Can a product marketing manager or a marketing director effectively?
The question is a bit complicated, let me parse it out a bit. First let me introduce Kauffmans Rule #43 - You can only effectively lead a team that values your contribution to it. Over and over in my career Ive seen managers parachuted down to lead, then fail because they only add burden and overhead to the group, they dont improve the team. A team leader has to make the group better in some manner, and in a way that the team feels better about themselves, and has some gratitude to the leader for that accomplishment. So, regardless of previous experience, anyone can lead a team if they help the team knowingly improve themselves. Now, I make a distinction between product design and product development. Product design includes the how the products looks, how it works, and how buyers use it, while product development is responsible for the technology to manifest that design in the real world. They sometimes have different cultures and values. From my experience, marketing folks dont often succeed in moving into the design and development team leadership roles unless they are looking to dive down into greater detail. A successful transition from marketing will bring some organization or design language skill that makes the design or development team understand their market and competitors better, improve their velocity of time to market, or increase their ability to surprise and delight customers.