The One-Person Marketing Department Problem

There’s a growing trend in marketing that doesn’t get nearly enough attention:
entire companies are resting their entire brand, strategy, and public presence on one person.

Somehow, somewhere along the way, “marketing” stopped being seen as a department and started being treated like a single job title. Not always because companies are unwilling to invest, though that absolutely happens, but because many leaders simply don’t understand how many distinct roles exist under the umbrella of “marketing.”

They know marketing is important. They know it drives revenue. They know it shapes the brand. But they rarely pause to understand what that importance actually requires: strategy, messaging, creative, content, analysis, community, storytelling, design, distribution, positioning, communication… all of the disciplines that used to be handled by several people, each with their own craft.

Without that understanding, it becomes easy for organizations to assume one marketer can “handle it,” not out of malice, but out of a fundamental misinterpretation of what the work entails (…at least that’s what I hope.)

Most modern marketing roles require you to be:

• a CMO

• a strategist

• a creative director

• a copywriter

• a brand designer

• a social media manager

• a PR lead

• an analyst

• a photographer

• an events team

• an agency

• an intern

• and whatever else the day decides you need to be

And the wild part? None of this is framed as unreasonable. It’s framed as normal. Expected. Admired, even.

Companies talk about “efficiency” and “lean teams,” but what they really mean is: “We’re going to put the full weight of our brand on one person because marketing looks easy from the outside.”

Let’s be honest: This has nothing to do with efficiency. It’s not smart resourcing. It’s not even a strategy. It’s denial.

And it’s easy. It’s easy to expect the marketing person to “just figure it out.” It’s easy to assume creativity is instant, strategy is obvious, and content takes five minutes. It’s easy to believe one person can replace a department when you don’t understand what the work actually entails. But the truth is this:

Marketing is not one skill.
Marketing is a system of disciplines.
And no single person can carry that entire system sustainably.

Yet so many of us do. Not because it’s reasonable, but because we’re trying to hold things together. Because we care about the brand. Because we want things done well. Because we’ve learned how to adapt, quickly and quietly, to whatever the role demands.

Here’s the real tension: Companies love multidisciplinary marketers; right up until they have to acknowledge what that actually requires. They want strategy, creativity, content, reporting, design, culture-building, trend fluency, execution, copywriting, storytelling, and brand vision… but they only want to hire one person to deliver all of it. And then they act surprised when that person is stretched thin.

The industry keeps selling the idea of the “full-stack marketer” like it’s aspirational, but what it often becomes in practice is a justification for unrealistic workloads.

Versatility is a strength. Being able to move fluidly between disciplines is a strength. But expecting one human to replace an entire team is not versatility. It’s exploitation disguised as efficiency.

There’s nothing glamorous about doing ten jobs under one title. There’s nothing exciting about constant context-switching. There’s nothing empowering about being told to “just use AI” like it magically makes all the work disappear.

Marketing deserves teams. Marketers deserve support. And companies deserve to understand the basic truth they keep overlooking: If the marketing is critical to the business, the people doing it deserve to be treated like a department, not a catch-all.

The work gets better when the workload is realistic. The strategy gets better when the role is sustainable. The brand gets better when the marketer isn’t drowning.

It’s not radical to say this. It’s rational.

And maybe it’s time the industry stopped pretending one person is enough, and started acknowledging what the work actually demands.