their results can often be seen in a few weeks. However, programs whose impacts are several steps removed from the buying decisions that generate revenue are much more difficult to measure, and they may not produce visible results for several months.

Under these circumstances, marketing leaders often face pressures to shift resources to marketing programs that can deliver quick and easily measurable results. Unfortunately, such a shift can cause companies to under-invest in longer-term marketing activities and programs, thus placing future revenue growth at risk.

Producing both short-term and long-term revenue growth is the core marketing mission at any for-profit company, and the company's senior leadership team must understand and endorse this mission. Therefore, communicating this mission to your company's senior leaders and obtaining their buy-in is a vital step in your planning process.

Top image courtesy of DENAN Production via Flickr (CC).

[Book Review] A Practitioner's Guide to Brand Associations

Source:  Ullrich Appelbaum

After languishing in the shadow of demand generation marketing for more than two decades, B2B brand marketing is experiencing a renaissance. Several recent research studies have provided insights about B2B buyers and the B2B buying process that make the value of a strong brand abundantly clear.

Most of what we know about building strong brands originated in B2C companies. In the 1930s, Procter & Gamble invented the business function that would come to be called brand management, and by the late 1950s, brand management practices had been widely adopted by U.S. consumer package goods companies.

Given the B2C origin of brand management, it's not surprising that many B2B marketers don't have extensive experience with some of the core principles of brand building.

If you're a B2B marketer who wants or needs to learn more about one of the fundamental concepts of building strong brands, you should put Ullrich ("Ulli") Appelbaum's new book on your reading list.

The Science of Brand Associations:  Win Minds, Win Markets (2025) provides a practitioner-focused primer on the vital role that brand associations play in building a strong brand. 

Ulli Appelbaum has more than 30 years of experience in creating brand strategies and building brands. He is the founder of First The Trousers Then The Shoes, a brand research, strategy, and training boutique. Previously, he held senior strategy roles at several leading advertising agencies, including BBDO, Leo Burnett, Fallon Worldwide, and SapientNitro. 

What's In the Book

The Science of Brand Associations contains four major sections.

In the first section (Chapters 1-4), Ulli Appelbaum provides a scientific definition of "brand" and "Brand Association Networks," and he uses principles of cognitive psychology and neuroscience to explain how brands are formed in people's brains.

He then describes how brands can carry meanings that extend beyond their functional attributes, and he shares research demonstrating the benefits of building strong and rich brand association networks.

The second section (Chapters 5-9) discusses how to use brand association networks to build strong brands. Appelbaum describes the types of associations brands should focus on (Chapter 5) and the critical role that distinctive brand assets play in building a strong brand (Chapter 6). In Chapter 9, he lays out 14 proven principles of brand growth.

In the third section of the book (Chapters 10-11), Appelbaum describes the reasons brands fail, and he discusses five strategies marketers or brand managers can use to overcome negative brand associations.

The fourth section (Chapters 12-13) addresses how to research and measure brand associations.

 My Take

The Science of Brand Associations will be a valuable resource for any marketer who is responsible for driving revenue growth at their organization. The book is short - just over 100 pages - and Ulli Appelbaum's writing style makes the book easy to read.

Advances in neuroscience and the behavioral sciences over the past several decades have given us a deeper understanding of how humans learn, how our brains store and retrieve information, and how memories impact human decision-making. To be effective, marketing must be designed to leverage how humans think and make decisions.

Appelbaum forcefully argues that brand associations are the single most important concept in marketing. He writes:

"In fact, understanding how brands are formed in the mind of consumers . . . and how to create and nurture strong and rich association networks around your offering . . . is the foundation of everything else we do in marketing and successful brand building."

Appelbaum supports this central argument with numerous references to the work of cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists, as well as high-regarded research firms (including Ehrenberg-Bass, Ipsos, and Kantar) and respected marketing experts (including Byron Sharp, Jenni Romaniuk, and Kevin Lane Keller).

The Science of Brand Associations is purpose-written for practitioners. Appelbaum describes his book as "a sort of operating manual" that translates scientific research and evidence-based marketing principles into "practical and applicable actions intended to help brand stewards make better strategic choices and decisions . . ."

To support practitioners, Appelbaum includes several detailed "scorecards" that marketers can use to apply the principles and techniques he discusses in the book.

Appelbaum also includes several real-world examples in his book to illustrate various points. However, these examples are not very detailed. I wish that he had included at least a few detailed and rigorous case studies to support his most important points.

Even with this caveat, I strongly recommend that you take the time to read The Science of Brand Associations.