35 Unofficial and Unwritten Rules Of Marketing

Marketing Unfiltered 35 - The Highlights, Lowlights & The Red Flags Of Marketing Leadership in 2025

📝 EDITORS NOTE 📝

Greetings, Marketing Leaders!

As London heats up again, we have a hot newsletter this week! It includes the unofficial and unwritten rules of Marketing.

I reached out to MU writers and regular contributors this week to add their unofficial and unwritten rules. This is to help you smile, laugh (or cry 😦) and applied well, they will help you steer your Marketing ship in a better direction.

If you missed last week’s instalment, here’s my guide to winning the next quarter by assigning an AI lead, theres the most important 5 takeaways below too.

Thanks for reading again this week and have a great weekend!
Danny Denhard

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Unofficial Rules & Unwritten Rules By Industry Peers

35 Unofficial And Unwritten Rules Of Marketing 

There are so many official rules we are supposed to follow, but there are a huge number of unwritten and unofficial rules of Marketing (& business).

1. The need for creativity is inversely proportional to budget, so if you don't have lots of money, you need to think clever and act brave to get cut through. Equally, it is possible to spend your way to fame - Harry Lang 

2. Don’t be afraid to keep it simple - that could mean how you measure digital and e-commerce ie tie it back to business goals when presenting to the exec, not in an echo chamber of digital channels - Simon Swan 

3. Don’t be afraid to also audit your platforms “tilling the land”, set it up for future growth, reassess what is working and what is not, reevaluate channel and processes - Simon Swan 

4. Think like a start-up or if it’s your own business, when it comes to hiring, spending and evaluating performance - Simon Swan 

5. Embrace the squiggly line - the hierarchy isn’t necessarily “success” get more comfortable in learning about what motivates you and drives your passion? It could be driving change, building connections in organisations- so look for those lateral moves in career (not just in same company) it might not be higher up the ladder - Simon Swan 

6. Apply your own training and development. You’re never to old to learn and adapt. The hard reality is the business won’t stay loyal to you and find opportunities, you need to be more comfortable in finding your own path or at least have one eye on alternative incomes and opportunities - Simon Swan 

7. Try to learn to play business politics and egos - Simon Swan 

8. Remember to allocate time to learn and explore, and to foster this culture with the team - Nick Bottai 

9. Build and nurture connections with all the other departments. The more insights, the better results (and value perceived from the marketing department overall) - Nick Bottai 

10. Don’t be glued at your desk. Your customers are outside the building, allocate time (for you and your team) to study and meet them - Nick Bottai 

11. Relationships are everything - you never know where the next great collaboration will come from - Sophie Collins 

12. Sweat the small stuff - the incremental gains of truly rinsing integrated channels add up - Sophie Collins

13. Spend most of your time with business partners outside of Marketing - Sophie Collins

14. AI is going to change Marketing and Marketing leaders need to be on the front foot to figure out how - Sophie Collins

15. To be an authentic brand externally, you have to be an authentic brand internally. Customers and staff smell brand BS. Marketing should be at the table/ lead for internal brand, culture, values, and comms strategies - Sophie Collins

16. Data is for action as well as measurement! This drives me bonkers. Companies obsess about getting log level data into visualisation tools so they can measure, but put minimal effort into the data infrastructure that means marketing can action it (CRM, retargeting, affiliates, loyalty etc) - Sophie Collins

17. Be best friends with your CFO - Nicola Anderson 

18. Deeply understand your product. Go through your own purchasing funnel - Nicola Anderson 

19. Make sure you are looking at the full funnel - too many Marketing Teams are told to focus on acquisition when the real gold is in retention, increasing LTV and building advocacy - Nicola Anderson 

20. Just because it didn’t work before doesn’t mean it won’t work now. Poor execution, wrong audience/creative/messaging or wrong time leading to bad results often scars a business so they won’t try again - Nicola Anderson 

21. AI is going to make and break your business 

22. If you cannot explain the complicated in an exec summary, it won’t be trusted 

    1. No one reads the full 100-slide deck, but they’ll notice that one typo.

23. The right metrics matter! 

    1. Your vanity metrics are a double-edged sword that will likely cut you 

    2. The company’s objective could be pre-determining your success (Bad OKRs will damage you) 

24. The best data is useless if your team doesn’t want to trust it or use it 

25. Your gut instinct will often beat data - never ignore your gut and your experiences  

26. Good Products make Marketing easier, mediocre Products makes Marketing hard, Crappy Products make Marketing almost impossible  

27. Brands are allowing themselves to live and die by algorithmic filtering 

28. Quality over quantity, every time! 

    1. Signal over noise every time; however, noise often looks good on reports 

29. Your CEO and CFO are your (internal) customers 

    1. That budget sign-off is only final until a reforecast 

30. We are living in the more with less era - that headcount is going away   

31. Evoke customer emotions

32. Going viral is not a tactic (but the C-Suite still wants viral moments to boast about…)

33. Internal alignment beats external hype, every time 

34. The CMO role is always at risk - performance matters most 

35. The CEO’s pet project will likely become a company's priority, and plan on that derailment.

    1. Remember: Your CEO or founder likely isn’t ready for that big podcast they want to be on 

    2.  Know your biggest critics and treat them as allies: Sales, Product, Growth, Finance 

    3. Cross-functional allies are worth more than the extra budget you fight all-year for 

Bonus Rules: Here are some bonus rules I couldn’t not share! 

• Miro boards will never be revisited, and where good ideas go to die… 

• You have to do Brand Marketing, but you have to rebrand it and label it something else…

• Empathy matters! 

• If you’re not measuring it, it certainly didn’t happen in the eyes of colleagues 

• You have to be able to operate in C-Suite chaos  

  • The loudest voice in the room isn’t always right, but it gains attention and will often be heard.

• Your competitors’ mistakes are your best learning opportunities (apart from your own) 

• The simplest message is often the hardest to produce  

  • The best creative brief is half as long as you think 

• Those “urgent” requests aren’t urgent

• Marketing’s priority is rarely other departments’ priorities

• If you don’t own the narrative, someone else will and does already 

• What people really think about your Product and Brand is being discussed in private group chats and pages 

• If your big launch doesn’t hit, go again and again and again! 

Q:: What did we miss? Hit reply to me know, and we will add in!

Got Strong Opinions? Or Have Something Important Or Unfiltered To Say?

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5 Takeaways From Last Week’s Article

If you missed last week’s MU article, here are the 5 most important takeaways:

• AI ownership is now a strategic imperative for CMOs 
  → Leaders who proactively assign an AI owner will gain a competitive advantage, while those who delay risk falling behind in workforce transformation and market disruption

• Clear role structure drives adoption success 
  → Implement the Owner/Co-Owner/Collaborator model with Social, Search, and Growth Marketing teams best positioned to lead AI integration across your org

• 90-day implementation plan delivers measurable results 
  → Execute these immediate steps, including strategy development, a dedicated allocation of AI budget, and team communication, followed by strategic hiring and ROI tracking for long-term success

• Significant benefits outweigh manageable risks 
  → Accelerate productivity, reduce costs, build internal expertise, and create competitive moats while managing change resistance and upfront training investments

• Board-level priority requires executive vision 
  → AI has moved from nice-to-have to boardroom discussion topic, demanding CMOs now require clear answers, a “strategy”, and measurable outcomes to maintain your executive influence

Thanks For Reading This Week

Thanks again for reading this week, we will land in your inbox next week.

Danny Denhard - 🆕 summer coaching programme available

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