Before I start, I would like to preface this scripture:
“Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.” Matthew 12:2
This scripture holds so much truth because as a Brand Strategist and Consultant I’ve seen my fair share of waring departments. A lot times it’s an argument over who reigns supreme in the success of brand awareness and sales. But sadly, it only hurts the company more than it helps.
There was a particular time that I was helping a company’s Marketing Department in the lottery sector to generate an overall educational campaign for an upcoming promotional event. The goal was to let the customers know why buying our products help fund programs from K-12 and provide college scholarships. Now one would think that this is a great thing to do some integrated storytelling to humanize the brand, but Sales thought differently. It was mentioned that this event was not the right audience, and players would not care. They just wanted to buy scratch-off tickets and win prizes! Of course, we as Marketing disagreed because as a team we were all there to tell our story and sell our product simultaneously. Thus, I communicated that our main focus is the students and schools that we help regardless of where our promotion event is located and we should not lose sight of that. In fact, we should team together to leverage our promotional items to help elevate the players’ experience that eventually helps our promotional sales.
So who wears the crown? The answer is BOTH. Both Sales and Marketing departments are needed to aid the success of a company. However, It’s the sole job of a Leader, Creative Entrepreneur (Creativepreneur) or CMO to make sure that everyone clearly knows their roles in getting goals or projects across the finish line. Like rapper Jay-Z in his song Family Feuds “Nobody wins when the family feuds.”