Most marketers have one.

Often unconsciously, we use these marketing heroes to help us make decisions. We model our decisions after the ones we think they would make. What would Richard Branson do? What would David Ogilvy do? What would my dad do?

Because marketing is as much art as science, we have to acknowledge that there are no right answers, and that there are very different approaches to a problem.

There are two big opportunities for problems. The first is alignment. When you and your boss or your colleagues have different heroes, communication and implementation is a mess. And second is picking the wrong hero for the wrong project. You can do everything right and fail because you’re busy being Lester Wunderman but marketing perfume.