It’s 2016. The world is different.

Marketing is different.

Marketing is charged with telling the world about your company, your brand, your team. They have to do this by establishing trust with the customer. Those customers have an expectation that if you say you are something or do something that those things are true. In today’s instant gratification economy, if their expectation isn’t met with what you told them to expect, it’s on social media, the news, and spreading to other customers as one more data point.

What are they saying?

You lied to me.

Marketers have the responsibility to your customers to tell the truth. This responsibility becomes a problem when the delivery or operations side of the business can’t deliver on that promise.

This is about truth. It’s about the brand. It’s about the entire customer experience.

That experience doesn’t start when they enter the store or the website or the app. It starts when they see an advertisement or hear about it from a friend and Google you.

The brand of the organization cuts across the entire company. From sales and marketing to delivery to finance, all three legs of the business are impacted by saying one thing and doing another.

If you say you support your product, make sure you support it. If you advertise a turnaround time, make sure you are executing on it.

Marketing is telling the world the story of your brand. Operations is responsible for delivery of that story to each and every customer. Without alignment there is friction. Without accountability there is mediocrity, without structure there is chaos.

These two people are in the same boat and drink the same coffee. They should have coffee together…a lot (once a week, maybe even every day) to ensure that the business says what it does and does what it says.

Make 2016 the year of truth.