This June, I will participate in the National Marketing Congress of Peru, celebrating its 25th anniversary. It is the perfect moment to ask an uncomfortable question: How is it that, in an era of peak marketing sophistication, its influence on strategic decisions is lower than ever?
This isn’t a tools problem; it’s a focus problem that we’ve been carrying for years.
From strategic thinking to operational management
For decades, marketing was the market’s interpreter. It understood people before anyone else and helped decide what a company should do to remain relevant. Today, in many organizations, marketing is confined to executing campaigns, managing performance, and constant optimization.
Marketing has been displaced from business strategy to pure operations. When leadership stops listening to the market, it begins making decisions from the “inside out.” Sooner or later, that isolation comes at a high price.
The trap of short-term measurement
At some point, we decided that marketing had to justify every cent. It made sense, but we ended up reducing it to what can be measured in the short term: immediate ROI, cost per acquisition, and conversion. We have built highly efficient departments that are increasingly irrelevant to the organization’s future.
In the late 90s, I co-founded Daemon Quest, a company focused on marketing intelligence. The idea was simple yet ambitious: helping companies understand their customers better to make superior strategic decisions. Today, 25 years later, that vision is more necessary than ever. The problem isn’t a lack of data; it’s what we do with it.
Artificial Intelligence: efficiency or strategy?
Artificial Intelligence has arrived with force, but many are using it just to do the same old things faster. AI is not merely an efficiency tool; it is the ultimate opportunity to reclaim the strategic role of marketing. For the first time, we can anticipate behaviors and detect shifts in real-time.
The key question is not technological, but strategic: Will we use AI to optimize campaigns or to make better decisions as a company?
Purpose and social impact
At ImpactCo, we believe marketing is not just a commercial function; it is a central discipline in corporate transformation. It is the bridge between what a company wants to be and what it actually means in people’s lives. Purpose isn’t communicated; it is demonstrated through every product and experience.
Today, people don’t just act as consumers; they act as citizens. They evaluate companies based on their consistency and real contribution. Here, marketing must be the nervous system of the organization: detecting expectations and translating them into real decisions.
Conclusion: reclaiming influence
After 25 years of observing this evolution, the conclusion is clear: marketing doesn’t need more tools; it needs to regain its power. It must return to influencing strategy, product, and culture. If it fails to do so, it will continue to optimize processes while the company loses its market relevance.
The future is not about more data; it’s about something much more basic: reconnecting. That remains the true job of marketing.