Spring is a season of hope and possibility. When the dark, dreary days begin to give way to the light and nature reawakens. Days lengthen and the sun shines a little brighter.

I recently found myself in an interesting debate on when spring itself begins.

For me, it has always been marked by the spring equinox. The point at which day and night are of equal length, typically around the 21st of March each year. On the other side, my fellow debater was equally certain (and strongly vehement) that spring starts earlier, at the beginning of March.

What made the conversation interesting was neither the answer nor the debate itself, but rather the certainty on both sides. Each view was internally consistent, grounded in a different definition and understanding, and neither felt like an opinion. It simply felt correct. And for all intents and purposes, it was for both of us.

On reflection, the conversation had me thinking about how that same confidence and stance in opinion within organisations impacts direction, approach and interaction.

Quiet misalignment is not unusual in organisations. We often assume we are talking about the same thing when, in reality, we are working from slightly different meanings and interpretations.

Particularly when we start talking about marketing or marketing communications.

When definitions feel obvious, they rarely are

In most organisations, marketing is one of those terms that feels self-explanatory. In part, as marketing is highly visible and customer-facing.

Most senior leaders have been exposed to it in some form throughout their careers. They have seen campaigns, worked with agencies, reviewed messaging, and contributed to discussions about brand or positioning. Language is used somewhat comfortably, with buzzwords thrown in like campaigns, leads, brand, SEO, website, social media, and so on.

Familiarity creates a sense of assumed understanding.

For some, marketing is primarily about visibility and communication. It exists to present the business clearly and consistently to the outside world. For others, it plays a more strategic role that helps shape how the business is positioned, influencing demand, and guiding where the organisation chooses to compete through segmentation.

Neither perspective is inherently wrong, and both can be valid depending on the context.

The difficulty arises when those two definitions or understandings coexist without being made explicit. When that happens, expectations and delivery begin to diverge.

When the very definition of the role marketing plays in an organisation is unclear, this is where tension begins to build.

Marketing and marketing communication teams may see their role as helping the organisation define how it is understood in the market, shaping narrative, clarifying position, and influencing demand over time. Meanwhile, leadership may be looking for more of the immediate and visible contributions, treating marketing as a servicing department solely for material generation.

Again, neither side is wrong. However, if that underlying definition of what marketing is and does for the business is different, expectations and therefore results, will never quite align.

What is marketing actually there to do?

I feel it is important to remember that most of the time misalignment sits at the level of the definitions, rather than in the delivery itself. From the outside, it could appear to be a performance issue. One that comes about as results on the effectiveness of the activities remains unclear. Focus, as a result, turns to addressing visible symptoms, such as improving messaging or increasing the volume of activity.

Now, sometimes that is what is required.

In many cases, however, the underlying issue is that the organisation has never fully agreed on what marketing is there to do. Without a clear purpose, marketing is left to operate across shifting, and at times conflicting, expectations. Success becomes harder to define and therefore measure, while progress becomes harder to recognise.

This is where leadership come in. Not to offer borrowed or surface-level interpretations of marketing, but rather to explicitly define what marketing is there to do, and address what may have been assumed in the past.

• What do we believe marketing is fundamentally responsible for in this organisation?

• Where in the commercial journey should marketing have the greatest impact?

• Are we asking marketing to shape how the business is understood, or to promote what already exists or decisions that have already been made?

• When marketing is working well, what should be different in the business?

Aligning for progress

The point is not to arrive at a “perfect” definition of marketing, or one that you pull from a textbook. Ultimately, different organisations require different things. The role that marketing plays in a high-growth technology business will not be identical to the role in more established and relationship-driven organisations. The impetus required to facilitate business growth will also differ depending on the stage the business is at.

What matters here is alignment.

When leaders and marketing teams share a clear and common understanding of purpose, definitions become shared. Without that, even capable teams will find themselves working harder without creating the impact the business expects and is looking for.

In the end, my debate about when spring officially begins remained unresolved. The value was in recognising what may have felt like an evolving argument at the beginning was, in fact, a difference in definition and context. Organisations face the same situation more often than they may realise.

All that is left now is for me to wish you a happy start to spring.