For decades, the board’s relationship with marketing has been defined by a polite but persistent skepticism. It’s the old John Wanamaker dilemma wrapped in modern metrics: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” In times of economic tightening, marketing budgets are historically the first to be slashed because leadership views them as a discretionary cost center rather than a predictable revenue generator. But we are living t