There is a precise moment when a word stops communicating value and starts generating distrust.
It does not happen all at once. It happens through accumulation.
The word marketing has gone through exactly this process over the last decade. Not because the discipline has become less relevant — on the contrary, it has never been so central to business strategy. But because the market that represents it filled up so quickly, and so badly, that it has become almost impossible to tell those who genuinely know the craft from those who have simply put a label on it, and from those who still deliver high-level marketing consultancy.
Entrepreneurs who have signed contracts, waited for results and received reports know the outcome well. “Marketing doesn’t work.” That is the line doing the rounds in boardrooms, in conversations between CEOs, in the stories of those who burned through budgets without seeing a return. But the problem is not marketing. It is the people who practised it without the skills to do so.
The numbers of a market that grew faster than its standards
Italy today has over 43,000 active businesses in the communications and marketing sector: agencies, web marketing companies, media companies, creative studios. A figure that, viewed in isolation, might seem a sign of vitality. Viewed in the right context, it tells a different story.
Of these 43,000 businesses, 1,874 exceed one million euros in turnover. Those that fail to reach 100,000 euros account for around 52% of the total. In other words: more than half of the Italian agency market operates at a size that makes it structurally impossible to maintain specialist teams, train continuously, invest in professional tools and guarantee measurable results.
And the vast majority of agencies have fewer than 4 staff: 28,321 out of 31,800 agencies with known headcounts. Only 1,512 have more than 10 staff. This is the market in which a business owner has to choose a partner. A market where size, positioning and structure differ radically from one operator to the next, yet the label is always the same: marketing agency.
The silent invasion: when everyone became an expert
But the real problem does not come from structured micro-agencies. It comes from what has exploded alongside them. According to 2025 ISTAT data, of 24 million people in employment in Italy, 5.17 million are self-employed, 141,000 more than the previous year, an annual increase of 2.8%. This puts self-employed workers at 23.1% of total employment in Italy, second only to Greece and Bulgaria in Europe and well above the European average of 14.3%.
A sizeable share of these 5 million work in marketing and digital communications. In 2024 there were over 3.5 million freelance professionals in Italy, many of them active in digital marketing.
These numbers alone do not explain the problem. The point is not how many people work in marketing. The point is how they got in.
Over the last ten years, three forces have converged, lowering the barriers to entry until they became almost invisible.
The first: social media created the illusion of competence by osmosis. If you manage your own Instagram profile and gain followers, you have become, in your own mind and in the minds of those watching, a digital marketing expert. If you launched a personal product and it worked, you are a product launch expert. The problem is that these results stem from a context that cannot be repeated: your audience, your story, your moment. They are personal results dressed up as professional competence. Yet the market has accepted them as credentials.
The second: self-employment in marketing became the most accessible escape route. Graduates with no experience, professionals changing careers, weary former employees. Marketing looked like the easiest way to start working for yourself. Low initial investment, no mandatory certification, no professional body, no formal barriers. The practical result: opening a “communications agency” requires a computer, a website and a LinkedIn profile.
The third: the creator economy has legitimised improvisation as a method. The influencer model, building visibility, monetising it, turning it into consultancy, has produced thousands of figures selling courses, strategies and services on the strength of a single variable: their own fame. Not experience with dozens of different companies. Not the ability to manage real budgets under pressure. Just visibility.
The real damage: not wasted money, but burned patterns
All of this has produced an effect that goes far beyond the individual contract gone wrong. 39% of communications and marketing projects in Italy fail or end early, not for technical or performance reasons, but for reasons of relationship, dialogue and mutual understanding. Almost 4 projects in 10 never reach completion. Not because the strategy was wrong. But because the level of trust between client and partner was already compromised before work even began.
And the economic consequences of this climate can be read in the investment data: total investment in marketing and communications in Italy is worth around 9 billion euros, 0.47% of GDP, one of the lowest figures among advanced economies. By comparison: France invests 1.06%, Germany 1.13%, the United Kingdom 1.17% and the United States 1.32%.
Italy does not invest in marketing because it does not trust marketing. It does not trust marketing because too many bad experiences have, over time, built a pattern of distrust that is applied automatically to anyone who turns up using that word. This is the debt the sector is now paying. It is not a communication problem. It is a problem of structural credibility, built over time, brick by brick of broken promises.
The apparently safe choice: the in-house team
Faced with this scenario, business owners’ most common response was predictable: better to bring everything in-house.
An in-house team seems controllable. It seems legible. It seems a smaller risk than entrusting things to an outsider once again. And part of this logic is sound. A CEO with a strong vision wants that vision conveyed precisely. They want the company’s values understood and embodied. They want those working on marketing to breathe the company from the inside. This is legitimate. And it is the strongest reason there is for building an in-house team.
But it is also where the most costly paradox in business lies hidden.
The problem nobody says out loud: the employee just ticks the boxes
An employee has a very different incentive structure from that of an external professional. They have a guaranteed salary. They have a contract. They have a position to keep, not one to win every month. Over time, inevitably, they tend to find a balance between what is required and what is enough to stay where they are. Not out of bad faith, but out of human nature.
The external professional has an entirely different incentive structure. They have to earn their keep every month. Every month the client can decide not to renew. Every month the results are judged. Every month the relationship has to be justified with concrete value. This is not stress, it is productive pressure. It is the engine that keeps energy, proactivity and the hunger for results high.
A competent external team does not work to avoid being fired. It works to be indispensable. And over time, that difference produces radically different output.
The hidden advantage: cross-pollination and perspective
There is a second advantage that is almost always overlooked in the in-house versus external comparison.
An external team brings cross-pollination. It works across different sectors, tackles different problems, tests solutions in different contexts. It brings into the company a repertoire of experience that an in-house team, by definition focused on a single context, cannot build up.
This cross-pollination is not a risk. It is an asset. It is the difference between those who see the problem from the inside, with all the cognitive biases the context creates, and those who see it from the outside, with the distance needed to read it clearly. A surgeon does not operate on himself. And a company rarely manages to read its own blind spots from the inside.
So why Bliss stopped calling itself a marketing agency
All of this — the saturated market, the weakened word, the distrust built up over the years, the structural limits of the purely operational model — is the context that led Bliss to make a deliberate choice.
Stop operating as a marketing agency. Start operating as a strategic partner.
This is not a distinction of labels. It is a distinction of responsibility.
A marketing agency produces output. It receives a brief, executes, delivers. Its remit is execution, and in a market where execution has become abundant and standardised, staying within that remit means competing on price alone.
A strategic partner comes in at a different level. Before producing anything, it defines the choices: what makes sense to do, why, by which criteria, in which sequence. Then it governs consistency over time. Then it executes, but within a system that makes execution measurable and geared to real objectives.
This is the model that integrates advisory, governance and operations. Not three separate services. A single system in which each level feeds the next and none exists in isolation. It is the answer to the real problem many companies have experienced: execution was not what was missing. What was missing was someone willing to take responsibility for deciding first, and for maintaining consistency afterwards.
The question that changes everything
Ultimately, the in-house versus external debate is a false choice.
The right question is not where the people working on marketing are physically based. The question is: who governs the decisions?
Who sets the priorities. Who defines the criteria. Who maintains coherence when operations naturally tend to fragment. Who takes responsibility, real, not nominal, for the results.
If these answers do not exist, it makes no difference how many people sit inside or outside the company. There is only activity. And activity alone does not build value; it only generates costs.
Trust is rebuilt with facts, not promises
Marketing has a reputation problem. That is a fact. And the numbers confirm it: a country that invests less than half the European average in marketing does not do so for lack of budget. It does so for lack of trust.
The solution is not to communicate better. It is not to do more personal branding. It is not to rename the service.
The solution is to do exactly the opposite of what created the problem: bring real expertise, take on genuine responsibility, deliver consistency over time. Not promising results, but building systems that make them possible.
Because trust, the real kind, the kind that lasts, is not won with a brilliant sales proposal.
It is built one experience at a time, until the pattern the market had damaged slowly begins to recover.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why has marketing lost credibility?
Because for decades it has been associated with advertising and persuasion. When marketing does not speak the language of business, it is perceived as an ancillary cost. The word has been emptied of meaning because the function has remained superficial.
What is the difference between operational marketing and strategic marketing?
Operational marketing manages the tools: social, ads, email. Strategic marketing decides the why and the for whom. Without strategy, the tools produce noise. Without execution, strategy remains a document.
How do you restore the value of marketing within a company?
By integrating it into the decisions that matter. Marketing must contribute to value. When marketing enters core processes, it stops being perceived as an expense.