Marketers should worry less about their carefully crafted brand image and take more risks because, as brands such as Porsche, Volvo and Ben & Jerry’s show, consumers don’t care about what they stand for.
You’re a talented, out-of-work marketer but every job ad seems to buy into the worst digital claptrap, so what do you do? Pretend you do too.
Amazon now tops the global ad spend charts, despite founder Jeff Bezos’s original scepticism towards advertising – not surprising, since it’s crucial for defending market share.
BT marketing director David Stratton says Plusnet has ‘done a Mark Ritson’ by simplifying its brand codes to differentiate from sister brands EE and BT – a no-nonsense approach our columnist is proud to associate with his name.
With movie studios determined to shift film releases to their own streaming platforms, the blockbuster’s December launch will show if cinema remains a viable distribution channel.
Mondelēz’s promise to “stop marketing and start humaning” is a new entry into the all-time marketing bullshit top 10, an exclusive list only the most delusional, out-of-touch and supremely earnest can hope to make.
Brand naming is always a difficult job, even more so for pharmaceutical drugs, but marketers should remember to put the naming carriage behind the positioning horse.
Google might have an 80% share of the search market, but as the investigation by the US Department of Justice will no doubt show there are now many more ways people find information online.
Marketing theory is a constant battle between opposing viewpoints, but an open mind and accurate data set will show you usually need to adopt both perspectives.
Marketers must heed the great Northwestern University professor’s principles of integrated marketing communications, or risk the loss of effectiveness that comes with focusing on individual channels.
It may seem like a paradox, but recessionary periods actually provide fertile grounds for marketers to grow their brand’s market share if they’re prepared to think long-term.
Marketers should follow Santa’s example this Christmas. He needs elves and reindeer to deliver all his presents in time, not just one or the other.
Although its strapline, ‘Don’t Make Ads, Make TikToks’, touts it as revolutionary, TikTok will soon reveal itself to be another ‘traditional’ ad business, as its own media strategy makes clear.
The government’s message on controlling coronavirus while leaving lockdown is fatally unclear, and only expert intervention can avoid a disastrous failure.
There’s probably no reason to ditch your old creative because of coronavirus, but if you do, your new ad needs to be distinctive and avoid the bland clichés brands are currently churning out.
Direct Line has replaced one of the most effective brand campaigns of recent years with a new approach that promises similar success, all thanks to the team’s understanding of distinctive brand assets.
Going online not only cuts costs, but also lowers competitive barriers and removes physical distance from the purchase decision, playing to the strengths of the biggest, strongest brands.
Marketers should be as wary of those predicting the marketing world is about to change forever as they are of people who thought Oreo’s Superbowl tweet was the future of marketing strategy.
Trolls World Tour’s successful digital launch will tempt all movie studios to do the same, but that would destroy the model that premiumises their product.
The latest annual CMO Survey shows marketing is losing many of its strategic jobs to other functions – a situation that will only worsen unless marketers place more value on formal training.
As the NBA faces calls to update its logo with Kobe Bryant’s image, more marketers should consider being playful with their brand imagery rather than acting as the brand police.
Salience is a much bigger challenge than differentiation, and codes are the way to achieve it – but using them creatively first requires decades of consistency.
By adopting Liverpool FC’s red colour to celebrate its long association with the club, Carlsberg continues to play with its distinctive assets in a way that revitalises the brand.
Mastercard dropping its name from its logo demonstrates branding strength most companies lack – and it’s all down to the sustained and consistent use of highly distinctive assets.
Brands can’t expect customers to behave generously, or even reasonably, to save them from the Covid crisis. They must accept their situation with humility and find new ways to offer value to their markets.
Tesla’s founder has successfully built a brand by shunning ads – but they convince the mass market to pay a premium, and would deliver the profit margin boost the company sorely needs.
Brands that profess to support racial justice on social media without a single black board member aren’t helping the cause, they’re just being hypocrites.
Predictions of fundamental change after Covid-19 are driven by the biased perspectives of those making them – in reality, most things will go back to how they were.
Ofcom’s latest data yet again shows why TV should be at the top of most big brands’ media plans, yet some marketers insist on ignoring the facts. Here are the answers to their most common quibbles.
Focus groups are a bone of contention, as a Twitter debate featuring Professor Byron Sharp this week showed, but while they are flawed, they are still a quick and cheap route to useful insights.
A new report confirms media agency staff are nothing like the consumers they serve, but the bigger question is whether they and marketers are market-orientated enough to know this and let customer insight guide them.
Superbrands’ bogus methodology regularly turns up inexplicable and nonsensical ‘findings’. Here are my top 10 aberrations from this year’s Superbrands Consumer Top 20 ranking.
Interbrand is a respected name in brand valuation, but its proposal to replace brand positioning with ‘iconic moves’ demonstrates a lack of strategic sense.
Sit back, grab the popcorn and enjoy what will surely prove to be the most competitive commercial contest in marketing history.
By unveiling that 007 will be a black woman in the next James Bond movie, the producers of the franchise have learned a lesson all brands should take heed of – brands that want to stay relevant and true to their identity must continue to evolve.
Carlsberg has turned its famous strapline on its head to admit it is ‘Probably not the best beer in the world’, a move that recalls its heritage while achieving a much needed repositioning.
Share of voice is a key metric for setting budgets and predicting growth, but digital media make it impossible to calculate accurately. Understanding your share of search queries is a simple and elegant alternative.
Forget ‘U’s and ‘V’s, this recession will be F-shaped, and Tesco knows from the financial crash that all most brands and retailers can do is minimise their losses.
Masquerading as a tech firm has done no favours for WeWork, neither have its premature brand extensions and over-inflated view of its own self-importance.
The Guardian is a fine newspaper and should be proud to reverse its losses, but by giving its product away for free it is preventing the news industry profiting from quality journalism.
Brands from Marmite to Peloton have shown negative publicity is beneficial if it doesn’t undermine your core image, which is why Corona will be fine but Burger King is heading for trouble.
As the Marketing Week Mini MBA enters its fourth year, its professor, Mark Ritson, explains the origins of the course and why it is expanding into a new subject area.
Zero-based budgeting hurts long-term brand-building, while advertising-to-sales ratios are entirely arbitrary. There’s a much better, ‘two-speed’ way to set marketing budgets.
Steve Jobs built Apple’s brand on simple design and a sparing product line-up, but now its portfolio is a mess of wires and product variants that make Microsoft look like the cooler brand.
Adam&eveDDB deserves recognition for its outstanding creative work but with its creative nous it should know it’s time to drop the adam&eve name for the good of the wider DDB brand.
Can veteran marketer Miguel Patricio use his expert eye to turn a dusty and confused portfolio around or has he got himself into a giant box of shit?
No company before Facebook has had so many users while being so disliked, but the risk of moving Instagram to the same platform is one Mark Zuckerberg seems willing to take to keep control and integrate the brands’ data.
The merger of Wunderman and JWT into Wunderman Thompson shows the key challenge of consolidating agencies: while necessary, it’s complicated by their commoditisation and lack of differentiation.
Restricting US sales will only strengthen the neo-fascists’ bond with the shirts they use as a uniform. The brand needs a big ad campaign to show it stands for the opposite ideology.
As The Guardian stops taking fossil fuel ads, marketers should take a similar stand and end big oil brands’ strategy of distracting the world from the harm they are doing.
Not all publicity is good publicity, but as long as you don’t undermine your proposition or entirely alienate your market, the salience gained from a bad news story often outweighs any damage to brand image.
Apple has messed up by adopting a biased algorithm that disadvantages women applying for its credit card, but the chances of it harming the core technology business are slim.