Analysis of all the key moments from the event, celebrating success, sharing best practice and offering actionable insight to help marketers thrive.
The Ogilvy vice-chairman argues brands’ focus on efficiency when implementing digital change is leading to “average” solutions, which don’t answer consumer needs.
Managing director of Marketing Week’s 2021 Brand of the Year, Paula MacKenzie outlines why strategic, undeniable and fame-generating ideas help KFC attain higher levels of creativity.
Marketers from three hard-hit sectors share the lessons they learnt during the pandemic.
Marketers from Asahi, Danone and Credit Suisse agree that overly long-term goals and talking rather than taking action can do more harm than good.
Boots’ CMO Pete Markey believes marketers must create a narrative around marketing to help demystify it to other functions, which helps finance “want to get it”, says CFO Michael Snape.
What do Sir John Hegarty, Jan Gooding and Reach’s Andrew Tenzer want to see eradicated from marketing?
Marketing director at mochi ice cream brand Ross Farquhar believes marketers need to be optimistic if they want to chase growth, as well as pragmatic enough to mitigate for every eventuality.
Brand extensions and DTC goals are distractions from real innovation and meaningful growth, argues Helen Edwards.
BT Sport head of marketing Ed Cracknell says strong creative work can still be produced on a budget, if marketers allow their agencies the time and freedom to create bold ideas.
A firm believer that creativity can be taught, Cleese also notes that the people in charge of companies seldom understand the process.
A decade long agency relationship built on trust and consistency convinced Ikea to run with its 2019 Christmas campaign ‘Silence the Critics’, despite the concept floundering in pre-production tests.
Addressing three core needs – autonomy, competence and relatedness – can help bring brands closer to their consumers, says psychologist Nathalie Nahai.
From a new recipe for pic n’ mix comms, to making extreme choices, Mark Ritson shares his marketing twists that can help SMEs get big brand outcomes.
The NHS had to act quickly last year after realising people with life threatening conditions such as heart attack and stroke were not going to hospital because of Covid, and marketing played a key role.
On The Beach took the bold decision to answer customers’ questions during lockdown, rather than sell holidays to them. The result was a 53% rise in customer engagement, which now puts the brand in a good position for the future.
To know and grow their audiences online, advertisers must look beyond the “walled gardens” and make use of emerging solutions that illuminate consumer behaviour across the open internet.
Adapting your business to ensure employees are engaged is just as important as responding to new consumer behaviours, if brands want to be seen as customer experience leaders after the pandemic.
The jewellery brand wants to appeal to a new generation by communicating its brand purpose of ‘brilliance’ through separate storytelling and marketing effectiveness teams.
At a Festival of Marketing virtual roundtable, marketers acknowledged direct-to-consumer sales could be a boon to brands as shopping behaviour shifts, but the offerings need to be relevant and add value for consumers.
At the Festival of Marketing, the audience heard how the long-form properties of podcasting drove Transport for London to make podcast sponsorship a vital part of the communications strategy for its ‘#TogetherAgainstHate’ campaign
For 75% of marketers, the pandemic has permanently shifted how they communicate and collaborate at work, according to the seventh edition of Salesforce’s ‘State of Marketing’ report. At the Festival of Marketing, senior marketers from Metro Bank and Just Eat shared how they are overcoming new challenges and realising new opportunities.
CFO Michael Snape and CMO Pete Markey agree strong relationships between marketing and finance are built on relentless communication, data and understanding how marketing fits into the broader agenda.
Main media advertising budgets saw the biggest boost over the third quarter of the year, as marketers report growing optimism about the prospects of their businesses.
Is personalisation still relevant, or even achievable, in a post-cookie world? Perhaps, if marketers are willing to lean in closer to consumers, suggests GSK’s Jerry Daykin.
With the right question, strategic investments, a range of methodologies and a “brilliant learning plan”, even those marketers with a small budget can produce effective and efficient research.
Marketers need to stop showing off and start knuckling down to help address sustainability targets, according to top marketers Danone, Asahi and Credit Suisse.
Mochi ice cream brand Little Moons may have taken its marketing strategy to the next level since it went viral on TikTok earlier this year, but that does not mean the business is “walking away from digital”.
Sir John Hegarty, Jan Gooding and Reach’s Andrew Tenzer have made their cases for the marketing buzzwords, theories and jargon that must be banished from marketing.
In addition to launching a Mastercard sound and taste, the brand has now unveiled a Mastercard smell, all of which is helping it to elevate the brand’s status, says Raja Rajamannar.
The contradictions between what consumers say they want and what they actually do represent an opportunity for marketers to help bridge the gap, says Dr Carol McNaughton Nicholls.
Warning that marketers are falling into the trap of “obsessing” over efficiency, Sutherland argues businesses should instead be looking towards digital as a tool for experimentation, now more than ever.
The context for consumer decisions is changing fast, but how we choose has evolved over millennia, so why are marketers obsessed with change?
Lorraine Heggessey, who has led transformation at high profile media brands including the BBC, says good leadership is built on communication, because there is “no point having the best strategy in the world if nobody knows what it is”.
Warning of a ‘cultural cringe’ and sense of insecurity within marketing, Professor Byron Sharp is calling on marketers to stop the self-hatred and have more pride in their profession.
Rather than allowing themselves to be pigeonholed as the ‘colouring-in department’, marketers should demonstrate what they deliver for the business, argues Nationwide CMO Sara Bennison.
As marketers continue to be charged with driving faster growth on tighter budgets, businesses should not ignore the opportunity cost of failing to invest in their brand, warns Eve Sleep CEO Cheryl Calverley.
From elevating marketing’s influence and how to do more with less, to the psychology of consumers and brand strategy excellence, there are many reasons to attend the Festival of Marketing: The Year Ahead next week.