Mark Choueke

Editor
Twitter: @markchoueke

Change is now normal. So what’s new?

Mark Choueke

Last year 63% of you underwent some level of restructure to your marketing team or department. More than half of you (53%) expect similar changes in the next 12 months. That means many of you are set to undergo your second period of restructuring in the space of two years. These figures are taken from […]

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Success in 2012 will be reserved for creative thinkers

Mark Choueke

I finally got around to reading Walter Isaacson’s brilliant Steve Jobs biography this Christmas, as did Mark Ritson it seems. After filing his latest column, Ritson later emailed me to emphasise the point relating to Jobs that he makes in the piece. In his email he wrote: “Jobs referred to himself continuously as a marketer. […]

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CIM is wrong to call for merger with sales

Mark Choueke

Sales and marketing departments have a bit of a difficult relationship. There’s some underlying tension there and that has always been the case. So what’s the answer? Well, merge the two, obviously. That’s the solution according to the latest report coming out of the CIM. The CIM’s Marketing and Sales Fusion report predicts an imminent […]

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Marketers facing up to demographic change

Mark Choueke

First, a couple of dates for your diary. Marketing Week’s last issue of the year is next week’s edition of the magazine, dated 15 December. We’ll be back in the New Year with an edition of Marketing Week on the 5 January. We have some great content ready to ease you through that miserable first […]

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You need to mind your language, TalkTalk

Mark Choueke

“We’re not planning on trying to con them with lots of extra marketing.” This rather unhelpful quote came from a surprising source last week in Dido Harding, chief executive of TalkTalk, who was referring to her customers. I say surprising because Harding is a former occupant of several heavyweight marketing and commercial roles at brands […]

We’re in the business of serving customer needs

Mark Choueke

It’s a brutal market out there, but there are still plenty of opportunities for those who are prepared to be positive and think differently. A couple of weeks ago we published a cover feature that drew a dotted line between customer experience and the organisation’s bottom line. Then last week’s Data Strategy section of Marketing […]

Customer

Customer experience: the new battleground

Mark Choueke

Read this week’s cover feature about how customer experience should be at the top of your priority list Customer experience is the next big battleground for businesses and brands to conquer. I’m convinced of it. It doesn’t matter if you get everything else right. If your customer experience is lousy, frustrating, over-complicated or full of […]

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An open letter to the Guardian’s George Monbiot

Mark Choueke

Dear George, With regard to your latest column in the Guardian (’Advertising is a poison that demeans even love blah blah blah’) I must pick you up on a few points. You’re an extremely intelligent journalist and I admire the way you bang the drum on a lot of serious issues. But suggesting that the […]

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Will Nokia speak the right language?

Mark Choueke

Nokia is changing its strategy to focus on young people. A brave move. A friend of mine, who teaches 11 to 18-year-olds at a north London comprehensive, has told me about the “different language” kids speak these days. It might sound like the pair of us were having the same sort of conversations that every […]

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Collaboration is future of marketing capability

Mark Choueke

I’m lucky. I get a daily view of marketing and business that few of you get to share. It’s the vantage point of the editor. The ’global’ view of best and worst practice, across every sector, discipline and market. As you focus each day on succeeding at the task in hand that will add value […]

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Costa’s story has killer insight for every brand

Mark Choueke

Customer service is something of a theme in this issue. There’s a dedicated feature and there are masses of tips in our retail peer panel for anyone looking to give their customers a bit of extra value. But I want to talk coffee. I’m a regular in a branch of Costa near Oxford Circus. I […]

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Customer experience will keep the BA brand flying high

Mark Choueke

You can imagine that when British Airways was able to tell us that it was ’the world’s favourite airline’, the strapline worked as powerfully internally as it did externally. Certainly, the sense of triumph that emanated from the line when it worked alongside the Lakme Flower Duet in those famous ads of a previous era […]

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HMV must move fast if brand is to survive

Mark Choueke

At the beginning of the summer I was invited to meet with HMV chief executive Simon Fox. The opportunity arose because even throughout a torrid year that contained four profit warnings, I’ve been broadly supportive of the strategy Fox announced in July 2010 to transform HMV into an entertainment superbrand. The plan was to shift […]

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Let pitch guide you out of creative dead-ends

Mark Choueke

There needs to be a grown-up conversation about creativity. A gap has opened up between the perceived value of creative work and its genuine market value. That gap means many marketers out there aren’t getting the best value out of their agencies. The same goes for other agency disciplines such as planning: vital when executed […]