This is the first in a series of articles I’m writing for my next book, Fred’s Hardcore Marketing Courses 2 (working title). More pieces will follow as the book takes shape, with some reserved for members only.
The format is intentionally conversational — interview questions paired with my answers and key takeaways — rather than long-form essays. Easier to write, easier to read.
The book revolves around what I call “marketing sense”: three interlocking elements — positioning, communication, and convincing (which includes negotiation and collaboration). I won’t bore you with textbook definitions. What I want to share is how these three things, drawn from my own experience and observation, can make you sharper, more perceptive, and easier to work with — in the office and beyond.
The Communication Protocol
Those three elements aren’t just the foundation of marketing. I consider the combination of them a communication protocol — for people, organizations, and increasingly, for people and machines.
The term protocol comes from the world of communications technology: the shared rules two devices use to encode, transmit, receive, and decode information. Without a protocol, they can’t talk to each other. The internet, your phone, your TV — all of it works because different hardware from different manufacturers agreed to speak the same language.
But the word protocol predates technology by centuries. It originally referred to diplomatic etiquette: how to greet someone, how to bow, where to sit. In the military, it governed how orders were issued and received between ranks. In business, it’s the unwritten rules of an industry. Between people, it’s the shared language, background, and context that makes meaningful exchange possible.
The principle is simple: the more two parties share the same protocol, the less friction there is — and the less room there is for conflict.
Why Marketing Sense Is a Protocol
Here’s my experience, at least as it applies to organizations and individuals (I’ll leave politics and diplomacy out of it — too much cynical maneuvering): marketing sense is the best communication protocol I’ve found.
It’s useful beyond marketing itself. It helps you manage teams, drive changes, resolve conflicts, and make clearer decisions when the stakes are high.
Marketing tools expire. What’s trending today is archaic tomorrow. You can keep up if you want to, but at some point the treadmill wins. Marketing sense is different. It’s a method for facing reality and making rational decisions — one that applies far beyond the walls of any marketing department. And as long as your audience is human, it doesn’t go out of date.
My first book was about how to discover value. This one is about what marketing thinking can actually do for you — inside organizations, in your career, and in life. This series begins where most marketing conversations don’t: inside the company.
Q: People hear “marketing” and slogans, ads, spin, manipulation come to their mind. But you’re saying marketing has a more powerful use inside a company. What do you mean?
I understand that reaction — especially from engineers and finance people. But set the word “marketing” aside for a moment and ask a simpler question: can people in your company discuss problems using the same logic?
In most companies, the answer is no. Engineers talk about technical complexity. Sales talks about client pressure. Finance talks about cost. Management talks about strategic direction. Everyone understands the individual words, but nothing lands. No one’s actually on the same page.
The real power of marketing inside a company isn’t putting slogans on walls. It’s establishing a shared communication protocol — a common framework built around positioning and value proposition — so that people from different functions and backgrounds can actually talk to each other. Less friction. More consensus.
This doesn’t mean everyone needs to become a marketer. It means everyone uses the same tool to answer one question: What problem are we solving, for whom, and how?
Q: Can you make that concrete? What does a “shared language” actually look like in practice?
My favorite example: an engineer and a salesperson arguing about a new feature.
Engineer: “This is too complex. I need six months to build it properly.” Salesperson: “The client needs it next month or they’ll go to a competitor.”
Without shared language, this conversation turns into a stalemate. The engineer thinks sales doesn’t understand technology, and sales thinks engineering doesn’t understand market pressure. Both are right, but neither is solving anything.
Now run the same conversation with marketing thinking as the protocol.
Engineer: “Based on what we know about the target user and where we are in development, what they actually need right now is fast onboarding — not full features. If we split delivery into two phases, we can ship the core functionality in month one and the advanced layer in month two. That probably fits their real usage better anyway.”
Salesperson: “Let me check with the client whether they’d accept a phased delivery. If they’re on board, I’ll come back to confirm the timeline with you.”
No persuasion required. No one’s pulling rank. Two people using the same framework — positioning, value proposition, communication, collaboration — to look at the same problem and find a solution they can both live with. That’s what marketing thinking actually does inside an organization.
Q: That sounds ideal. But in reality, marketing is often the low-status department — big responsibility, not much power. How do you build this protocol when you’re starting from that position?
This one hits close to home for a lot of marketing people.
In many companies, marketing is treated as a support function for sales — there to “help move product.” And yet, in practice, marketing is often the last wall standing when things go wrong. If R&D has problems, if sales misses targets, if the product doesn’t land — the blame eventually finds its way to marketing. This is especially common in reseller or distribution businesses where the company doesn’t make anything, just sells it.
This points to something strange that happens in a lot of organizations: leadership is convinced authority has been delegated to different teams. But the teams, afraid to take the fall, never actually pick it up. The typical symptom is “I can’t move until the other department confirms.” Decision-making power disappears in the gap between “I thought I delegated that” and “I didn’t feel empowered to take it.”
I call this a power blackhole: nobody’s being malicious or lazy, but productive capacity evaporates in the structural gap. The only real fix requires active leadership intervention. For those without enough positional authority, there’s no easy way out.
Q: If you’re stuck in that environment and can’t change the culture — what’s actually actionable?
Something is, but it’s not easy.
When you can’t change the organization head-on, the most effective approach is what I’d call guerrilla tactics: don’t challenge the power structure in meetings. Instead, build influence informally, one relationship at a time.
Lead with data, not opinions. Build unofficial alignment across teams outside formal processes. Introduce the “marketing sense framework” into product discussions without triggering an organizational immune response.
There’s risk in this approach. You might blaze into someone’s turf. You might be read as overstepping. But in many organizations, it’s the only practical path. Waiting for culture to change on its own is usually just waiting forever.
That said: guerrilla tactics are a technique, not a solution. The goal is still to establish a shared communication protocol — at minimum among the people who matter most. If the guerrilla approach works and the organization starts thinking in the same framework, with the same values, that’s the real win.
A closing thought
Marketing sense, at its core, is about facts and reality — not embellishment. When that kind of thinking gets into the bloodstream of an organization, it doesn’t just reduce the noise. It makes real value easier to see, easier to discuss, and easier to act on.
With a shared communication protocol, meetings get sharper. The question shifts from “whose opinion wins” to “how do we create value together.” And everyone feels like their expertise actually counts.
That’s what a well-run organization looks like, done the hard way. Marketing thinking is the lubricant that makes it run.
(Note: This series is written with a book in mind, so some ideas introduced here will be developed further in other installments. There will be some jumping around. Stay tuned for what comes next — or wait for the book.)
