Boardroom Brawls: 20 Marketing Truths No One Wants to Hear

What started as a simple Reddit thread—“What’s your hottest marketing take that would start a fight in a boardroom?”—quickly turned into a raw, collective therapy session for marketers everywhere.

Help! my marketing has crashed

Hundreds of practitioners and creatives dropped their company personas and said what they really think.

Here are the biggest insights, compiled and expanded. Some will make you nod. Others will make you squirm. A couple are mine.

Either way, they all point to one truth: Marketers think that Marketing is broken. Everyone knows it- no one wants to say it.

Ready?

1 Most B2B companies don’t have a sales problem — they have a positioning problem.

You can’t fix unclear positioning with another paid ad or redesigned homepage. If your audience doesn’t “get it,” your problem isn’t your funnel — it’s your focus.

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2. Founders and CEOs are not marketing experts.

Every founder thinks they’re Steve Jobs. Most are not. Their “crazy ideas” usually bypass strategy, don’t want advice, and derail teams chasing by their latest whim.

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3. Attribution is a lie we tell ourselves to feel in control.

The obsession with tracking every click has led to a flood of easy-to-measure activities (like paid ads) and a drought in brand-building and real storytelling. The truth? Most influence happens in places we can’t measure.

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4. Branding has become blending.

In the race to look modern and minimal, brands have erased their personalities. Logos are forgettable, voices sound the same, and “rebrands” are just sameness in a new font.

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5. Data is not strategy.

Data is a snapshot — not a prophecy. And most marketing teams misuse it to justify what they were going to do anyway. Good data guides curiosity, not confirms bias. The gold comes from the edges.

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6. You can’t polish a pig.

Marketing can’t fix a bad product. If your offer is confusing, your UX is weak, or no one really wants what you sell — no funnel will save you.

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7. Performance marketing has cannibalised real creativity.

We’ve confused marketing with media buying. ROAS dashboards, short-term offers, and retargeting the same 3,000 users is not demand gen. It’s a spreadsheet game. And the house always wins.

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8. Bold opinions beat bland content.

Most B2B content is SEO-stuffed filler written for algorithms, not humans. No voice. No stakes. No one cares. Want traction? Say something worth disagreeing with.

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9. Great marketing makes sales irrelevant. Or should do.

When your positioning, product, and storytelling land, your customers come to you. Sales doesn’t have to beg for better assets — they just follow the interest that marketing has already created.

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10. Real growth comes from product-market resonance.

Most marketing teams are optimising headlines when they should be rethinking the whole offer. Talk to customers. Rebuild the value prop. Fix the root, not the symptoms.

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11. Executives fear true organic growth.

They want it — in theory. But they won’t go on camera, post bold content, or allow “spicy” takes. That’s not brand safety — it’s fear in disguise.

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12. Most CMOs are protecting status, not pushing performance.

The further marketing gets from customers, the more it becomes theatre: presentations, dashboards, endless rebrands. What’s missing? Contact. Clarity. Courage.

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13. Email marketing still works — when it’s done well.

It's not dead. It's just misused. Spam content doesn’t work. Value does. Same with direct mail. WHAT???

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14. Most programmatic ad spend is lighting money on fire.

Display advertising is plagued by fraud, bots, and irrelevance. Yet budgets keep flowing to what’s easy to measure — not what works. Amplified when using most agencies.

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15. Good creative ≠ good marketing.

You don’t need a Cannes Lion to drive growth. You need resonance. And sometimes the ugliest ad — with the clearest message — wins.

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16. Brand is what they say when you’re not in the room.

It’s not a colour palette or a mission statement. It’s a feeling, built through repetition, story, and clarity. Don’t mistake brand promise with the thing.

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17. Growth marketing isn’t a channel — it’s a mindset.

It’s not “run ads.” It’s “do whatever it takes to create traction.” That could mean rewriting the offer, changing the market, or breaking the funnel. YES!!!

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18. Most marketing teams should stop everything for 30 days and talk to 100 customers.

More insight. Less assumption. And way better results.

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19. You can’t market a product you don’t believe in.

No marketing strategy can cover for a lack of product-market fit. AI won’t save it. Neither will ChatGPT or TikTok. God forbid.

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20. Marketing is too often a scapegoat.

When revenue drops, everyone points at marketing. Rarely does anyone ask: Is the product right? The timing right? Are we actually solving a real problem?

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Bonus takes for any remaining optimists (don't blame the messenger):

• Most marketing jobs could be replaced by AI.

• SEO is becoming obsolete.

• Ugly ads often outperform polished designs.

• B2B companies desperately need a conversation with customers, not just campaigns.

• Creative freedom in marketing is dying under a flood of "best practices."

• Many marketing departments exist just to "confirm assumptions," not to challenge them.

My final thoughts and maybe some advice

If you’re in marketing and you’re frustrated, you’re not alone.

This thread on Reddit showed that it wasn't just me in becoming morbidly disillusioned with the profession: marketers are tired of the fluff, the fake metrics, and the internal politics. We want truth, traction, and to do work that actually matters.

The future of marketing isn’t in more content, more campaigns, or more dashboards.

It’s in clarity, connection, and courage.

Maybe the solution to the Great Disheartening is to follow the late, great Charlie Munger’s advice and invert. Charlie advised that instead of just asking, "How can I succeed?" you ask, "How could I fail?". You work backwards. You try to eliminate stupidity before you try to be brilliant.

It might be that simple.