Most of the marketing failures I’ve seen weren’t creative failures. They were directional failures.
Leadership teams hand down vague, feel-good directives — “we need more engagement,” “let’s get some buzz,” “make it feel premium but approachable” — and then wonder why the output feels like wandering in circles. No trail. No summit. Just noise. This is a Business & Strategy post at its core: before you can solve a Marketing & Communication problem, you need a fixed destination.
Marketing Without a Clear Target Is Just Expensive Wandering
Done well, marketing is a mission. And like any mission, it needs three things: a clear objective, the right tools, and a route to get there.
Too often, I’ve watched leaders treat marketing like a creative sandbox, or worse, a place to flex personal taste. They chase trends. They design for their own preferences. They cobble together initiatives that sound exciting internally but mean nothing to customers. The results look about how you’d expect: meaningless ad campaigns, social posts that collect likes but no conversions, branding that shifts with every wind change.
No compass. No direction. No results.
The Compass Is Two Fixed Points
Every effective marketing strategy starts with two questions, and if you can’t answer them in one sentence, stop. Don’t spend another dollar on design, content, or media until you can.
- Who are we talking to? (The audience.)
- What do we want them to do? (The objective.)
A real example: Audience — women 35 to 55 in rural communities who want natural skincare. Objective — book a consultation or buy the signature kit. That’s a compass. Every message, every design choice, every dollar then aligns to it. Without it, the Marketing & Communication pillar has nothing to stand on.
A Hard Truth About Leadership
Many of the marketing failures I’ve watched up close were really leadership failures. When executives or owners turn marketing into a vanity project — personal ego, aesthetic preference, chasing the shiny thing — the whole effort becomes self-indulgent.
Your taste doesn’t matter. Results do.
Microsoft’s “Scroogled” campaign is the classic example. In 2012 they launched a sustained attack on Google with no clear audience and no objective beyond “make Google look bad.” It cost millions, scattered the brand’s focus, and did nothing measurable to market share. Compare that with Apple’s “Get a Mac” campaign — aimed precisely at creative professionals and tech-savvy consumers who wanted simplicity, with one clear ask: switch from PC to Mac. The result was a 42% jump in Mac sales and one of the most memorable tech campaigns ever shipped.
Marketing Is the Trail, Not the Summit
One reframe I keep coming back to: marketing doesn’t achieve your business goals. It’s the trail that gets you there. If you’ve mapped the wrong destination — or you refuse to stick to any single path — no marketing in the world will save you.
A clear target gives your marketing team the authority, and the responsibility, to stay on course.
Before the next brief: Who exactly are we trying to reach? What do we want them to feel, think, and do? How will we measure whether it worked?
Answer those three, then let the creative work begin. Not before.
