When a brand name travels too far
Ruth MortimerRuth Mortimer is Marketing Week’s associate editor and a prolific blogger. She won a PPA Award for her forthright and insightful columns on marketing.
Brand Reversions – Can you get them all?
Ruth MortimerRuth Mortimer is Marketing Week’s associate editor and a prolific blogger. She won a PPA Award for her forthright and insightful columns on marketing.
Kids’ marketing is more complex than absolutes
Ruth MortimerRuth Mortimer is Marketing Week’s associate editor and a prolific blogger. She won a PPA Award for her forthright and insightful columns on marketing.
Corporate responsibility or corporate confusion?
Ruth MortimerRuth Mortimer is Marketing Week’s associate editor and a prolific blogger. She won a PPA Award for her forthright and insightful columns on marketing.
Silliness sells
Ruth MortimerRuth Mortimer is Marketing Week’s associate editor and a prolific blogger. She won a PPA Award for her forthright and insightful columns on marketing.
Tesco buys consumer favour with smartphone app
Ruth MortimerRuth Mortimer is Marketing Week’s associate editor and a prolific blogger. She won a PPA Award for her forthright and insightful columns on marketing.
Eat this, Volkswagen
Ruth MortimerRuth Mortimer is Marketing Week’s associate editor and a prolific blogger. She won a PPA Award for her forthright and insightful columns on marketing.
The best medicine for a sick baby and child chain is retail therapy
Ruth MortimerA failure to follow the basic rules of brand marketing best spells out what’s going wrong at troubled Mothercare. Never extend a flawed brand is one of the basic rules of marketing. But baby-and-child retailer Mothercare obviously hasn’t been reading its textbooks. It announced last week that it is planning to shut a third of […]
Could mydata be the answer to personal information problems?
Ruth MortimerA government initiative to make available to the public all the customer data held by companies sounds good in theory. This week, the NHS contacted me by email to offer me help quitting smoking, even though I’ve never started. And not so long ago, a clothing catalogue dropped through my door offering me more great […]
Brands must believe the f-commerce hype
Ruth MortimerThe opportunity Facebook commerce offers brands is currently worth many billions of pounds and it is likely to grow in value. We live in an instant gratification society. Everything has to be now, now, now. When we search for something we need instant results; when we talk to someone we want a response straight away; […]
Multiple-choice marketing ticks all the right boxes
Ruth MortimerThe new trend in choose-your-own-adventure marketing is allowing brands to make consumers feel more empowered. One of the most popular cultural phenomena of the Eighties is making a comeback and inspiring a whole new generation of brands, from pop bands to car companies. Choose-your-own-adventure kids’ storybooks are back, but this time the multiple-choice storytelling technique […]
Groupon, the billionaire baby, learns to get picky
Ruth MortimerThe two-year-old group coupon website that turned down a £4bn bid from Google has five winning marketing tricks. Where did you buy your Christmas gifts? For some of my friends, the retailer of choice was the website Groupon. The site offers daily discount deals by email – “£299 tooth whitening for £79” – that proved […]
WeightWatchers has no plans to slim down
Ruth MortimerReplacing calorie-counting with a ProPoints allowance is nothing less than a marketing coup – and nothing more either. Some things in life have a monotonous predictability – policemen get younger, hair gets thinner and calories get counted. But this last cliché may be about to change. WeightWatchers, the world’s most famous slimming brand, announced this […]
The science bit takes art of rave review to expert level
Ruth MortimerA new style of TV ad that combines modern social media with old-fashioned sales pitches has made its way onto British screens. Ruth Mortimer, associate editor of Marketing Week, explains more. America has exported many things to the world. The hamburger, fizzy pop and squeezy cheese to name a few dubious gifts to modern culture. […]
Apple’s stab at social media is little more than a sales tool
Ruth MortimerApple’s Ping is apparently the latest, greatest entrant to the social media sphere. It’s not just any old service, says Apple chief executive Steve Jobs, but a “social network all about music”. “It’s Facebook meets Twitter meets iTunes,” enthused Jobs at Ping’s launch last week. Well, excuse me, Mr Jobs. Apple may be a fantastically […]