Author: Ruth Mortimer

At last, marketers realise they can be the perfect chief executive

Ruth Mortimer

Chief executives, watch out. Marketers are coming for your jobs. That’s the news from Forrester’s report The Evolved CMO in 2014, out this week.

Opinion

Uncertainty around e-cigarette marketing needs to be vapourised

Ruth Mortimer

British American Tobacco returned to British TV screens for the first time in 20 years this week, with ads for its e-cigarette brand Vype. The company says it is spending a multi-million pound figure on the campaign, hoping to reach more than 70 per cent of adult smokers.

Opinion

Three reasons Buzzfeed is changing everything we do

Ruth Mortimer

Why should you care that entertainment website Buzzfeed announced this week that it is expanding its UK commercial team? Because the real impact of the media brand and content model is far greater than its amusing stories. So here’s my take on it.

Opinion

Sochi – the gayest Olympics ever?

Ruth Mortimer

Every Olympics has a theme. London 2012 was about the host city’s huge and diverse population: the world in one city. Sochi 2014, however, has inadvertently found itself representing lack of diversity.

Opinion

Stop thinking like a marketer and let the value exchange guide you

Ruth Mortimer

Millennials “expect brands to live in the same world they live in, speak the same language about the same issues they care about, be humorous, or strike an emotional chord,” according to the Harvard Business Review. And it’s not just millennials – consumers aged between 18 and 34 – who feel that way. There is an increasing demand from all consumers for a genuine ‘value exchange’ between themselves and brands.

Opinion

How you judge the hype cycle can make or break your brands

Ruth Mortimer

When should marketers take advantage of the hype about a new technology? Move too early and you’re the proud owner of a warehouse full of internet-enabled shoes while consumers are worried about leather soles. Move too slow and you may end up selling standard shoes when the rest of the world is using their footwear as a wireless hotspot.

Opinion

Realise the enormous untapped potential in our small businesses

Ruth Mortimer

Small is beautiful. And it can be lucrative too. Especially if you’re a small or medium-sized business, according to new research from the Advertising Association. For every £1 that an SME spends on advertising, the resulting growth in turnover is approximately eight times as great as it is for larger firms.

Opinion

From obesity to that ‘quenelle’ salute, marketers must be the moral compass

Ruth Mortimer

One in three adults is overweight or obese, according to a report from the Overseas Development Institute this month. That figure has quadrupled since 1980. The report’s more specific obesity data makes pretty miserable reading too. Sixty-four per cent of adults in the UK are overweight or obese, just behind the US at 70 per cent.

Opinion Uncategorized

Knowing what you’re worth, getting what you’re worth starts right here

Ruth Mortimer

What is a marketing director worth? In 2014, the answer is £86,165, a whopping 14.4 per cent rise from last year. Marketers may be anxious that they are undervalued by the board but this pay rise suggests otherwise. The good news holds true for the rest of the department too – the average marketing salary overall has climbed £2,500 to £45,021 in the past 12 months.

Opinion

The 14 pieces of intelligence a marketer must know for 2014

Ruth Mortimer

It’s 2014, so in the modern tradition of listing key trends for the year ahead, here are 14 things you need to know.

Opinion

We aim to be the most useful resource on marketing for you and your career

Ruth Mortimer

This year was called ‘Empty 13’: no Olympics, no World Cup, no general elections, no… well, anything. It was hailed as a year to forget before it had even begun. But 2013 has not been empty. This was the year in which we discovered that spending £1 on advertising adds £6 to the economy and in which content marketing exploded, with claims that 20 per cent of every pound in marketing is spent on content.

Opinion

Mentor a digital start-up and boost your change management

Ruth Mortimer

The opportunity for brands to engage with start-ups is significant. Yet I am still struck by how big a gulf there is between the growing start-up and the general marketing communities. I wrote in Marketing Week earlier in the year about the opportunities for large companies to engage with these smaller, innovative businesses yet – with a few exceptions – little progress seems to have been made.

Opinion

Reinvention, not cost cutting, should be the stimulus for reorganisation

Ruth Mortimer

It takes an accomplished marketer to argue that a 12 per cent reduction in headcount in the marketing department is a positive step. So congratulations to Unilever’s global marketing chief Keith Weed, who presented his brand’s marketing vision for the future this week, promising to create such a streamlined, effective marketing machine that an estimated 840 people will no longer be necessary.