Today’s episode of Two by Two is about how the marketing function has been eating itself from the inside. Historically, in companies, marketing has always been about the long term, while a function like sales was about the near term. Marketing owned the customer—what they wanted, their dreams, their fears, and their vanities. It was supposed to tell stories of customers back to the organisation and, in return, tell stories of the company back to customers. Today, in company after company, the marketing function has been getting sliced away, cut into parts and becoming something else altogether. Marketing is eating itself from the inside. To discuss what changed, we had two wonderful guests: one who has been teaching marketing for decades and one who has been practising it for decades. Our first guest is Professor YLR Moorthi, who teaches marketing, brand management, and marketing strategy at IIM Bangalore. These days, Professor Moorthi’s work is focused on the impact of branding in different domains like IT and B2B marketing. Our second guest is Deepali Naair, who is currently the group CMO of CK Birla Group. She's had a long career in marketing across varied functions as CMO for India and South Asia at IBM, and prior to that, she was CMO at IIFL and Mahindra Holidays. In this episode, the hosts ask two simple questions: Why is marketing dying, and how can we bring it back? Welcome to Two by Two. What you just listened to is a short part from a more than hour-long conversation. If you want to listen and get early access to the full episode, consider becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken, which in addition to Two by Two, will also give you access to our long-form stories, Premiums newsletters and visual stories. Or if you just want to listen to Two by Two for now, for iOS users, we have enabled Premium subscription on Apple Podcasts. You can sign up for The Two by Two newsletter here—it's free! This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode. New episodes are released every Thursday. So follow the show wherever you get your podcasts, and tell us what you think of the show. You can write to us at [email protected] with your thoughts and suggestions.