A personal reflection on what really lies beneath the surface of marketing budgets.

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of hosting a webinar with Tom Mills, who is, in my view, one of LinkedIn’s more thoughtful voices on procurement. Our topic was the familiar friction that so often arises between procurement and marketing.

Of all the comments from the audience, one in particular made me want to write this. A senior procurement professional remarked that having budget to spend was not a right; it was, as he put it, a privilege.

I cannot say the comment surprised me. In truth, I had rather expected it; I have heard variations on that theme many times over the years. It resonated with the audience, which was, as you might expect, largely made up of procurement professionals. From their vantage point, I can see why the word ‘privilege’ feels appropriate. Procurement teams are charged with protecting company resources, establishing governance, managing supplier relationships, and ensuring that organisational spend delivers value. When budget holders arrive with requests for agencies, events, platforms, campaigns, or sponsorships, it is only natural that procurement views those decisions through the lens of stewardship.

What interested me more, though, was what the conversation revealed about the relationship between procurement and marketing itself.

These two functions often look at the same budget through entirely different lenses. Because neither side has a clear view of the pressures facing the other, misunderstandings are predictable and highly likely.

One thing procurement professionals may not always see is that, by the time marketing arrives with a purchase request or a proposed contract, the decision to invest has usually already survived a fair amount of scrutiny.

Marketing investments do not simply appear out of thin air. Annual plans have been debated, forecasts constructed, expected returns modelled, and risks discussed — often at length. There have usually been conversations with sales leadership, product marketing, finance partners, agencies, and senior executives. In many organisations, major marketing investments are challenged several times over before procurement is formally involved.

That context is important, because procurement often sees only the final request, not the process that led to it. What may look, from the outside, like confidence –  or even, on occasion, a touch of casualness –  is usually the result of months of planning, negotiation, forecasting, compromise, and internal accountability.

I also suspect there is a broader misunderstanding about what budget responsibility actually feels like inside marketing.

From the outside, marketing can seem deceptively straightforward, largely because it is so visible and familiar. Everyone encounters advertising, events, content, branding, and customer experiences on a daily basis. As a result, almost everyone feels qualified to form opinions about marketing decisions — something they would rarely attempt with legal structures, tax policy, cybersecurity architecture, or supply chain operations.

That visibility brings with it a very particular kind of pressure.

Marketing leaders are expected to drive growth, strengthen brand position, support sales performance, and create future demand — often in conditions that are anything but certain. Consumer behaviour shifts quickly; markets change; competitive dynamics evolve; and external events can reshape outcomes overnight. Even when the strategy is sound and execution is strong, there are always variables that sit well outside marketing’s control.

A campaign can falter for any number of reasons: economic conditions, pricing decisions, operational issues, market timing, product challenges, or external disruptions that have nothing whatsoever to do with the quality of the marketing itself. Yet, despite all this complexity, marketing budgets are often among the first to come under scrutiny when commercial performance weakens.

What makes this especially challenging is that marketers are so often asked to justify long-term investments using the language of short-term results.

Much of what marketing is responsible for building – brand equity, market positioning, trust, awareness, and future pipeline – accumulates gradually, over time. Procurement, on the other hand, is often measured on value realised within the financial year. Neither perspective is wrong; they simply operate on different timelines and according to different forms of accountability.

When one function is measured on immediate efficiency and another is investing in future growth, friction is not necessarily a sign of failure. It is simply the result of two legitimate disciplines approaching the same decision from different angles.

I know this to be especially challenging for younger marketers.

Senior leaders eventually learn how to defend uncertainty; experience teaches you that no serious commercial decision comes with guarantees. More junior marketers, however, often carry very real accountability without yet having the organisational confidence or authority that makes those conversations any easier. They are asked to explain long-term investments in front of functions whose approval they need, using criteria that may not fully reflect the realities of how marketing creates value.

That can be a remarkably heavy responsibility to shoulder.

None of this is to suggest that marketing budgets should escape scrutiny, nor do I believe procurement professionals are wrong to challenge assumptions, negotiate firmly, or ask difficult questions. Healthy organisations need that discipline.

At the same time, I think it is important to recognise that most marketers do not experience budgets as freedom or privilege; they experience them as responsibility.

Behind every campaign, event, partnership, platform decision, or agency investment lies the knowledge that company money is being entrusted to your judgement — often in conditions where certainty is impossible and outcomes will only become clear with the benefit of hindsight.

That is the part of the story that is so often invisible.

Perhaps that is why procurement and marketing sometimes struggle to understand one another quite so well. Both functions care deeply about value, accountability, and commercial success, but they encounter those responsibilities from very different starting points.