Across my many years in research and consulting, I’ve picked up a few marketing lessons I believe are worth passing along—timeless basics that are surprisingly easy to ignore. This year, I’m sharing some of them for you to reflect on. I hope you find them useful. This week’s idea: Marketing is the conscience of business. In America, business leaders rank among the least trusted groups, and that’s been the case for a long time. There are plenty of reasons, and the ever-updated roster of bad actors and scandals keeps skepticism alive. In recent years, the housing collapse, PACs, social media, inflation, affordability, living wages, management diversity, immigrant labor, and AI have all fueled public distrust. Frustration has been mounting toward Big Tech, Big Pharma, and Big Food. People see greed everywhere. This perception of business is not entirely fair. Very few businesspeople actually match the caricature of a ruthless, soulless villain. Even Scrooge, the ultimate example, eventually changed his ways. Still, business leaders often make unforced errors. And I suspect they would make even more if it weren’t for marketing. Because marketing serves as the conscience of business. The marketing mindset starts with the consumer. Every few years, we marketers feel compelled to rebrand this idea of consumer-centricity with a catchy new phrase. Yet the core principle of marketing has stayed the same: business exists to solve people’s problems. Marketing is the discipline that makes that happen. This article is part of…