Would you leave marketing to marketing ?

“Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department.” marketing observation comes from HP founder David Packard.

I am not sure if he said this positively or otherwise. I had this experience earlier in my career when some marketing initiatives were introduced. All departments used to jump in to “help” by giving opinions, suggestions, or feedback. All team members had suggestions on fonts, tones, and logos.

In a startup of course the operating or contributing lines blur, but that too has to have limits. I as a marketeer wasn’t coming and coding for you, so couldn’t understand why this breach of boundaries. Have understood that most people think that they all know marketing and they can contribute to it somehow. Or this is coming from a place of mistrust on the talent hired to do the same, as you have spent only peanuts to hire this team, contrary to the tech teams? It has also changed over the 15 years in which I have been part of this industry, to the acquiring talent or maintenance of talent in marketing now requires more than peanut spend. Deserved as well. It is not a fringe department as most business or business leaders think of it.
This could also come from considering marketing function as *nice-to-have*, or something the team does when the product is *ready*. So here you are given a product to sell, where we would like to get involved when the product is only a vision so that we can conceptualize the branding and image building before we sell. We don’t want to sell and perish. Talk, assess…