When Babs Rangaiah, Unilever’s vice-president of global communications planning, takes to the stage at The Annual, Marketing Week’s flagship London conference on 29 September, I’ll be in the front row hanging on his every word. For I suspect his presentation, entitled The Consumer Manifesto, is going to provide a lot of answers to some very […]
There’s a campaign being built here at Marketing Week. And it involves you. Last week I wrote an extended website version of this column on the subject of leadership in marketing, when I spoke about our joint responsibility to make ourselves and our function as valuable to our businesses as we can. More than 3,000 […]
Marketing Week’s flagship conference will see star names reveal top secrets.
With Tony Hayward now having been officially relieved of his duties as chief executive of BP, the crisis management plan and communications strategy at all our own businesses should be brought under some serious scrutiny. It is no accident that Aviva CMO Amanda Mackenzie has responsibility for PR, public affairs and internal communications incorporated into […]
Starbucks believes that social media is central to building the future of its business, but this was far from the case when Alexandra Wheeler became its director of digital strategy four years ago. Mark Choueke discovers how the brand now uses web-based channels to engage with customers and employees MW: Starbucks has overtaken Coca-Cola as […]
Depending on what type of person you are, the challenge of being a marketer in a digital world is either keeping you awake with sheer excitement at the potential for engaging your brand’s customers, or keeping you awake with confusion and despair. Whichever of the two situations you find yourself in during the small hours, […]
BP’s disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is still unfolding. Even now as I write, 56 days after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig in April, there is still a sense that we are at the very beginning of the story.
If proof were required that children are incredibly aware of how brands affect their lives, then here it is: “If I had £1,000, I’d spend it on a 42-inch Panasonic TV because Panasonic is best for Wii.” That quote came from a six-year-old when Marketing Week commissioned Discovery to carry out research for this special ’marketing to children’ issue of the magazine.
Diageo chief marketing officer Andy Fennell says the marketing discipline undersells itself when it promotes the discipline as merely the provider of “creative services”.
It seems that insurer Prudential, recently in the headlines for proposing one of the largest and most audacious deals ever by a British company, is about to hit the skids. Though nothing will be made formal until a shareholder vote next Monday, it appears that Prudential’s proposed $35.5bn (£24.6bn) takeover of AIA, the Asian insurance arm of its rival AIG, is dead.
With marketing held responsible for company growth at Diageo, CMO Andy Fennell relies on a strong sense of what will succeed – and a team of 950 marketers – to make the most of an annual budget worth almost £2bn.
A friend of mine who came over for dinner last weekend told me that he had just emailed a message of support to British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh. The email, which read “Keep on fighting and don’t give an inch”, will have landed in Walsh’s inbox the day before the first of these five-day […]
Data has the power to add incredible value to a brand’s offerings, but only if marketing departments meet the challenge of making maximum use of it.
“Countries are not brands. They are countries.” So said our columnist Mark Ritson, in a recent examination of the concept of nation branding exercises. Many of you who weighed into the online debate sparked by that particular column took Mark’s side.
Everything Everywhere is not a good name for a new company. It is childish, cumbersome, vacuous and hollow. Don’t get me wrong, it would make a pretty good strapline and an unbeatable (by definition) business proposition. It just seems to me a bit of a naff choice of company name.