For a while I did what many professionals do: I showed up, attended the meetings, delivered the presentations. From the outside, nothing looked wrong. Inside, everything had changed. I hadn ' t become a poor marketer. I had become a marketer trying to separate my work from my values.
Alignment Changes Everything
Leaving wasn ' t an act of courage. It was an act of alignment; by the time I handed in my resignation, my gut had already left months earlier. What surprised me was how quickly my passion returned once I was working on brands whose promises matched what they delivered. I hadn ' t become a better marketer or found a new framework. I simply believed. For a long time, I had convinced myself I was burnt out. I wasn ' t. I was misaligned. The grit had never disappeared; it simply refused to work for something my values couldn ' t support.
So, what do you do when you ' re living in that tension? The first response shouldn ' t always be to leave. Sometimes the answer is to stay and fight for the brand, challenge the positioning, question the claims, push for better science. Some of the work I ' m proudest of has come from refusing to settle for“ good enough.” Leadership isn ' t only about inherit ing great brands; it ' s about having the courage to improve imperfect ones. But there are moments when you ' ve done everything within your influence and the gap remains. There are seasons when we stay because we need the income or the stability, and there is no shame in that. I ' ve made those decisions too. A season is a season. It was never meant to become your address.
So, What Do You Do?
If your answer is positive, protect it. Conviction is one of the greatest advantages a marketer can have. But if your answer makes you uncomfortable, don ' t ignore it. Your gut is rarely asking to be silenced; more often, it ' s asking to be heard. That doesn ' t mean resigning tomorrow. It means being honest enough to admit the tension. But if your values collide with your work every single day, don ' t convince yourself that ' s simply what leadership feels like. It isn ' t. There ' s a difference between making sacrifices and losing yourself: one builds character, the other slowly wears it away.
And to my fellow marketing leaders: when a team lacks conviction, our first instinct is to question their capability.
Perhaps we should first ask whether they believe. Have we created brands whose promises we would confidently make to our own families? You can ' t order belief, and you can ' t measure it on a scorecard. It must be earned. The brands that leave a lasting mark on this continent won ' t bebuilt by the biggest budgets or the cleverest campaigns, but by people whose values and whose work tell the same story.
Marketing has never been just about influencing customers. It ' s about looking after trust, and trust begins with the people trusted to build the brand. So before your next launch, your next campaign, your next business case pause. Put the research aside. Silence the dashboards. Listen to the oldest instrument you have. Your gut has been speaking all along. The only question is whether you ' re willing to listen.
Abigael Ikamba, is SSA Head of Marketing, Cipla. She is A thought-provoking leader, making meaningful changes in the spaces she occupies. You can commune with her via mail at: Miss. Ngure @ gmail. com.
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