A marketing job title is not a strategy

I have spent most of my career in branding and marketing. I see plenty of recruitment ads for marketing talent and get asked for referrals in luxury hospitality just as often. What I rarely see is a business that has worked out what it actually needs that hire to do.

The job description usually covers everything. Brand, social, PR, partnerships, lead generation, sales, events. All in one hire. As if the title itself is the strategy.

Are you hiring a person, or trying to fix a problem you have not defined yet?

Too often, the brief leaves the important questions unanswered. What is marketing accountable for? What is the business selling, to whom, and why should someone choose it over the place next door? Until that is settled, whoever you hire is working without a clear target, and you are paying for the guesswork.

I would do it the other way round. Look at what is driving the business and what is not. Decide where you want to get to, then work out what marketing has to deliver. That tells you who to hire, or whether you need the hire at all.

Sometimes the answer is an in-house marketer. Sometimes a full team. Sometimes it is one senior person to set the direction before anyone else comes on.

And whoever it is, this is not a one-season fix. You do not turn a brand around in a summer. The direction has to hold beyond the next campaign, or you are back where you started next spring.

Hiring the title first can be an expensive way to discover what the business actually needed.