Introduction

If you work in B2B, you have almost certainly seen this happen: Marketing HQ launches a new “official” deck. Sales says thanks….. Then quietly carry on editing and presenting their own version. That covert version with unsanctioned images downloaded from Google and messaging that doesn’t align with your company website. At first glance, it looks like an obvious compliance issue.

• Sales is not using the branded tools provided. (again!)
• Sales is going off-brand. (again!)
• Sales are creating problems for marketing. (again!)

But once you’ve spent time close to live deals, a different truth becomes obvious. Sales do not rewrite marketing assets just to be difficult. They rewrite them because they are under pressure to meet quota.

… a pressure that rarely filters down to marketing, in my experience.

Shadow Marketing is not rebellion. It is adaptation. And in most organisations, from a sales point of view, it is business as usual.

Sales lives under pressure that marketing rarely feels

I have worked at both ends of the commercial spectrum and started my IT career carrying a sales number at IBM before moving over to the dark side into marketing. This “hybrid” perspective makes certain patterns that I see hard to ignore. There is one key difference between sales and marketing that explains everything. Sales is accountable for outcomes, in public, in real time.

Pipeline, forecast, commit, deal slippage, quarterly targets. That pressure is constant (I can testify).

So when a customer asks a tough question like:

What makes you different?
Where’s the ROI?
How quickly can this be implemented?
Why are you more expensive than the competition?

Sales need an answer that works now. If the “official” marketing collaterals do not clearly articulate that answer, they will create one. And if it works, they share it among their peers. Creating silos of unbranded and off message collaterals. Sound familiar?

It’s not about branding. It’s about removing friction

Most marketing organisations assume Shadow Marketing is mainly a brand consistency problem. That risk is real. But it is not the emotional driver. The driver is simpler: Sales is trying to remove friction from the deal. Shadow Marketing usually appears when:

• The deck explains features, but not outcomes
• The messaging is broad, but the buyer’s problem is specific
• The proof points are thin, generic, or unconvincing
• The narrative sounds good internally, but doesn’t land externally
• The call to action is “book a demo” when the buyer isn’t convinced yet

So sales does what any rational team would do. They fix what is not working for them.

The sentence nobody says out loud

Here is the uncomfortable truth behind most Shadow Marketing: “Marketing is not helping me win deals.” Not because marketing is incompetent. Not because marketing is lazy. Not because marketing doesn’t care. But because marketing is operating too far from the coalface, where decisions are actually made. A marketing team can hit every internal KPI and still fail commercially.

This is the gap that exposes the symptom of Shadow Marketing.

What sales is really doing when they rewrite our assets

When sales rewrites our assets, they are usually trying to do one of three things:

1) Make it usable in real conversations: Shorter. Clearer. More direct. Less theory.

2) Make it specific to the buyer: Industry language, buying persona, relevant examples, credible proof.

3) Make it easier to win internal approval: Budget holders, risk owners, IT security, procurement, legal. The real buying committee, not the idealised one.

Sales isn’t “breaking the brand”. They’re trying to make the message land where it matters and move the deal forward. This is the part most teams miss. The opportunity hiding inside Shadow Marketing.

Inside every “sales rewrite” is a piece of commercial intelligence:

• Which message isn’t landing
• Which proof point is missing
• Which objection keeps showing up
• Which words trigger buyer scepticism
• Which narrative works when budget gets tight

Shadow Marketing is not just a symptom. It is feedback.

And it is often better feedback than you will get from any internal workshop.

The mistake most marketing teams make next

Here is what usually happens when marketing spots Shadow Marketing: They reach for more governance; Lock the deck – Force the template – Add approvals – Escalate non-compliance to management. It feels like the right move. It’s logical. It’s controllable.

But increased governance does not create relevance. It creates friction.

And it drives a wedge between sales and marketing. Pushing Shadow Marketing further underground.

A better question for marketing leaders

Instead of asking: “Why is sales changing our assets?”

Ask: “What are problem are they trying to fix?”

Because the goal is not to stop sales tailoring materials. The goal is to stop them from needing to and for marketing to become a better and more supportive partner.

In Part 3, I’ll outline practical ways to turn Shadow Marketing into commercially useful insight, and fix it at the source – for good.