Forget worshipping at the altar of revenue. Marketers who take a leaf out of Tom Kerridge’s book and embrace pricing power will find the surest route to profitability.
The boundaries between marketing teams’ responsibilities become clearer if you simply make long-term brand strategy a global job and short-term, targeted product activations a local one.
Facebook’s new virtual meeting software falls victim to one of marketing’s worst sins, product orientation, simply because Mark Zuckerberg needs to find a use for virtual reality to justify his investment in Oculus.
Reebok hasn’t reached the heights of the 1980s and 90s since Adidas bought it in 2006, and its sale means Adidas can focus on its ‘branded house’ while new owner ABG has the skills to bring Reebok into its ‘house of brands’.
Procter & Gamble doubled down on marketing when Covid hit, while Coca-Cola went dark. The former’s revenues surged, the latter’s dwindled, and Ehrenberg-Bass data now proves if you stop advertising you lose sales.
Black Widow’s release on Disney+ alongside cinemas hit the film’s box office revenues, but what Disney wants is proximity to the consumer and the insight that comes with it.
Right-minded marketers understand the need for long-term brand building investment, but most still question how they can convince those above them. Here’s how you do it.
The new ‘Not your mother’s Tiffany’ campaign has angered the brand’s older customers, but this is new owner LVMH’s tried and tested formula for refreshing tired fashion labels for new consumers.
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.
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.
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.
Netflix has reached a level of penetration it will struggle to improve, with most customers already paying premium prices, so converting those sharing passwords into paying subscribers is its biggest growth opportunity.
Is loyalty dead? How many positions is too many? And who the fuck is Byron? Our columnist presents a modern marketing love story.
Whenever a marketer sets out to improve, augment or adapt the four Ps, they reveal the absurdity of the exercise and reinforce why product, price, place and promotion remain the core concepts of the marketing mix.
Marketers always ask me for examples of my clients’ marketing plans. I can’t give you that, but I can tell you how to write a good one.
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.
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.
Mark Ritson called on the industry to help him compile a list of quotes from a diverse selection of marketers who better reflect the “powerful” and “brilliant” talent of today.
For all Amazon’s innovation and invention, it is the world’s most valuable brand principally because its founder Jeff Bezos got to know his customers.
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.
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.
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.
When brands struggle, marketers’ first thought is a rebrand or repositioning, but by going back to its roots you can boost sales and retain brand equity cost-effectively.
Even if John Lewis cocks up in its bid to rent homes to the masses, the blowback on its department store business will be limited – even non-existent – thanks to the magic of brand extension.
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.
Interbrand is a respected name in brand valuation, but its proposal to replace brand positioning with ‘iconic moves’ demonstrates a lack of strategic sense.
Brand strategy is not complicated, it’s just the systematic application of the basics all marketers are taught. Here’s a simple way to be sure you’re taking the right steps – in the right order.
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.
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.
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.
Critics might scorn the fit but consumers care little about corporate ownership, and acquiring the Debenhams brand at a knockdown price helps Boohoo target more profitable customers.
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.
There’s no influence like a customer’s, as AT&T found when nonagenarian Aaron Epstein placed an ad in the Wall Street Journal criticising its service.
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.