Brand purpose campaigns underperform ‘traditional’ marketing on average, but for the right brands purpose will still be the most effective strategic choice.
Courtesy of French politics, Kärcher is the latest brand to find out that becoming synonymous with your category is a double-edged sword.
Mr Big’s (spoiler alert) death after a Peloton ride in the latest Sex and the City spin-off had social media forecasting the brand’s doom, but it actually created greater mental availability for the brand – especially after Ryan Reynolds’ creative agency got involved.
Great diagnosis, smart insight, clever use of media and inventive execution, Sheba’s ‘4am Stories’ is a masterclass in simple but highly effective marketing.
Dorsey’s contention that founder-led businesses are overhyped doesn’t hold water. The right founder offers huge marketing advantage – that just wasn’t him.
Newly leaked documents suggest Amazon has begun a concerted push to become a grocery retailer on the British high street. Our columnist looks at why it will eventually triumph, and why this new move is a big part of the omnichannel revolution.
Christmas 2021 is shaping up to be an exercise in hyper-emotional brand bullshit, with Coca-Cola even choosing to edit itself out of its own campaign. But don’t worry, the holidays are still coming.
Our marketing columnist stayed up late in Tasmania and put his headset on for the Facebook Connect VR conference. But he came away unimpressed with the branding revelations that followed.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
As the Better Briefs Project will reveal this week, 90% of marketers fail to brief agencies effectively, and their failures begin with a total lack of strategy.
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.
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.
Visual cues are all very well but don’t forget the other four senses when developing brand codes as they can be just as powerful – if not more so – at creating stand out and appeal.
Those questioning the updates to Heinz’s slogan and the British Rail logo miss the salience the brands will gain – but there are rules for playing with brand codes effectively.
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.
Listening is a key attribute of high-performing marketers, alongside empathy, curiosity and an ability to make even the complex look simple, says Mark Ritson.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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’.
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?
Facebook repeatedly ranks low in consumer trust surveys, yet user growth continues, revealing the idea of trust in brands as anthropomorphic nonsense.
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.