2 years ago today I first got my hands on a physical copy of Eat Your Greens - the multi-author marketing edit that Wiemer carefully pulled together! Proud to be a part of this marketing science driven project, if you haven’t read it then: amazon.co.uk/dp/1789016754/…

As Gary Duckworth neatly illustrates in his excellent chapter of the 1991 book ‘Understanding Brands: By 10 People Who Do’ this is a rather uncontentious statement in the context of supermarkets, where - unlike most of the brands it stocks - the experience is multifaceted & rich.

A rare instance of genuine generational research that actually compares cross-generational attitudes *at the same age*!

Perhaps I’m stretching the analogy but the idea “safety” pushes us towards more familiar brands reminded me of this research suggesting that “fear” also makes scarcity appeals counter-intuitive - further strengthening the desirability of popular brands: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

Pleased to discover these particular beliefs have largely survived the transition to the ‘new normal’.

In episode 341 of 'Nothing in marketing is as new as you think', next year marks the 100th anniversary of one of the most successful influencer campaigns of all-time (from 'The Laws of Human Nature' by Robert Greene).

Pleased to have snuck in (before leaving) a 'highly commended' in the WPP Atticus Awards for this piece today too - not quite so sure about the new title though! wpp.com/wpp-iq/atticus…

Thanks a ton Giles Edwards also ➡️ @gilesedwards.bsky.social for inviting me, such an enjoyable chat!

"A variation (on Goodhart’s Law) may be that when a measure becomes a target, whoever owns the intellectual property has a license to print money" - IP + the LFL historical data for 'more accurate benchmarking' in the case of the brand tracking industry. netinterest.substack.com/p/the-business…

"The more powerful the norms in society, the more differences between people are masked" - this is an excellent provocation on human nature & heritability that should be of particular interest to any global planners searching for universal truths. mailchi.mp/b05c23c1f892/h…

"One of the biggest own-goals of the ad industry is the invention of the ‘Brand-building' campaign" - as one of Jenni's colleagues has highlighted, there are really two types of advertising: price-led advertising (often time-bound) & everything else. warc.com/newsandopinion…

In an otherwise even-handed article on the crisis in creativity, the underlying premise that brainstorming plays an important role in the development of new ideas is perhaps the most contentious. ft.com/content/27364b…

I can’t think of a single sporting performance that has ever more clearly merited the BBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year.

“Every minute spent thinking about the short-term stock price is a minute wasted” - Bezos, 2000. With its prioritisation of customer-focused expansion over profit, it'd be difficult to identify any company more relentlessly long-termist in its approach. marketingweek.com/mark-ritson-an…

The Long & the Short of It is a fantastic paper but it's not wrong to Q the detail behind such a precise 60:40 split: pre-2014 assigning channels a role of either 'brand' or 'activation', 2014> asking case study authors what they believe the split to be. marketingweek.com/mark-ritson-lo…

This is a great article on the history of price comparison websites and the prominent, fluctuating roles both 'brand' and 'performance' type advertising has played in acquiring users and defending incumbents from new players. netinterest.co/p/price-compar…

In the case of System1 - where those sages are the target audience - their marketing team deserve huge kudos for convincing an industry sceptical of any testing data their methods offer a definitive means of assessing campaign effectiveness. marketingweek.com/ritson-dont-li…

Further evidence that facial coding is a dubious means of testing emotional responses.