10 Things We Love About Marketing (And 10 Things We Hate)

These days, marketing is essential to a brand’s success and there are so many ways to create a killer campaign, exceptional creative content, and unique ads.?

At WITHIN, we live and breathe marketing. Every day, creative minds and unique talents come together and work toward scaling some of the most memorable brands in the world — and we love what we do!

Buuuuut …

When we’re talking about the things we love about marketing, we also tend to notice some of our least favorite things about marketing…?

We spoke with 10 WITHIN team members to ask what they love (and what they hate) about marketing:

Michelle Moscone, Head of Creative Operations

?? “I love that marketing builds relationships and connections with people. Actual human beings! There is a sense of community that is inherent in developing this relationship - how a brand speaks, what it says, where it says it, and who it says it to. And on the other end of that brand voice is a brand receiver, that is shaping the state of this same brand. It’s beautifully reciprocal. I get to be a part of that.”

?? “I hate that marketing is often expected to do everything, for everyone, all the time and is expected to save the world. That's a lot of pressure to put on one little ad!”

Robin Wivell, Revenue Enablement Coordinator

?? “I love that marketing helps me to find things I'm looking for or discover things that make my life better.”

?? “It's hard to turn it off! There are very few things you can do without encountering advertising in some form.”

Bailey Hopp, Social Media/Community Manager

?? “I love how versatile skill sets can be within different areas of marketing. I’ve had the pleasure of working on both the DTC and B2B sides and have found that a lot of my knowledge is transferable and what isn’t transferable, is still easy for me to pick up and learn.”

?? “Sometimes when doing monthly or quarterly reporting, there’s TOO much data available and it can be overwhelming to segment out what’s actually important versus what’s just noise.”

Tommy Lamb, Head of Lifecycle Marketing

?? “I love that the only constant in marketing, the only thing that always wins is variety/newness!”

?? “The thing I like the least is not being able to break from the "we have always done it this way" mindset.”

Monique Millet, Senior Social Media Manager

?? “I love creativity! There's so much more you can be 'artistic' with whether that's writing cool copy or coming up with a new way to present stunning visual content with strategy direction. You have so many opportunities to be a part of a large iconic campaign.”

?? “Platforms shutting down! Our work is SO web based, so things aren't always 100% reliable. When I'm trying to schedule tweets or Instagram posts and the platforms suddenly shut down, that gets frustrating.”

Taylor Thomson, Director of Business Development and Revenue Operations

?? “I love the need for empathy in good marketing. We are tasked with truly understanding, seeing, and hearing the world from our consumer or customers’ point of view. That challenge, one we are often not organically faced with, forces us to make new connections and look at things from a different perspective.”

?? “It’s challenging, and I suppose you could say I hate, that marketing cannot fix all problems by ourselves. Marketing is only one piece of the acquisition or retention funnel; more marketing doesn’t always equal more business. So, marketing has to constantly communicate with every other team to make sure their efforts are congruent with larger business strategy. But there’s a blessing there, which is that forced alignment across departments makes the business more efficient and ultimately creates sustainable growth.”

Sue Cahaly, Senior Manager, Content Marketing

?? “I love that content marketing lets me produce meaningful work that people find useful and educational. It’s very satisfying to be able to answer questions and provide solutions to problems in the form of thought leadership and insights.”

?? “It’s hard to turn off the awareness of good and bad advertising. Sometimes, I’d like to just be able to enjoy content being served to me without over analyzing its effectiveness.”

Areeb Mahamadi, Director of Digital Media

?? “In the digital marketing world, it isn't just necessity that's the mother of invention & creativity, it's everything. Discover an interesting creative insight? Iterate. See a data anomaly? Hypothesize. World transitioning into the (hopefully) late stages of a pandemic? Adapt.”

?? “This one isn't marketing specific but sometimes you have to move slow to move fast. Hate is a strong word! But it can definitely test your patience when a phenomenal new idea requires bit-by-bit, incremental (trying to diversify my use of the word!) steps that seem slow in the moment but help achieve the end result "faster".”

Courtney Addy, Head of Integrated Media

?? “I love that the basic underlying principles of marketing remain the same while the tactics are constantly changing … and the powerful intersection of empathic storytelling and data that can propel brands forward.”

?? “I hate when the shameless pursuit of attention masks the truth and tricks people into behaviours that don't benefit them or society.”

Chris Chan, Content Writer

?? “I love the flexibility and growth that marketing brings. The fact that digital marketing is a continuously flourishing industry means that there is a ton of opportunity to test, run, and scale campaigns. Marketing is also the perfect mix between left-brain logical practice and right-brain creative thinking. I feel that anyone and everyone can find a place in marketing. Overall, marketing is a very captivating field to a large amount of people.”

?? “The lack of ethicality of marketing is definitely a bit frustrating. The fact that some brands will demand unethical practices for the sake of positive revenue is one of the things I dislike the most about marketing. Thankfully, the trend is that more consumer-friendly marketing performs much better in the current marketplace. Leading brands are incentivized to have more moral marketing which is a huge uptrend.”

And there you have it, a little glance into the brilliant marketing minds at WITHIN. If we asked you what you love and hate about marketing, what would your answers be?

To learn more about why you should go WITHIN, our five guiding principles of Performance Branding and more, explore our solutions or showcase to get a better idea of the work we do. Any ideas for future LinkedIn articles or topics you’d like to hear from our experts on? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.?