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Mark Ritson: The era of price promotions is over
One of the biggest and strangest reversals in recent marketing history is taking place, unnoticed by most, in the supermarket aisles of the UK. In these fantastical days of Trump, Brexit and ad fraud,...
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Mark Ritson: I long for the death of marketing clichés
Before Will Smith got hold of it and turned it into total pants, I Am Legend was a remarkably disturbing novella from science fiction author Richard Matheson. In the book Matheson’s hero Robert...
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Mark Ritson: Why can’t marketers see that digital metrics are bullshit?
Last Thursday I found myself addressing about a thousand marketers. I was one of four speakers debating the motion ‘Digital Metrics are Bullshit’ at Australia’s biggest marketing conference...
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Mark Ritson: Putting the C in KFC is an advertising error
Nothing is ever completely straightforward with advertising but the latest turn of events at KFC is odd even by ad land’s standards. The story so far… After 15 years with Bartle Bogle Hegarty, KFC...
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Mark Ritson: Yoga pants fury shows one brand doesn’t fit all
Wilson was quizzed about Lululemon’s recent quality issues with its best-selling yoga pants. Wilson admitted to design flaws but also pointed to a consumer issue too: “Quite frankly, some women’s...
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Mark Ritson: Aldi and Waitrose have strategic thinking in common
If you have been following recent events in Marketing Week it should have become clear that one of these supermarkets has a winning strategy and one, very clearly, does not. Before we get into winners...
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Mark Ritson: Are you a smart or a SOOMA budget setter?
Let me review both options for you because, as we enter June, those of you who do it smartly and work to a January-to-December planning year are literally starting the process as we speak. If you set...
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Mark Ritson: “Expect a bloodbath in the grocery aisles as the big four start...
Tesco’s half-year profits have dropped from more than £1bn to just over £100m. Sainsbury’s lost nearly £300m over the same period. Morrisons and Asda have fared less badly but both saw sales decline...
View ArticleMark Ritson: Why oh why do CMOs attend the hypocritical, ego-fuelled, waste...
Last week, we got one answer to the question. It appears that many of them get into private jets and head to an Alpine mountain to prance about in snow shoes. I am referring, of course, to that...
View ArticleMark Ritson: Google Glass’s marketing was perfection but its design made you...
Despite all the hullaballoo, the boldest and most famous example of wearable technology is currently floating, face first, in the ocean somewhere off California. In mid-January, we learned that Google...
View ArticleMark Ritson: Before falling over backwards to use virtual reality, get the...
Your humble columnist was unconvinced. Attaching what appears to be a large tablet connected to a diver’s mask to your face appears to be a bit of a stretch when it comes to persuading consumers to do...
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Mark Ritson: Despite the hype, smartwatches are unlikely to sway those in...
In the first camp are the steadfast ignorers led by the likes of Patek Philippe and Breguet. These brands, very much in the conservative corner of the luxury watch industry, see smartwatches as...
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Mark Ritson: 7 essential lessons all new marketers need to know
Eventually I saw the light and found myself in a room filled with bright, smiling junior marketers. I had an hour to instil in them the kind of fear and loathing that had taken me a lifetime to...
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Mark Ritson: Marketers have forgotten the meaning of marketing’s most basic...
Irrespective of the exact date, it’s clear that marketing is now more than a century old. Age confers many advantages – not least acceptance. Thirty years on, I can still remember the look on my...
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Mark Ritson: Millennials are out; blah blahs are your next target group
Twitter might be struggling at present as a corporate entity, but it still occasionally provides outstanding moments of quality social media. And by that I do not mean return on investment or...
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Mark Ritson: Leicester City’s winning strategy should be a template for all...
When the Premier League season began in August Leicester City were favourites for only one thing – relegation. They had only just survived the drop during the previous season and their manager had...
View ArticleMark Ritson: If you think the sales funnel is dead, you’ve mistaken tactics...
Advertising Age published a fantastically unhelpful article last week. In it, the chief marketing officer at Publishers Clearing House, Jason John, recounts his recent purchase of a coffee maker. John...
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Mark Ritson: Ditching targeting for mass marketing is going back to the dark...
Bruce McColl, the Global CMO for Mars, was in no mood for prevarication last month at the Advertising Research Foundation’s annual ReThink conference in New York City. “I’m not a great believer in...
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Mark Ritson: Tactics without strategy is dumbing down our discipline
There is no easy way to start this week’s column without sounding like a wanker, but I am genuinely worried about the state of our discipline. We’ve never been regarded as the most strategic part of...
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Mark Ritson: The Leave campaign is winning the all-important emotional...
By now you almost certainly know what is at stake. If British voters opt to stay in the European Union next Thursday we lose the last vestiges of sovereignty, immigration will run amok and rule of law...
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Mark Ritson: Maybe it’s just me, but shouldn’t an ‘expert’ in marketing be...
Sitting on a train on Friday grading exam papers I got a tweet from marketing consultant Glen Gilmore. The tweet was a little grid of 24 headshots and the message, “24 Marketers you Should Follow on...
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Mark Ritson: The real lesson of Pokémon Go is that today’s marketers will...
I tried to resist as long as humanly possible. But the gravitational pull of Pokémon Go has pulled me into its digital tractor beam and forced me to join the throng of marketers enthralled by every...
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Mark Ritson: We’re all killing our businesses by giving the hard work away...
A lovely long lunch with a couple of advertising people remains one of the great unadulterated pleasures in life. Like cigarettes at midnight or urinating on your lawn, it is a lovely combination of...
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Mark Ritson: TV and digital are dating, so who’s going to get screwed?
If you’ve been a marketer for the past five years you have almost certainly been sucked into the ongoing debate about the death of TV as a channel and as an advertising medium, and its imminent...
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Mark Ritson: Facebook’s segmentation abilities are depressingly impressive
The recent surge in attention being paid to the Russian influence on American society via its use of social media has produced a stream of ever more amazing insights. A few months ago the headline...
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Mark Ritson: Even ‘millennial-minded’ marketers should see TV as a gold mine
In 1996, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed this day, 21 November, to be World Television Day. That’s right on this very special, if rather arbitrary, date we are meant to spend the day...
View ArticleMark Ritson: Nike’s Londoner ad is great creative, but is the city-focused...
I don’t know about you but when someone on social media tells me to “take a look at this video” my first instinct these days is to hide in the wardrobe. It’s either some highly suspect motivational...
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Mark Ritson: Marketers are clueless about media effectiveness – here’s the proof
Being sent new research or industry reports is a common experience for columnists. I’ve been writing for Marketing Week for a long time and rarely does a fortnight pass without an approach from an...
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Mark Ritson: We must fight the philistines on the value of marketing training
No one knows if the Philistines actually existed. They turn up in the Old Testament being a bunch of wankers to the Israelites and then promptly vanish from history. But something about their general...
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Mark Ritson: Marketers’ silence on Cambridge Analytica speaks volumes
Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie testifying to the House of Commons DCMS committee on 27 MarchIt’s ironic, is it not. We marketers spend our lives trying to get the public’s...
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Mark Ritson: Understanding customers is marketers’ most misunderstood mission
Forty. Bloody hell! It’s an interesting milestone. Unlike other anniversaries such as your 18th or 21st that are largely ceremonial, you feel your 40th marching up the hill about six months before it...
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Mark Ritson: Targeting or mass marketing? The answer is both
Mark Ritson debates Byron Sharp on mass marketing versus targeting at the Festival of Marketing 2017The ads for this year’s Festival of Marketing have sparked happy memories of last year’s event. The...
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Mark Ritson: Calling all marketers – it’s up to you to prove if Vote Leave’s...
You can feel it in the morning. An auburn tinge in the sunrise, an impatience in the leaves above, and a distinct nip in the air before you close the door at night. Autumn is on the way. Perhaps not...
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Mark Ritson: Gary Vaynerchuk is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong about media
Photo by Stephen McCarthy/RISE/SportsfileEvery advertising era has its guru. From Thomas Barratt and the advent of modern outdoor advertising to David Ogilvy and the creation of effective print ads,...
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Mark Ritson: Revenue is a lousy measure of success for most ad campaigns
This year has begun pretty much the way 2018 ended, with a spate of big advertising campaigns that have divided the marketing community. Kaepernick for Nike. Elton John for John Lewis. Not to mention a...
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Mark Ritson: Think TV is dying? You’re forgetting about the ‘Knopfler Effect’
Photo: Victor SchiferliAlas, I am old. I can remember glimpsing the initial efforts of MTV on American TV screens and then, a little later, on the sets back in the UK. And I can recall the videos that...
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Mark Ritson: Binet and Field’s research may not be perfect but that doesn’t...
When Bill Murray meets people who tell him they want to be rich and famous the actor always dispenses the same advice. “I tell them to try being rich first,” he told The Guardian in 2003, “and see if...
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5G is the latest hot topic on the bullsh*t roadshow
Well that’s Cannes over for another year. I don’t know about you, but I am exhausted. Fortunately, I applied my tried and tested three-point plan for getting the most out of the Cannes Lions Festival...
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Cinema’s comeback is a tale worthy of the big screen
When I was a young, beautiful marketing professor in the late 20th century, it was customary to show the amount of advertising money spent across the various channels in pie chart form. You’d have a...
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