Marketing’s Not-So-Quiet Identity Crisis

If you talk to ten marketers about what they do, you’ll get twelve different answers. And if you look at ten job descriptions for the same title, you might wonder if they’re even describing the same profession.

Across organizations, marketing is defined in wildly different ways. Sometimes it sits under brand, sometimes under sales, sometimes under communications. Sometimes marketing is responsible for shaping narrative. Sometimes it’s responsible for revenue. Sometimes it’s both or neither.

And the confusion isn’t just internal.
McKinsey has found that only about 30 percent of CMOs believe their CEO truly understands modern marketing, even though 65 percent of CEOs say they do. That disconnect alone shapes how the role is scoped, measured and valued.

And honestly? I understand why.

Marketing has never been about owning one lane. Its real value is in understanding how all the lanes work together. Marketers are natural connectors, translating between teams, spotting patterns, making sense of the chaos and helping the business move in a shared direction. Often before we’ve had our morning coffee.

My own career has mirrored that fluidity.

I’ve supported sales and business development, led rebrands, aligned leaders around new priorities, built growth infrastructure and helped teams navigate structural shifts. 

Every environment has defined “marketing” a little differently, but the throughline has always been the same.

Marketing is the ultimate cross-functional role.
It is the connective tissue between reputation, sales, operations, client experience and culture.

Which is exactly why the role feels like it’s having an identity crisis.

Marketing adapts to what the business needs at any given moment, sometimes leading strategy, sometimes driving demand, sometimes anchoring the brand and sometimes uniting the system. Our value is dynamic, not static. Which is powerful, but also disorienting when you’re trying to understand what marketing should be inside a modern organization.

And it’s not just individuals who feel this.
Companies are wrestling with it, too.

Deloitte’s work with CMOs highlights the same tension. Many marketing leaders say their remit should be enterprise-wide, but only a small share report actually influencing all major business activities. The ambition and the reality rarely match, which only adds to the identity pressure inside the function.

Job titles add to the noise.
The American Marketing Association points to dozens of marketing titles in circulation, everything from growth marketer to lifecycle manager to brand activation lead. The variety reflects how expansive the discipline has become, but it also highlights the lack of a unified definition of what marketing “is.”

Organizations are redefining the role in real time because the business environment is shifting faster than the job description. Growth today requires alignment, integration and operational clarity, areas where marketing plays a central role even if it’s not always recognized as such.

So maybe it’s less of an identity crisis and more of an identity expansion.

Marketing isn’t losing itself.
It is evolving into what businesses actually need:
a connector, a strategic operator, a system shaper and a force for coherence in an increasingly fragmented landscape.