I hate marketing by committee. It’s a concept that I truly have a ton of beef with.

Not because other people aren’t smart. Not because leadership should stay out of marketing. And not because marketing teams always get everything right.

I hate it because it creates a weird situation where everybody gets to influence the work, but nobody is actually responsible for the result.

That’s how good ideas get watered down. And that’s how campaigns sit in review for 3 weeks. That’s how a strong headline turns into a paragraph of safe corporate language because 6 people wanted to add “just one more thing.” 

(it’s never one more thing…)

I personally experienced this as the CMO of a previous company. There were always more opinions. Somebody wanted to change the angle. Somebody else wanted another audience included. Someone had a concern about the wording. Someone wanted to wait for more data before launching. Then somebody else wanted to bring in another person because that person might have a thought too.

We weren’t short on intelligence. We were short on decision ownership. That’s the difference.

At some point, a person has to say, “This is the direction. This is what we are launching. We will learn from the response and adjust from there.”

Without that person, marketing becomes a group project where everybody is trying to avoid being blamed for the final answer.

And nothing moves.

I want to make an important distinction here because this is where people usually misunderstand the argument.

Good marketing needs input.

All of that information is important. But information is not the same thing as decision rights.

You can invite the right people to contribute without giving every person the power to redirect the work. Those are 2 different things, and a lot of companies blur them together.

When everybody is treated like a final approver, the loudest opinion often wins. Or the safest opinion wins. Or the conversation keeps going until the original idea has no sharp edges left.

Sorry… not sorry. But that’s not collaboration. It’s avoidance wearing a collaboration costume.

The question is not whether people should have a voice. The question is whether everybody should have veto power.

I promise you… they shouldn’t.

One of the reasons committees become so painful is that there is no agreed-upon standard for making decisions.

So every review becomes personal.

Those reactions may be worth discussing, but they are NOT a strategy.

At Wrapmate, one of the things I pushed for was creating a clear story and using that story as the filter. The brand script gave us a shared understanding of who the customer was, what problem they were dealing with, what they wanted, and how the company helped guide them toward a better outcome.

That changed the conversation.

Instead of debating every sentence based on personal preference, we could ask whether the sentence supported the story. 

If it did, we had a reason to keep it. But if it didn’t… it didn’t matter who liked it.

The brand script was not there to make every decision automatic. It was there to stop every decision from becoming a fresh philosophical debate.

I believe that’s what a source of truth should do. It should give the team something to return to when opinions start multiplying.

I know. This is another uncomfortable part. It even pains me to write it.

The person with the strongest opinion is not always the person with the best context. 

This is why I like thinking about marketing through 3 roles:

Those roles need to work together. They do not need to fight over every decision.

One person should own the marketing direction. Other people should own their areas of expertise and provide the information needed to execute well.

You might be thinking that this creates silos, but it actually creates accountability.

If the promoter owns the direction, the designer can make the work better without having to defend the entire strategy. If the analyst owns the measurement, the team can learn from the data without changing direction every time somebody feels uncomfortable. If leadership owns the business priorities, the marketing lead can translate those priorities into a coherent plan.

That is a much healthier operating model than 6 people trying to be the CMO for one campaign.

The obvious cost of marketing by committee is time. But the BIGGER cost is what happens after the delay.

The market does not wait for your internal approval process. Competitors keep publishing. Buyers keep searching. Your sales team keeps having conversations without the asset or campaign they were promised. The opportunity that was relevant in week one may be less relevant by week four.

There is also a credibility cost.

When the website, sales deck, email, and social content all sound slightly different, buyers notice. They may not say, “This company appears to be suffering from committee-based decision-making,” but they FEEL the inconsistency.

Some signs that I see are:

And, eventually, the company has a growing library of content but no clear narrative connecting it.

That is how a company can be ‘busy’ in marketing and still feel invisible in the market.

Here is the system I would use if a marketing team keeps getting stuck in review.

Before the campaign, page, email, or launch is created, decide who owns the final call. Not who contributes. Not who gets consulted. Who decides.

That person needs enough context and authority to make the call without asking the entire company for permission.

Write down the few things the work must accomplish. Maybe it needs to reach a specific audience, reinforce the brand story, support a revenue priority, and create a clear next step.

Those filters make feedback more useful. Instead of asking whether someone likes the work, you can ask whether the work meets the agreed standard.

Give the right people a clear window to provide feedback. Sales can flag a customer objection. Operations can flag a fulfillment issue. Leadership can flag a strategic conflict.

Then close the window.

The owner makes the decision, documents what changed, and moves the work forward.

If there is no date, the work will expand until it feels perfect. It will NEVER feel perfect. Trust me.

Set the date first. Then decide what needs to be true by that date. You can improve the campaign after it is live. You cannot learn from a campaign that never leaves the meeting.

After launch, look at the evidence. Did the right people engage? Did sales get better conversations? Did the offer create the intended action? Did the page help or hurt the motion?

That is where the next decision should come from. Not from whoever spoke last in the meeting.

I have had to remind my team (and myself) of this too.

When you own the decision, you also own the possibility that the decision will be wrong. I get it. That’s uncomfortable. It’s easier to keep asking for more feedback because as long as the work is still in ‘review,’ nobody can point to the result and say you made the wrong call.

But marketing does not improve through protected opinions. It improves through decisions, launches, feedback, and adjustment.

The goal is not to make every first version perfect. The goal is to get a strong enough version into the market that you can learn something real.

That’s how marketing becomes a business function instead of a collection of personal preferences.

The CEO's opinion still matters. Sales’ opinion still matters. Operations’ opinion still matters. Customer success’ opinion still matters.

They all matter. But they don’t all need to hold the steering wheel at the same time.

Let people contribute where they have real context. Let one person own the direction. Let the market provide the next round of evidence.

That’s how you get the work moving again.

Have you experienced this before in your company? I would love to hear it. Reply back, and share your thoughts.

Javy

P.S. — Is there a topic or strategy that you’d like me to unpack? Drop me a line. Let me know what you’re thinking of. And, I’ll get it queued up for an upcoming newsletter.

A few months ago I joined Jessie Lizak and Taja M. Graham on WinsDay to talk about what happens when marketing is treated like a revenue function instead of a collection of disconnected activities.

We got into the connection between marketing, sales, operations, attribution, lifecycle marketing, and the systems needed to keep growth from creating more chaos than the business can handle.

We also talked about why marketing and sales need to stay close to the buyer journey. Not everything converts immediately. Buyers research, compare, build trust, and look for signals before they ever raise their hand. If marketing and sales are not sharing that context, the handoff gets weaker and the team starts blaming the wrong part of the system.

Watch the conversation on Spotify or YouTube. Or listen on Apple Podcasts

Your marketing team cannot build a reliable relationship with buyers if every interaction depends on a new campaign or a new algorithm.

The B2B Email List playbook breaks down how to build an owned audience you can educate, nurture, and bring back into the conversation over time. It is a useful companion to this week's newsletter because a clear owner and a consistent story matter just as much after the first click as they do before it.

Read the B2B Email List playbook here.