Marketing departments tended to have more influence at companies whose directors also served at firms where marketing held a stronger position, according to research covering 6,008 publicly traded businesses.
The study examines a board interlock, a connection created when a director serves on more than one company’s board. Such connections can expose directors to different ways of organizing and evaluating marketing.
Peter Ebbes, Frank Germann and Rajdeep Grewal analyzed companies from 2007 through 2021. Their Journal of Marketing Research paper was published online in 2024 and appeared in a 2025 journal issue. The American Marketing Association revisited the findings in an April 2026 discussion.
How the researchers measured influence
Marketing influence is difficult to observe directly. The authors constructed a measure using information about senior executives, including the number of marketing executives in the top management team, their relative compensation and the seniority of their titles.
That measure reflects a department’s position in the formal leadership structure. It cannot capture every informal conversation or establish whether a marketing team made a particular decision.
The researchers found a positive association between the measure at a focal company and at companies connected through its directors. Their analysis also considered how many connections a board had, the information available through those connections and the company’s receptiveness to it.
The authors used several statistical methods to address alternative explanations and argue that the relationship is plausibly causal. The data remain observational, however, and the result does not prove that appointing any particular director will increase marketing influence.
What marketing leaders can bring to the board
For a marketing executive, influence can depend on whether directors understand how customer acquisition costs, retention, brand investment and product decisions relate to the company’s objectives.
A board presentation might distinguish between short-term advertising results and longer-term customer outcomes, state the assumptions behind a forecast and explain what the team will measure next. Those are practical applications of the research, not interventions the study tested.
Leadership also involves trade-offs. More representation for one function does not automatically improve every decision, and an experienced director must still consider finance, operations, risk and the interests of the company as a whole.
The sample consists of public companies and historical board records, so its findings may not transfer directly to smaller private firms. Our coverage of marketing strategy and acquisition decisions similarly shows why a senior marketing perspective can matter in a broader commercial choice, without making a title a guarantee of better outcomes.
