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Mark Ritson: Even at $5m each, Super Bowl ads make sense – here’s why
I swore I would not do it. Told myself for weeks that it would be that most hoary of clichés and that I should not even consider working on such a thing. So here it is: a column about Super Bowl...
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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: It’s time to shut down digital marketing teams for good
The news that the Co-op Bank has disbanded ‘digital marketing’ should come as no surprise. For several years senior marketers have been wearily signalling that the need to maintain a digital marketing...
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Mark Ritson: Kraft Heinz is in 57 varieties of trouble
It’s been an awful week for Kraft Heinz. The giant food conglomerate born from the $49bn merger of Kraft Foods and Heinz four years ago is reeling from a disastrous close to 2018. Last week the company...
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Mark Ritson: Tesla’s online-only move doesn’t herald the retail apocalypse
There is so much to like about Elon Musk. So much. The ball-busting media interviews in which declares himself “bored” with Earth and intent on moving to Mars. His occasional acts of supreme market...
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Mark Ritson: For the first time big tech faces a credible threat of breakup
US Democratic Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has pledged to break up the tech platforms (Photo: Marc Nozell)When it comes to digital marketing, the name Elizabeth Warren might not be the first...
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Mark Ritson: A true brand purpose doesn’t boost profit, it sacrifices it
Starbucks’ mission ‘to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighbourhood at a time’ contradicts its inability to align its tax responsibilities accordingly.I was at a...
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Mark Ritson: Distinctiveness doesn’t need to come at the cost of differentiation
Tom Roach and his team of effectiveness monkeys have been at it again at BBH London. Every now and again they sit down and stitch together a bunch of separate slides, charts and other marketing...
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Mark Ritson: Superdry’s returning founder can restore the brand’s DNA
Superdry founder Julian Dunkerton has forced his way back into the company, prompting the board’s resignationsThere is an epic saga taking place over at Superdry, the ailing British fashion brand. It’s...
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Mark Ritson: Accept it, people hate ads – yes, all of them
Attend enough marketing conferences and all of them start to feel essentially the same. A slightly greying creative director in black jeans shares his stories of big agency success. A perky CMO from...
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Mark Ritson: Will Carlsberg’s brave new strategy succeed? Probably
It started innocuously enough at the beginning of the month. Organic tweets about Carlsberg beer were being picked up and promoted by the Danish brewing company. Nothing special there; more than one...
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Mark Ritson investigates: Recreational marijuana
About four times a year I jet over to the United States to do a bit of consulting work and generally avail myself of all things America. There is nowhere quite like the place in terms of the quality...
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Mark Ritson: The Guardian may be profitable but its model damages journalism
There are many wonderful things to celebrate about The Guardian. In a few moments, about 12 paragraphs from here, I am going to accuse it of drastically and repeatedly damaging the future of quality...
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Mark Ritson: Turning Carlsberg Liverpool-red is a branding masterstroke
The quest to transform Liverpool FC into a world-beating side really only began in the 1960s. Prior to that Liverpool played in the shadow of their Evertonian rivals across town. But with the...
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Mark Ritson: Talk of crisis could be a death spiral for Thomas Cook
One of the greatest moments of the very great comedy series The League of Gentlemen takes place when a policeman visits the home of snub-nosed serial killers Edward and Tubs. The policeman asks...
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Mark Ritson: Tide’s award-winning Super Bowl ad is the best of marketing and...
The quest to make marketing a science is ongoing. It’s a quest that might ultimately prove to be successful or (my vote) a noble but flawed venture. Either way, its nobility is assured because the...
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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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Mark Ritson: Apple’s confusing product portfolio makes Microsoft look sleek
I’ve always liked those ads that show grey-haired executives whizzing around the planet. You know the ones. They are shaking hands with a client in Japan; sitting in the back of a car in Frankfurt,...
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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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Kraft Heinz’s new CEO needs to deliver a much-needed dose of tough love
“Who is Miguel Patricio,” asked AdAge last week, “and what is he getting himself into?” There are two short answers to that double-barrelled question: he’s a bit of a marketing legend and, potentially,...
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Mark Ritson: Ethnography beats focus groups hands-down, but they still serve...
It was one of those little moments on Twitter that makes you glad to be a user. A noted marketer produces an apparently innocuous tweet. Another noted marketer smashes it to pieces. And, before you can...
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James Bond’s latest repositioning is a lesson to brands looking to adapt to a...
“The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. Then the soul erosion produced by high gambling – a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension – becomes unbearable...
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Mark Ritson: Marketers’ only shot at influence is to embrace the CMO title
Let’s be honest, all those league tables that rank chief marketing officers are a little suspect. How do you decide whether the senior marketer at Asda is better than the woman in charge at KFC? In...
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Mark Ritson: 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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Seven reasons why TV’s doubters are wrong
Ofcom has produced its annual ‘Media Nations’ report and, as usual, the picture it paints is contradictory to the one presented within so much of marketing. While the ‘TV is dead’ meme seems to have...
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We need a new ‘third way’ to set marketing budgets
“Some may say that it’s not a disaster and thus better than feared – we’re not yet in that camp.” That was the gloomy verdict from Goldman Sachs analyst Ken Goldman as he surveyed the latest results...
View ArticleCadbury’s brand purpose is just ‘woke-washing’
The phrase ‘jumping the shark’ comes from a 1977 episode of Happy Days. Lumbering into its fifth season, the TV series was struggling to come up with new storylines. So the season premiere had Fonzie,...
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Why Marketing Week’s Mini MBA is branching into brand management
I remember that feeling in my stomach as my wife’s pregnancy gradually began to reach its inevitable conclusion. We’d been married for a decade and built a life based on me travelling overseas two...
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Standing out is the key brand challenge – that’s why great brands play with...
I’ll tell you what, there has never been a more interesting time to study visual identity and packaging. In the last six months we’ve seen more bold moves by big brands than the previous decade....
View ArticleThe streaming wars will be the bloodiest battle in marketing history
Millennials ask me all the time about what it was like growing up in the 1970s. Actually, no-one has ever asked me that. But it does not stop me from boring the shit out of them with tales from the...
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WeWork’s IPO debacle highlights the failures of modern brand building
It’s a terrible thing to be prescient. Ask Scott Galloway. Many months ago the always opinionated, usually accurate, professor made the bold prediction that tech darling WeWork would never make it to...
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Marketers praise Burger King but McDonald’s is more deserving
I saw Rain Man at the weekend. It popped up on my TV and, before I knew it, I was gripped by a film I had not seen in 30 years and could not switch it off. Tom Cruise is left peanuts by his recently...
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After 30,000 connections, I’m all LinkedOut
Mark Ritson’s professional network (artist’s impression)I am ever so slightly dependent on LinkedIn. It’s a very good source of marketing and branding perspectives and, more importantly, the only...
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Interbrand’s ‘iconic moves’ invite ridicule for the discipline of branding
There was something of a panic back in 1988 when Australian firm GFW made its hostile bid to acquire Rank Hovis McDougall. The British conglomerated company owned a wealth of power brands ranging from...
View ArticleIgnoring TV is a strange choice for a big brand
If you have a big budget and are making long-form video ads, it makes little sense to leave the most effective medium out of the mix, as Gap has done by rejecting TV for its Christmas campaign. The...
View ArticleThe Apple Card fiasco is a brand risk – but not a very big one
Apple has messed up by adopting a biased algorithm that disadvantages women applying for its credit card, but the chances of it harming the core technology business are slim. The post The Apple Card...
View ArticleAds are pointless if the consumer doesn’t recognise the brand behind them
Renault's new ad featuring a lesbian couple is a beautiful story and cultural statement, but the brand's presence is nowhere near distinctive enough. The post Ads are pointless if the consumer doesn’t...
View ArticleFor the ‘agency of the decade’, adam&eveDDB is a mess of a brand
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. The post...
View ArticlePeloton’s ad is bad, but it will ultimately benefit the brand
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...
View ArticleHave yourself a media-neutral Christmas
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. The post Have yourself a media-neutral Christmas...
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