Today I give a pretty sharp critique of modern marketing’s obsession with short-term metrics, and a call to restore creativity as a true strategic advantage.

I had a harsher title but decided to change it last minute. Forgive me for being hesitant to call it out as it is.

Marketing lost its power. Not because the people are bad or because they lack talent or care. I have worked or spoken with some of the strongest marketers in the advertising & AdTech industry. People who understand storytelling, positioning, timing, and how the right narrative can change the trajectory of a product or company. The talent is there. The problem lives somewhere else.

Most marketers did not choose this career because they love dashboards. They chose it because they love stories and they love ideas. They love the feeling of seeing something they imagined land with real people. Many of the best marketers I know are creative at their core. Writers, designers, strategists who care deeply about craft and emotional impact.

I know this because I am one of them. I studied marketing because I loved advertising and I loved creative. That pull still exists for most people who enter this field.

Somewhere along the way, that got lost.

Over the past several years, marketing has been pushed into proving its value in the shortest possible window. Every dollar needs immediate ROI. Every campaign needs leads. Every piece of content needs clicks. Slowly, marketing shifted from shaping perception to defending itself internally.

Marketing today feels dull with safe messaging and campaigns that blur together. and really don’t stand out. Content is optimized, gated, tracked, and reported on, yet rarely remembered. When lead generation and short-term metrics become the dominant goal, the work loses energy and edge.

That is the first learning worth sitting with. When you optimize exclusively for what is easiest to measure, you quietly abandon what actually creates differentiation. Brand recognition, attention, recall, and emotional resonance take time and they rarely spike neatly on a weekly report, but rather they compound in ways performance metrics alone cannot.

Most marketing leaders already know this and they want to take creative swings and tell better stories, build better brands but many times thats at the risk of managements patience wearing thin and ultimately getting axed from their job.

I want to be clear that this is not an argument against accountability. Measurement and performance matters. The issue is priority. Creativity did not stop working. It simply became harder to defend in organizations addicted to immediacy.

Here is another learning many teams miss. Creativity often drives the very outcomes leadership demands. It earns attention in saturated markets. It builds trust before a prospect ever fills out a form. It creates memory long before a buying cycle begins. In categories where products and pricing look identical, creativity becomes one of the few durable advantages left.

There is also a structural challenge most teams quietly accept. Marketing is brought in late. The product is locked. The pricing is set. The roadmap is finalized. Then marketing is asked to “tell the story.” By that point, creativity is already constrained. The strongest work happens when creative thinking shapes the narrative earlier, when marketing helps define how the offering is framed and why it matters.

That leads to a practical takeaway for leadership. If you want better marketing, involve marketing sooner. Invite creative perspectives upstream. Treat storytelling as part of strategy formation rather than a layer added at the end.

Culture plays a bigger role than most teams admit. Marketing reflects the environment it operates in. If teams are rewarded only for short-term wins, they will chase short-term wins. If risk is punished, bold ideas never surface. If patience is absent, brand building never has a chance to work.

So what does this mean in practice?

If you lead marketing, protect space for creativity. Give teams permission to think beyond the quarter. Balance performance metrics with brand indicators such as recall, engagement quality, and narrative consistency. Accept that some of the most valuable work will not show immediate returns, even though it will influence everything that follows.

If you are a marketer, learn the numbers. Understand the business well enough to earn trust. Use that trust to advocate for better work. Bring data into the conversation, but do not let it replace judgment. Push for storytelling, originality, and long-term thinking, even when it feels uncomfortable.

And here is the quiet truth beneath all of this.

Your marketing department does not actually suck. It is operating inside a system that no longer values the thing that made marketing powerful in the first place: creativity.