The Most Underrated Skill in Marketing Isn't Creativity, It's Project Management

Last week, a family friend I’ve known for 40+ years, who is a high school math teacher, asked what I do for a living. I responded, “Marketing.”

She paused. “What does that really mean?”

She explained that when she thinks about marketing, she thinks about advertising. And I realized that, for many people unfamiliar with the many facets of marketing, that's exactly what comes to mind: the big idea, bold campaign, clever tagline, or jaw-dropping creative.

What they don't see are the hundreds of decisions, conversations, strategies, content, creative, analytics, timelines, dependencies, and contingency plans that bring those ideas to life.

I've spent much of my career leading marketing projects, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's this:

Great marketing is orchestrated.

(And yes, that’s a purposeful Vivace play-on-words with “orchestrated!”)

More than 20 years ago, I worked on the first January 1 launch of the Girl of the Year character for American Girl. On the surface, it sounds exciting. Behind the scenes, we were running on all cylinders to make an incredibly complex launch come together seamlessly.

While most people were enjoying the holidays and getting ready to ring in the New Year, we were finalizing the character's big debut: working toward a potential Today Show appearance, preparing storefront windows, readying customer service teams, ensuring inventory was loaded, activating teaser campaigns, setting up reporting, validating e-commerce product availability, launching day-of marketing, and checking every last detail.

There was no room to push the date. January 1 wasn't just another New Year's Day; it was THE date. It was the product launch that kicked off our year, and everything needed to be ready when customers woke up that morning.

That experience taught me that project management is more than timelines and checklists. It's making sure dozens of moving pieces come together at exactly the right moment and being prepared for anything.

One of the most valuable things project managers bring to a team is perspective.

They often spot missing pieces, communication gaps, conflicting priorities, or opportunities to simplify a process before anyone else notices, especially when there's no centralized project management or CMS platform keeping everyone aligned.

Project managers shouldn't be on the sidelines. The best teams invite them to meetings, creative reviews, and discussions where they can ask questions and provide feedback. Understanding the creative direction, strategy, and objectives makes it easier to spot disconnects and keep everything aligned.

The best project managers aren't simply tracking tasks. They're connecting dots and helping everyone move toward the same goal.

I learned this when I joined Thomson Reuters for a project to relaunch the corporate website. I came in after the project had already kicked off and had to quickly navigate an external agency, internal creative team, developers, UX, technology teams, and virtually every discipline across the organization.

Getting everyone aligned was challenging, but working with incredibly talented people who cared about the outcome made it one of the most enjoyable projects I've worked on.

That's another thing good project management can do: bring talented people together and create the conditions for them to do their best work.

One misconception about project management is that project managers are simply coordinators. In reality, many bring backgrounds in marketing, communications, design, operations, digital, education, and more.

Early in my career at American Girl, everyone was considered a marketer—we just specialized in different areas. I gravitated toward project management, but that didn't mean my role was limited to only schedules and timelines.

If I saw a better way to approach something or an opportunity to improve the customer experience, I spoke up.

That's advice I'd give any project manager or young professional: you are more than your title, and your perspective has value. Share your ideas, ask questions, and offer feedback when you see something that could be better.

Successful projects almost always start with a thoughtful kickoff, regardless of size.

That doesn't mean every kickoff needs to be a two-hour meeting with dozens of slides and people. Right-size the kickoff to the complexity of the project.

At a minimum, the team should leave with a shared understanding of:

The more alignment you create at the beginning, the fewer surprises you'll face later.

Project management isn't always about getting a campaign out the door. Sometimes, you're helping people change how they work.

At Ecolab, I worked on launching a new e-commerce ordering platform that allowed account managers and customers to place their own orders rather than relying on account managers directly.

On paper, it was a digital tool launch. In practice, it was about changing behavior.

We needed product descriptions and photography, an easy customer experience, and training for long-time account managers who had spent years taking orders directly. They needed to learn the platform so they could teach their customers.

We also had to demonstrate the longer-term value of the platform—not just what it could do on launch day, but how it could improve efficiency and the customer experience over time.

The lesson? A project's success isn't always whether you launch on time. It's whether people actually adopt what you've built.

In marketing, we're taught that people need to hear a message multiple times before it sticks. Research consistently shows that repetition can improve understanding and recall, particularly when important information is reinforced across multiple formats.

My philosophy is: Communicate early. Communicate often. Then communicate again.

If something is important, don't rely on a single email. People miss things or skim. And while I'd love to tell you bolding the important parts guarantees they'll be noticed, I haven't found that to be true either.

Repeat key details and dates in the kickoff meeting, meeting agendas, project notes, hallway conversations, company chat, and follow-up emails.

When you think you've communicated enough, you probably haven't. When everyone on the team knows it and can repeat it back to you, then you've probably said it enough. (But good luck when that important date changes and you get to do it all over again!)

In project management, and probably in life, overcommunicating is almost always better than undercommunicating.

Always remember what we're actually trying to accomplish.

Yes, the work matters. Yes, we want every launch to succeed. But at the end of the day, I wasn't saving lives, I was launching a <insert project here>!

That perspective makes it easier to stay calm, make thoughtful decisions, and maintain a healthy work-life balance, even during the busiest projects.

Not every project is an emergency. In fact, very few are. Knowing when to push and when to step back makes you a better project manager and a better teammate.

Project management isn't the opposite of creativity. It's what allows creativity to flourish.

When communication is clear, expectations are aligned, and teams trust one another, creative people can spend less time putting out fires and more time doing their best work.

And in my experience, that's where the best marketing happens.

Jeanette Juetten has spent her entire career in marketing, excelling in user experience, market research, digital, strategy, and execution. She lives in Wisconsin with her outdoor-loving husband, their active and adventurous teenage daughter, and their new-to-the-family Danish exchange student. She’s passionate about giving back to her community, serving on the board of the local food pantry, coordinating meals for the Rotary Club, and serving as treasurer of the nonprofit Haitian Relief Services. Jeanette loves to travel both near and far and was fortunate to check Machu Picchu off her bucket list this spring.

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