Both marketing and leadership are subjects of high interest especially for private sector organizations, with countless research done regarding their influence on organizational performance. However, their meaning and use changes when put in a public context. Taking into consideration the last 3 decades of NPM reforms both marketing and leadership got a new meaning for public organizations. The present paper explores the theoretical relation between public leadership and marketing as a managerial tool. The second part of the paper concentrates on testing, through qualitative research, whether basic marketing elements are present and used in the management of local public administration in the North-Western Region of Romania. Results show that public marketing is not yet present significantly in the local public institutions that where part of the study.