Stop asking for more brand marketing ideas. Start asking for better decisions.

Most marketing meetings start the same way.

“We need ideas.” “We need something fresh.” “We need a big concept.” So people brainstorm. Whiteboards fill. Slides multiply. Energy rises.

And then, weeks later, the results look suspiciously familiar. Not because the team lacks creativity. But because creativity is not the real bottleneck.  Decision-making is.

Ideas are abundant. Good decisions are rare.

Every organisation has more ideas than it can execute. Campaign ideas. Content ideas. Partnership ideas. Platform ideas. Podcast Ideas. Event Ideas. Scarcity is not the problem. Prioritisation is.

Most marketing underperforms not because teams cannot think of things to do, but because they struggle to choose what not to do. When everything feels important, nothing truly is.

The hidden cost of indecision

Poor decision-making rarely looks dramatic.

It looks like this:

• “Let’s try it and see.”

• “We can add this too.”

• “Better to be safe and include everything.”

These sound reasonable. They are expensive. Indecision creates bloated scopes, diluted messages, and scattered budgets. It also creates invisible waste.

Time spent on low-impact initiatives is time not spent on high-impact ones. You do not feel this loss immediately. You will feel it months later, when growth stalls and no one can explain why.

Strategy is a decision-making framework

Many organisations treat strategy as a document. A deck. A workshop. A yearly ritual. In reality, strategy is not what you write down. Strategy is what you consistently choose.

Every time you say yes to one initiative, you are implicitly saying no to another. If those choices are not guided by clear criteria, you do not have a strategy. You have activity.

The questions to ask that create better decisions

High-performing teams ask different questions:

• Does this move us closer to our business objective?

• Does this strengthen our positioning or dilute it?

• Is this for our priority audience?

• Can we resource this properly?

Notice what is missing. “Is it cool?” “Is it trending?” “Do we like it?” Taste has a place. It is not at the top of the list.

The courage to kill good ideas

One of the hardest skills in marketing is killing good ideas that are just not the right fit. Good ideas are seductive. They create excitement. They make teams feel creative.

But a good idea in the wrong context becomes a bad decision. Strong leaders are not the ones who approve the most ideas. They are the ones who protect focus. They understand that impact comes from depth, not from quantity.

Why brainstorming is overrated

Brainstorming is not useless. But it is often overvalued. Without clear constraints, brainstorming produces noise. Better input leads to better output. Instead of asking:

“What ideas do we have?” Ask: “What problem are we solving?” “For whom?” “With what outcome?”

These questions shrink the idea space. And that is a good thing.

Decision-making is a competitive advantage

Most companies can access the same tools. The same platforms. The same data. What separates leaders is not access. It is a judgment.

The ability to look at ten possible paths and choose the one that actually matters. Over time, this compounds. Small, good decisions stack. So do small, bad ones.

A final thought

If your marketing feels chaotic, do not run another brainstorming session. Run a decision audit.

Look at what you are funding. Look at what you are prioritising. Look at what you keep saying yes to.

Then ask a harder question: Are these the best possible decisions for where we want to go?

Marketing does not fail due to a lack of ideas. It fails due to a lack of decisive thinking.

About the Author

Steve Gardiner (exec MBA) is a senior marketing and commercial leader at Lighthouse PR, bringing global experience from Accenture, Electronic Arts, Virgin Media, Telekom, and Etisalat. Latterly, as VP Business at Etisalat, he was responsible for $1.8B in revenue.

Today, Steve applies his strategic, marketing, and growth expertise to support Lighthouse PR clients as part of the agency’s service offering.