What's a good way to approach decisions that UX/design feels they should own vs. Marketing feels they should own?

PMM is a highly collaborative role and I've found that if you define a DACI model: Driver, Approver, Contributors, and Informed, you can help remove some of that ambiguity upfront. A single approver (likely the CMO in this case) can broker any debates in order to make timely decisions. Then if someone in Marketing (be it PMM or Creative) is the single driver of brand, when UX/design is clearly identified as a contributor, they not only have a voice in the decision, but are executors of the brand strategy as well. That sense of shared ownership in the process goes a long way to fostering a strong working relationship with the UX/design team.

At Heap we also have this great value, which is to always assume positive intent. Applying that mindset to this type of collaboration is extremely productive to encourage open dialog and uncover issues and requirements the others may not have thought of!

Also be mindful that we are all on a career journey. We should leverage the rich experiences everyone brings to the table. In fact, none of us in PMM went to "PMM school", or grew up dreaming of being a product marketer. We came from other functions like PM, presales, or corporate marketing. You can assume the same of the UX/design team. Be open to leveraging the skills and expertise everyone on the team brings to the table. 

I have a great example from when I was at IBM and launching Watson Analytics. I was responsible for our launch event and needed video content to play as our customers, press, analysts and social influencers were taking their seats. I could have just played some generic customer case study videos, but when I found out a member of the Creative team went to film school, we leveraged that skill and collaborated on a Hollywood-style movie trailer instead. Two thumbs up!

It starts by establishing a common ground. This means talking to UX Design Leaders and Marketing leaders and understand how each defines their Role and Responsibilities. Then compare the two and look for areas of overlap or ambiguity that can lead to potential conflict.

Present those areas to the leaders and either discuss steps to clarify it or come prepared with a proposal and let them chime in. The goal is to co-develop a R&R matrix that uses a RACI or RAPID model to clarify what each team owns vs supports or informs. If you’re unclear on what to propose, you can start by looking at industry definitions of the role of UX Design and Marketing. Some companies may determine that Marketing (e.g., Brand) determines the color palette, fonts, illustration, and photography style and owns customer insights and research while UX Design owns the development of the visual design system (buttons, tokens, accessibility) based on those brand guidelines and focusing on customer experience and owning UX research and insights. Please note that companies may still decide to frame core responsibilities differently, in this case, try to empathize and understand why that is and come to a common ground where both teams feel they can influence and deliver on their stakeholder’s expectations.

Always comes down to, whats right for the customer. And what does each team uniquely bring to the table to drive the best customer outcome. UX can bring a unique lens of what end users what, vs marketing can bring the viewpoint of sales and buyers. Together, it can lead to products that easy to sell, easy to buy and easy to use, which is the holy grail. Also, if there is a lot of politics in your org, then best to explicitly call out stakeholders, create recurring forums, get buy in from folks beforehand and give everyone enough time to say their peace before making decisions.