With the major investigation into media buying kickbacks in the USA by the ANA about to conclude, and our own ISBA recently making headlines about the poor state of media agencies in the UK, Mark Ritson reviews what we have learned so far.
The news that adam&eveDDB has dropped the digital designation from all its job titles came as no surprise last week. Despite the prevalence of the D word and the omnipresence of digital planners, digital strategists and digital marketers under every lamp post, nobody in the know ever doubted that the prefix would eventually become an anachronism.
The 60th anniversary of the first British TV ad is encouraging most marketers to look in the wrong direction: backwards. TV ads remain the great tool of modern marketing and we would be crazy to forget it.
The story of marketing communications is a cat and mouse game between two opposing forces.
The phrase ‘digital marketing’ has gone the same way as ‘international marketing’ – into obsolescence. We have new tools to play with but the age-old principles of the discipline remain the same.
If programmatic actually works and connects the worlds of social, digital and traditional media, we have a potential solution for what ails marketers worldwide.
Ok, I have to be honest. I had never heard of R3. Apparently in its day job R3 helps companies maximise their agency reviews, remunerations and relationships – hence the name. I have no idea if it is any good at any of those tasks, but it surely has done every marketer a favour with its new report on marketing communications published this week.
I was signed up to write a branding column in the early noughties by an editor who did two very smart things.
The breathtaking marketing for film Ex Machina ticks all the boxes for what great tactical work should achieve, which makes it all the more bewildering as to why the digital crowd has taken such a negative attitude towards it.
Two-thirds of 1,000 sampled Australians said they followed not a single brand on social media, but the research company did not show that in the results tables. It’s time to stop hiding from the negative story leaping out from the data.
There is a God of Marketing. A deity so omnipotent that seasoned marketers make small offerings and prayers of thanks before, during and after any major campaign launch or brand strategy.
Super Bowl weekend has just passed. You probably noticed the gigantic clash of egos, bullshit and total pointlessness that ensued. I refer, of course, not to the game itself but the surrounding social media charade which, once again, engulfed marketers at the start of the month.
To be a marketer in 2013 is to encounter a peculiar form of propaganda in which all things digital are promoted as the replacement for, antidote to, and general nemesis of traditional media. That’s especially true for TV which, if the reports are to be believed, is on its last legs as a marketing medium.
Review the millions of people on Twitter and it’s apparent that there are about five distinct types of user.
I am never sure whether to be angry or depressed when I read about marketing communications at the moment. So much of the discourse on planning and executing communications strategy just seems to be wrong to me.