Marketing is not a function.

I still believe it.

But today, I see it differently.

Back then, it was a point of view. Now, it’s something I’ve tried to build.
And building it is a completely different story.

It’s easy to say that marketing should be more than campaigns, content, or lead generation. It’s much harder to make that true inside a company.

Because organizations don’t change through definitions.

They change through decisions, habits, priorities, and conversations.

And most of these are not naturally shaped by marketing. So when you try to bring marketing closer to the core of the organization, resistance is not always explicit.

It takes a different form:

• Misalignment.

• Lack of marketing literacy.

• Siloed thinking.

In these two years, one thing became very clear to me: the hardest part is not defining the strategy. It’s making it understood.

Inside organizations, every function has its own language.

Sales talks about opportunities.
Finance talks about numbers.
Operations talks about constraints.
Leadership talks about direction.

Marketing talks about people.

About perception.
About meaning.
About positioning.

But these things are not always visible to others. And when they’re not visible, they’re not prioritized. So the real work becomes translation.

Translating what marketing sees into something the organization can act on.

Not simplifying it. Not reducing it. But making it understandable, relevant, and concrete.

At the beginning, I thought change would come from clarity: from having the right vision, the right arguments, the right strategy. And sharing them whenever I had the chance.

I was wrong.

Change doesn’t happen in big moments. It happens in small shifts that accumulate over time. It takes patience.

It takes finding allies inside the organization: people who understand, who are curious, who are willing to try something different.

It takes creating quick wins. Not to prove that marketing is right. But to make its value visible. Because visibility creates trust. And trust creates space.

There is also another side. One that is less comfortable. All of this only works if the environment allows it.

If there is openness.
If there is a willingness to listen.
If there is commitment from leadership.

Because you can build relationships. You can create alignment. You can show results. But if the organization is not ready to evolve, you will hit a wall at some point. And when that happens, no framework will fix it.

Sometimes, the most strategic decision is not to push harder. It’s to move.

After these two years, my definition of marketing has become simpler. And more demanding.

Marketing is not just about understanding people. It is about taking responsibility for how organizations relate to them. Because every choice an organization makes - what it says, what it does, how it behaves - shapes that relationship. And marketing sits exactly at that intersection.

It starts with listening: not just to data, but to signals, to behaviors, to what is said and what is not. Listening as a continuous practice. Not a phase at the beginning of a project, but something that informs decisions every day.

And then it asks a different question.

Not:

What do we want to say?

Not:

What do we want to sell?

But:

How do we want people to feel?

Because what people feel is what they remember. And what they remember is what builds the Brand.

Feelings don’t come from messages alone; they come from experiences, from how a company shows up, from how consistent it is, from how well its actions reflect its words.

From there, everything becomes a matter of coherence.

Between:

what we say and what we do
what we promise and what people experience
what we communicate outside and what happens inside

This is where marketing becomes something else: a connective layer across the organization. And this is what makes it more demanding. Because you can’t control it through campaigns. You have to build it through company decisions, behaviors, and shared understanding.

Every day.

And this is also where another realization becomes impossible to ignore. Marketing is not neutral.

The words we choose.
The stories we tell.
The messages we amplify.

They shape how people see things: they influence expectations, they create meaning. We often treat them as tools, but they are not. They are infrastructure.

So yes, I still believe that marketing is not a function. But today I would say it differently.

Marketing is how organizations listen, align, and create meaning and value every day.
For their customers, for the business, and for how they show up in the world.

🎡Hi, I’m Nadia.
I make marketing happen.

Through Marketing Loops & Hoops, I share reflections, lessons, and real experiences from my everyday work as a marketing manager, exploring how marketing can connect strategy, people, and culture inside organizations.

If this topic resonates with you, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to reply to this newsletter or write to me.