Branding vs. Marketing: Stop Confusing the Chef with the Waiter
Friend and client Executive Chef Raphael Lunetta of Marelle and Lunetta in Santa Monica.
For some of you, I might be pissing in the Lobster Bisque on this one. But we need to get something straight:
Branding is not marketing.
Putting your brand or creative director under the marketing department is like asking the architect to report to the guy hanging the “Open” sign.
You wouldn’t tell a chef to take direction from the maître d’.
So why do so many companies keep confusing the people “building the brand” with the ones “selling it”?
Here’s the deal:
Branding makes value. Marketing extracts value.
Branding is the blueprint, the soul, the thing with guts and gravity that turns a product into a story, a logo into a flag, and a company into a cause. It’s not seasonal. It doesn’t pivot on a clickthrough rate. Branding is who you are when no one’s buying.
Marketing? It’s the megaphone. It’s launch dates, landing pages, budgets, and banners. It’s performance dashboards and ROIs. It’s short-term adrenaline. It’s the sugar rush that gets you through the quarter.
Both matter. But they’re not the same beast.
Branding is a long con. Marketing is a flash sale.
The best brands were built while no one was watching. Nike wasn’t born in a campaign. Patagonia didn’t A/B test its values. They played the long game. They built trust. They said “no” when it mattered.
Marketing, meanwhile, is the hustle. It’s loud, fast, and always needs new shoes. It gets the credit when sales spike and the blame when they don’t.
And that’s precisely the problem.
When brand reports to marketing, it dies a slow death by a thousand PowerPoints.
Because marketing is chasing the next quarter. Brand is building a company for 2030.
And when the people tasked with shaping your story, defining your voice, and protecting your cultural relevance are buried three layers under campaign managers and ad buyers, you get noise. Not narrative. Wallpaper, not meaning.
So no—your creative director shouldn’t report to marketing.
Your head of brand doesn’t belong on the org chart under performance metrics.
They’re not cost centers. They’re value creators.
The ones who make people want you before marketing ever finds them.
You want to win the future?
Start here:
Treat brand like capital, not collateral.
Give creatives power, not just briefs.
And for the love of all that’s holy, stop confusing storytelling with sales tactics.
Because in the end, marketing may get attention—but brand? Brand earns devotion.
And that’s what scales.
If you keep confusing the chef with the waiter, don’t be surprised when your brand starts tasting like reheated leftovers.
If your brand is buried under marketing and your story’s stuck in a deck, it’s time to bring in someone who knows how to set the table—and write the recipe.