All of the things he suggests are incredibly obvious though. Most marketing people I know (and I know a lot) would consider the idea that their job was to 'set

All of the things he suggests are incredibly obvious though. Most marketing people I know (and I know a lot) would consider the idea that their job was to 'set up trade booths' or 'send out a Press Release and wait for things to happen' as a thinly veiled insult. Of course the purpose of trade shows is to gather and qualify leads- otherwise you're simply spraying money up the wall. Likewise, if a marketing organization doesn't have basic targets or marketing/sales alignment in place, then it's not because of the lack of management, it's because the marketing/sales people are incompetent. And if I think of the negative cultures I've worked in - the one thing they have in common is a 'leader figure' at the top who spends his time abasing the team and generally getting in the way of things that, left alone, the team would organize to do anyway. The job of a leader is to hire good people and get out of their way.