Not Just the Pretty Department: Reclaiming the Strategic Power of Marketing

To start off with, let me make one thing clear – I didn’t get into marketing because I like the color palettes in brand books. I got into it because I wanted to build things – real things. Growth. Trust. Connection. Revenue. And over the last 20 years, I’ve done that across boardrooms and brands from Africa to America. But here's the rub: too often, marketing is still seen as the "soft" function, the one you call when you need a new brochure, a party planned or a color-coded slide deck.

No – this isn't a second attempt at the burning of bras or anything of that sort. By no means is this a feminist slant, at least not in the clichéd sense. But it is a call-out. A sharp one. Because if we're honest, marketing – and the women who dominate it – have long been underestimated. And that has real consequences.

And for women, that perception is even more layered.

The Gender Coding of an Entire Discipline

Marketing, especially in corporate America, carries the stigma of being a "feminine" function. And I don’t mean that in a complimentary, goddess-energy kind of way. I mean in the pejorative, underpaid, underpowered, overlooked way. The function is often characterized by traits traditionally coded as feminine – empathy, communication, emotional intelligence, collaboration. All of which, ironically, are essential to modern leadership and brand-building.

But because these traits are undervalued in patriarchal business structures, so too is marketing.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2024), women make up nearly 63% of the marketing and advertising workforce. At entry and mid-levels, this proportion climbs even higher – yet the balance flips in senior leadership, where just 38% of CMO roles at Fortune 500 companies are held by women (Spencer Stuart, 2023). The pipeline is full. The power, however, is not evenly distributed.

Despite being one of the most important drivers of growth, marketing is often left out of strategic conversations. CMOs remain underrepresented in the C-suite and on boards. Budgets are among the first to be cut in a downturn. And when marketing is at the table, it’s often defending its right to be there.

Feminine? Maybe. Fluffy? Absolutely not.

Let’s talk about performance marketing – the supposed savior of our discipline and, ironically, the wedge that has reinforced its gender divide. As soon as marketing started to lean heavily into data, tech stacks and revenue attribution, the tone shifted. Performance marketing began to command larger shares of budget, earn the respect of CFOs and attract more male talent. The closer marketing moved to the money, the more masculinized it became.

Today, roles in marketing operations, SEO/SEM and analytics are disproportionately male, while women are still the dominant force in brand, creative and communications. The implication? That the "real" work – the quantifiable, dashboard-driven kind – is best left to the boys. And that soft skills like insight development, intuition and storytelling aren't worth quite as much on the balance sheet.

A 2022 Deloitte Digital study found that in B2B organizations, less than 20% of marketing operations leadership roles are held by women. Meanwhile, brand and comms functions remain over 70% female. This isn’t a pipeline issue – it’s a value assignment issue.

A Brand That Flipped the Script

Take Adobe, for example. Long considered a design company, Adobe repositioned itself as an enterprise SaaS leader – powered by marketing. Their CMO, Ann Lewnes, who served for over a decade, was one of the first in the industry to tightly link brand equity to financial metrics. Under her leadership, Adobe’s marketing team didn’t just talk about creative excellence – they measured marketing’s contribution to revenue growth, pipeline acceleration and customer lifetime value. It paid off. Adobe’s market cap grew more than tenfold from 2010 to 2020, with marketing sitting squarely at the table (Adobe Inc., 2020).

Adobe proved that a marketing-led brand could be a performance machine. And they did it without abandoning creativity or empathy – they simply tied them to outcomes.

Rewriting the Narrative

The feminization of marketing isn’t just a gender issue. It’s a business issue. When marketing is viewed as a cost center rather than a value generator, companies miss out on brand equity, customer lifetime value and market differentiation.

So, what do we do? We rewrite the playbook.

1. Speak in CFO.If you want marketing to be taken seriously, start with how you talk about it. Lead with impact. Customer acquisition cost, margin expansion, contribution to revenue, pipeline velocity – this is the language of the boardroom. Use it.

2. Claim the business agenda.Don’t wait to be invited to the strategic table. Claim your seat by owning growth strategy, customer experience, product positioning and innovation insights. These aren't adjacent to marketing. They are marketing.

3. Elevate the discipline.Push for structural change. Marketing should report directly to the CEO, not sit buried under Sales or Operations. If your org chart sends the message that marketing is a service function, your business will act accordingly.

4. Make the invisible visible.Too many marketers – especially women – do great work in silence. Shine a spotlight on your team’s wins. Tie every creative execution back to a business result. Own the narrative before someone else writes it for you.

5. Lead differently – but visibly.We don’t need to mimic masculine leadership styles to be taken seriously. But we do need to lead decisively. Strategically. Audaciously. And we need to do it in full view. Executive presence isn’t about taking up space. It’s about owning the value you create.

For Women in Marketing: The Double Duty

Let’s be honest. Women in marketing are not just advocating for a function – they’re advocating for themselves in a structure that often sees both as secondary. That means we walk a different tightrope: assertive but not aggressive, visionary but not impractical, persuasive but not emotional.

It’s exhausting. It’s unfair. And yet – it’s ours to change.

We don’t need to perform masculinity to be taken seriously. We need to reclaim power, rewrite narratives and redesign systems from within.

Final Word

Marketing isn’t just about storytelling. It’s about strategy. About futureproofing. About turning brand equity into business equity. So no, we’re not the pretty department. We’re the growth engine. And it’s time everyone caught up.

Sources:

• Spencer Stuart. (2023). CMO Tenure and Success Report

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2024). Labor Force Statistics by Occupation and Gender

• Harvard Business Review. (2020). Thomas, T., Egan, C. and LaBerge, K. Why CMOs Never Last – and What to Do About It

• McKinsey & Company. (2023). The New Growth Agenda: Why Marketing Matters More Than Ever

• Deloitte Digital. (2022). Women in B2B Marketing Operations Leadership

• Adobe Inc. (2020). Investor Day Presentations and Annual Reports