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.
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.
Kraft Heinz is suffering from a number of self-inflicted wounds, from underinvestment in its brands to a failure to adapt its portfolio to modern tastes, leading to a parlous financial situation.
The number of direct-to-consumer brands is ballooning, as are predictions of the traditional FMCG sector’s demise, yet people underestimate the resilience and capability of the established giants.
Marketing leadership has failed to instill pride in the discipline, as a LinkedIn post by Unilever’s European president proves, leading to constant attempts to use purpose to apologise for or redefine it unnecessarily.
Richemont, owner of luxury watch brands such as Cartier, is boldly forfeiting hundreds of millions of pounds to keep stock out of the grey market, but it is a crucial step in preserving long-term brand equity.
Publishers, brands and agencies may fear the Facebook news feed changes will harm their businesses, but they are the right thing to do for users and the company’s long-term value.
As M&S sales fall again, its problems are not brand management but brand equity, and a mid-market positioning that is inevitably fatal in a tough consumer economy.
McDonald’s appointment of Omnicom to its advertising account is a significant first – both in terms of agency integration and the performance-based pay structure that incentivises achieving brand objectives above media buying rebates.
Your portable toilet business has nothing to learn from Steve Jobs, and if a consultant even mentions Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs you should kick them out of the door.
The huge debate that has exploded around Protein World’s “Beach Body” campaign has made it the big branding story of the year so far.