Title Or Talent? What Decision Makers Should Know Before Filling The Marketing Seat

By Eric Elliott, Founder and CEO, VIP Marketing

Marketing has a title problem.

Scroll through LinkedIn and you will see more Chief Marketing Officers, Heads of Growth, and Brand Visionaries than ever before. Titles have never been easier to get. Some people earn them over many years. Others simply claim them.

This is not a complaint about ambition. Ambition is good. This is a reminder to the people who do the hiring: a title tells you where someone sits. It does not tell you what they know.

After 20 years of working with law firms in legal marketing, I have learned that the difference between a title and real talent shows up fast. Usually it shows up in the results, and usually the client is the one who pays for it.

Where I Learned the Difference

When I was hired into media, I worked for a leader named Star Israel. She taught us how to read ratings books long before those numbers were programmed into our computers.

We studied Nielsen and Arbitron books by hand. We broke out the numbers by daypart, by station, and by audience. We learned how to project ratings, how to build a buy from them, and how to present those numbers to a client with confidence. Most important, we learned how to stand behind them.

That training was not glamorous, but it was priceless. It taught me that every medium has strengths and weaknesses, and that you have to study a medium before you spend money in it. I am forever grateful to Star for that foundation.

Today, many marketers learn media a different way. They make buys with vendors, watch what happens, and assume they now understand the medium. That is an expensive education, and the client is the one paying the tuition.

What a Title Can Hide

A polished title can hide real gaps in knowledge. I have met marketing leaders who could not explain the basics of media ratings. Some could not tell you the difference between reach and frequency, or how many gross rating points a market needs to break through. Others had never led a team through a full campaign launch from planning to results.

I have also watched new leaders take campaigns that were working very well and change them until the brand was barely recognizable. They changed the message, the media mix, and the look, often all at once. The results dropped, and no one could explain why.

In most of these cases, the problem was not effort or intent. The problem was that they made repeatable decisions without knowing the market they were marketing to. What worked at their last company, in their last city, with their last audience, was copied and pasted into a new situation. Markets do not work that way.

Your Gut Needs to Be Fed

Great marketers talk about trusting their gut, and they should. Instinct matters in this business. But a gut feeling is only as good as what you have fed it.

A strong marketing gut is built from years of reading data, studying markets, watching campaigns succeed and fail, and learning why. When a seasoned marketer says, “This feels wrong,” that feeling usually comes from hundreds of past decisions.

When someone without that background makes a gut decision, it is often just a guess. There are a lot of gut decisions being made in marketing today. Not enough people are feeding their gut first.

Why This Matters So Much for Law Firms

For personal injury law firms, marketing is not a side expense. It is how cases come through the door. Many firms invest heavily in broadcast TV, radio, outdoor, connected TV, search, social, and programmatic media, often in very competitive markets.

In that environment, small mistakes are costly. A poorly planned market launch can burn through a budget before the phones ever ring. A rushed rebrand can erase years of name recognition a firm spent good money to build. Choosing the wrong mix of reach and frequency can mean your message is seen by many people only once, or by too few people too often.

The person leading your marketing should understand the traditional fundamentals, such as ratings, GRPs, TRPs, reach, frequency, and cost per point. They should also understand modern digital media, from programmatic buying to connected TV to attribution. Just as important, they should understand creative. The right message on the wrong media fails. The wrong message on the right media fails too. Real talent knows how to connect the two.

Questions to Ask Before You Hand Someone the Seat

If you are a firm owner, managing partner, or decision maker hiring for a marketing leadership role, here are questions a title cannot answer for someone:

How do you decide between reach and frequency for a new market launch? A strong candidate will explain the tradeoff in plain language and tie it to your goals.

What does a GRP or TRP tell you, and what does it not tell you? Look for someone who understands both the value and the limits of the numbers.

Walk me through a campaign you inherited. What did you keep, and why? Real talent respects what is already working before changing it.

How do you learn a market before you spend money in it? Listen for research, data, and curiosity, not just past habits.

Tell me about a launch you led from start to finish. Ask about the team, the timeline, the budget, and the results.

Who taught you this business? People with real experience can usually name the mentors who shaped them.

Signs You Are Looking at Real Talent

In my experience, people with true marketing talent tend to share a few traits:

• They explain complex ideas simply, without hiding behind jargon.
• They talk about the market and the audience before they talk about the media.
• They protect what is working and test changes carefully.
• They can show their work and stand behind their numbers.
• They see media and creative as partners, not separate departments.

Earn the Title

Titles are not bad. Many people wear them proudly and have earned every letter. The point is simple: when you put a person in a marketing seat, look past the smoke and mirrors. Hire for knowledge, experience, and judgment. Ask the questions that show what someone truly knows.

Star Israel never needed a fancy title to prove her value. Her talent showed up in the people she trained and the results they delivered. That is the standard worth hiring for.

Eric Elliott is the Founder and CEO of VIP Marketing, a performance marketing agency for law firms based in Charleston, SC, and its premium video production arm, Craft Creative. With 20 years in legal marketing, he is the 2026 AMA Charleston Marketer of the Year, a 3x Golden Gavel and ADDY Award Winner, and host of the Going Forward podcast.