Your marketing department isn't a group of offices or the people in them, it's the front door, the back door and everything in between.
Rhoda's Tamales is a hole in the wall roadside joint in Lake Village, Arkansas that has some of the best tamales in the business...no joke, yes in Arkansas. They don't have a marketing director, a PR firm, or even a website. Heck, I'm not sure they have a telephone. But, they're famous. Why? You don't expect to find a great tamale in the middle of the Mississippi delta, in a roadside shack that looks like this...
Stories sell, what's going on in your lobby sells...not so much marketing departments. The Google results.