Marketing consultant Johnny Corbett argues that the visible, easy-to-access solutions marketers reach for — new campaigns, new agencies, new dashboards — "rarely answer the real questions about how marketing can drive business growth better." Corbett, founder of consultancy WhichWayUp, makes the case in the first part of a new series promoting 'The Line in the Sand', a paper co-produced by WhichWayUp and The Marketing Society on making marketing more effective, more efficient and more enjoyable.

The paper starts from one question: why is the gap between marketing's potential and its reality so huge? Marketers know more than ever about how the discipline works, the tools are extraordinary, and businesses desperately need growth. Yet, as Corbett puts it, "why does everything feel so difficult?"

What is the Streetlight Effect?

Corbett's answer is what he calls 'The Streetlight Effect'. Lose your keys in the dark street outside your house, and you will search under the streetlight — because you can see the ground. It does not matter how long you search there. The keys are in the dark.

Marketing, he argues, does the same thing. The industry lives under a bright light shining on other people's advertising, products, websites, apps and services — where the case studies get written and the awards handed out. Inside the business, the same light falls on dashboards, metrics, weekly updates, product launches, campaign reviews, QBRs and planning cycles.

These are often good answers to short-term challenges. The problem is what happens when marketing underperforms. Instinct sends marketers hunting in the visible world for the fix:

• A new campaign
• A new agency
• A different brief
• Another light on the dashboard
• A new platform, some new research, another intelligence

All potentially useful. But Corbett writes that these tend to be "output" answers — pictures of "what" has happened — rather than the deeper questions that explain "why".

Which questions live in the dark?

The questions that matter involve influence and expectations, skills and confidence, permission and authority. They concern how people work with each other, and how they behave when nobody is watching.

Corbett asks marketers to confront questions such as: What does 'marketing' actually mean in this organisation? Do the CEO, CFO, sales team and marketing team share the same answer? Is marketing respected as a discipline driving business performance, or is it a delivery function communicating decisions made elsewhere?

They are uncomfortable questions — and that, Corbett writes, is usually the sign they are the right areas to explore. One commitment the paper encourages is accepting that "it's OK that things aren't OK", because making something better requires admitting it could be better in the first place. That takes humility, vulnerability and resilience.

How should teams change their planning?

The practical implication is a shift in how teams plan. Most spend huge energy working out what to execute outside the business. Corbett says they should also spend serious time working out what needs to be true inside the business for the plan to succeed. He proposes three starting points:

• Bravery: Shine a light into the shadows. Ask the difficult questions with uncomfortable answers. How are we really doing? What is working? What isn't? Start those conversations early.
• Rigour: Check the foundations. Is the way marketing works around here clearly articulated, with a plan for the people expected to deliver it? Or are we hoping strategy, systems and humans magically align?
• Openness: Join the conversation. Share stories of where bringing sunlight into the dark has helped. "We don't need more stories about what's under the streetlight. We need stories about the gems people have uncovered in the dark."

What is the worst that can happen?

Corbett urges perspective. Finance wants invested money to produce a return. Sales wants customers who want to buy. Product teams want to create things people value. CEOs want growth. There is more common ground than marketers' imaginary tigers suggest.

The worst realistic outcomes, he writes, are discoveries: marketing is not as well understood as you thought, the team is missing capabilities, the business needs to work differently. None of these are monsters under the bed.

In the dark, there is only one business to explore: yours. "We can't creative-and-comms our way out of problems we've capability-and-cultured our way into," Corbett writes. "We need to go and find the keys. We need to mean business."

For B2B and consumer marketers alike, the challenge the paper sets is coupling everything already visible under the streetlight with genuine exploration inside the organisation — starting with the questions most teams avoid asking.