Mark Ritson: Heineken should remember marketing is about profit, not purpose
Mark RitsonHeineken’s new purpose-driven ad might express all the right values, but marketers must remember if you don’t use your budget to create sales, you’ve failed.
Mark Ritson – Brand Strategy
Mark Ritson: The marketing stories that mattered this year
Mark RitsonHere’s my highly scientific countdown of the top 10 things you should have been paying attention to this year, and what they mean for 2017.
Mark Ritson: Tesco’s ‘fake farms’ are a real headache for its own-label strategy
Mark RitsonThe National Farmers Union has asked Trading Standards to investigate Tesco over brands named after fictional farms, on the grounds that consumers believe they are exclusively UK-sourced. An adverse ruling would hurt its ability to compete with Aldi’s private label brands.
Mark Ritson: If Brexit were a soap brand, life would be simpler
Mark RitsonIf Brexit were a brand – I mean a real brand, one you buy in a supermarket to wash your undies with – things would have been a lot simpler last week.
Mark Ritson: Burberry’s tumbling profits show Christopher Bailey is overstretched
Mark RitsonThe luxury brand’s struggles raise questions over the wisdom of bringing creative direction and business strategy under one role.
Mark Ritson: From branded house to house of brands, RBS’ strategy is both ambitious and radical
Mark RitsonFollowing a rebrand in Scotland, a new brand and repositioning in England, and a revitalisation in Ireland, can RBS successfully transition from a branded house to a house of brands?
Mark Ritson: Coke is smart to simplify its designs, but that won’t save it from decline
Mark RitsonDespite being ridiculed, Coca-Cola has made the right branding move by using its red circle logo as a visual code on the cans of all its product variants, but with fizzy drinks declining it’s no more than delaying the inevitable.
Mark Ritson: Haymarket Media Group has forgotten that marketing comes before advertising
Mark RitsonBy consolidating its magazine titles under the Campaign brand instead of Marketing, publisher Haymarket has neglected 85 years of heritage and put the ad agency world ahead of the wider marketing discipline.
Mark Ritson: Apple Music’s success will owe nothing to product and everything to its brand
Mark RitsonTake away the slick launch event, and Apple’s latest innovation is a me-too product years behind its rivals. However, its sure-fire success is a far better exemplar of the power of branding than genuine product innovations such as the Apple Mac or the iPhone.
Mark Ritson: Banks and tech brands are fighting for digital dominance – I know who my money is on
Mark RitsonYou can miss the big moments in marketing. They usually don’t come with a fanfare or neon lighting and often they can be so underwhelming that it’s only much later you grasp their enormous significance.
Mark Ritson: Zuckerberg’s vision of a new social marketing revolution failed to materialise
Mark RitsonIn 2007, a young Mark Zuckerberg nervously addressed a room filled with analysts to predict the future. “The next 100 years are going to be different for advertisers starting today,” he announced. “For the last 100 years media has been pushed out to people, but now marketers are going to be a part of the conversation.”
Mark Ritson: Coke Life is the harbinger of death for Coca-Cola
Mark RitsonI can’t believe I’m saying this but Coca-Cola’s new product, Coke Life, which launched last week, looks like a dud.
Mark Ritson: A series of inconvenient branding truths
Mark RitsonThere is a stand-out fact in this year’s top 100 list of the most valuable global brands by BrandZ. It seems that the brands most likely to grow in future are those that embrace diversity in their executive leadership teams.
Mark Ritson: Facebook’s $104bn bubble is set to burst
Mark RitsonFacebook’s debut on the Nasdaq on Friday meant that the largely positive and optimistic vision held by marketers has been supplemented with an entirely different, and I would argue more critical, perspective from the international investment community. The $104bn question is whether the brand is worth anywhere near that. In terms of the oldest media […]
Mark Ritson: The Sun on Sunday’s launch has been fumbled
Mark RitsonIt was vintage Rupert Murdoch. In the depths of the biggest crisis ever to hit his publishing empire, he took the opportunity to announce one of the most audacious gambles of his career. The Sun on Sunday will launch this weekend.