By MikeR, Generatorland.com

Marketing departments get a lot of grief. Often among the first to be laid off, they are the least understood and least respected department in your company (behind HR). They’re typically at the mercy of sales and despite their best efforts have a difficult time getting credit for anything they do outside of someone saying “Hey, did you guys create that nifty logo? I like it. Except I don’t like green. Try purple instead.”

Why do marketing people get so little respect? Let’s explore.

1. They are exceedingly aggressive with other peoples’ time.
   If you’ve ever been asked to do something for a marketing person you’ve probably experienced the “Marketing Full Court Press.” Basically you’re asked to do something and then somehow coerced into an aggressive deadline. A few minutes later you get a call saying they actually needed it sooner because of some campaign that starts in an hour or so. A few minutes later, as you’re scrambling to pull everything together, they call and say never mind, they got someone else to do it “but thanks, you’re the best.”
2. They spend a lot of time proving how important they are to the company.
   I’m not saying marketing isn’t important to a company. It is. However, because no one outside of Marketing seems to know what Marketing is doing all day and what effect it’s having on the company, Marketing people feel like they need to let everyone know how busy they are and all the activities they’re involved in. You realize this about 37 slides into their company meeting presentation.
3. They have extreme ADD.
   Marketing people are about ideas. Often they develop numerous ideas just on their way back from the printer—where they probably picked up a print-out of their latest list of ideas. They are passionate about everyone of these ideas for about a week. During that week they will discuss the idea loudly and rally people behind it, declaring it “the idea that will change everything” and “the thing we must do as soon as we’re done hearing the idea Brad just had on his way back from Starbuck’s.”
4. They breathe buzz words.
   Marketing people who don’t pepper their speech with the latest buzz words don’t last in Marketing. Because most marketing people, especially in meetings, have a little machine in their head that ticks off the number of buzz words another marketing person uses and automatically assigns a marketing prowess rating based on the number of ticks. Some marketing people have even stopped using articles like “the” and “a” to ensure maximum buzzwords per sentence. Yesterday I heard a marketing person burp the phrase “lead-gen.”
5. They are overtly enthusiastic.
   It’s great to have a positive attitude at work. It’s something else altogether to force yourself to be so enthusiastic and positive that your attitude shrieks “Everyone! Look how incredibly enthusiastic I am!” Whether it’s the clam dip at the office party or latest quarterly sales numbers, “IT’S ALL FANTASTIC! MY GOD IS THERE ANYTHING BETTER?”