Tina Desai

Mark Ritson

‘Brazillians are rallying the ad slogan for their fight’

Tina Desai

Consumer culture. It’s one of the most used and yet least understood concepts in the modern lexicon. It’s a phrase usually wheeled out when society is deemed to be spending too much or to describe the proliferation of brands on the high street. But the concept of consumer culture and its implications for society are far more complex and important than that.

Nicole-Vollebregt-Adidas-2013-460

Adidas: aiming to score in Brazil

Tina Desai

With the World Cup just a year away, sponsor Adidas is gearing up its marketing but faces tough competition from Brazilian team partner Nike. Senior vice-president of global marketing Nicole Vollebregt explains how her brand aims to win.

Online and over 50

Tina Desai

Your Digital Strategy article ‘Perfect Experience’ by Steve Hemsley said that the online user experience is now one of the top priorities for marketers (Marketing Week 16 May).

Avoid fake followers

Tina Desai

Mark Ritson’s article ‘Pay up and embrace Twitter’s fake followers’ confirms my fears about how social media is pitched. It would be a shame if it were besmirched by those motivated by greed and who have a master’s degree in jargon.

Social Media

Reality finally bites for social media

Tina Desai

More trouble in social media land. Insiders at consumer goods giant Unilever recently confessed that some of their brand teams were questioning whether increased investments in social media were proving their worth.

Year of the tablet is still a long way off

Tina Desai

There’s no denying that tablet advertising offers unique opportunities for innovation as well as providing a stronger platform for conversion when executed correctly. However, we’re a long way from seeing the ‘year of the tablet’ from an advertising ROI perspective. In reality, there are challenges that make investment more difficult: limited ‘proof’ of the reach […]

Could EU stop EE and O2 in their tracks?…

Tina Desai

Perhaps it’s surprising that EE and O2 have only recently announced new ‘big data’ insight services as a way to monetise their mobile network data. Having seen a presentation from one of them at a conference last year, illustrating the potential power that lies within its data, I know that the service will be of […]

Mark Ritson

Beware the loyalty prophets of doom

Tina Desai

Everybody knows about brand loyalty. It’s one of the first concepts taught to marketing undergraduates. In a decent MBA programme a couple of weeks are spent exploring all the strategic attractions of building loyalty for a brand: price insensitivity, repeat purchase, advocacy. No wonder, then, that most brand managers spend a lot of their lives talking about, understanding and then protecting that magical little army of consumers considered to be loyalists.