Marketing strategy: Strategy development

 

It is no longer the case that shopping at a low-cost store indicates poverty; smart consumers have come to realise that price is not always an indicator of quality, as premium-priced products may be m ...

This paper argues that both researchers and clients benefit from examining how clients make decisions, especially how they absorb and process information, and how these can be impacted to mutual benef ...

Omar Mahmoud draws some useful lessons for people engaged in marketing from watching a DVD of Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth.

The subject for this issue's Comments section is neuroscience and advertising research. Three researchers who have explored this topic in depth provide their views, showing the benefits that neuroscie ...

Thought Leadership is a very successful marketing strategy employed by professional service firms in order to make money from their clients. It works by developing ideas, presented as universally appl ...

This paper argues that the tools for assessing business risk are inadequate, yet some form of assessment of the probable return on capital is necessary. Describes `Marketing Due Diligence', a tool dev ...

JP Morgan Cazenove has recently suggested that oil giant BP should split into two companies, separating `upstream' (exploration and production) from `downstream (marketing). The article argues that it ...

Argues the importance of distinguishing between long-term trends, which have real impacts on and opportunities for the business, and short-term fads which fail to last (such as the Atkins diet). Compa ...

Pearse McCabe, planning director of Fitch in London, develops the concept of 'generous' brands. Brands that with small, uncontrived gestures, reflecting the brand's heartbeat, have built strong long- ...

Using a wealth of examples, Tim Jones, principal of Innovaro, illustrates how radical or 'disruptive' innovation can fundamentally change major markets. In particular he looks at technology driven dis ...

Dominic Twose, global head of knowledge management at Millward Brown, has analysed the winners of the IPA Effectiveness Awards and identified the main common themes that have resulted in brand growth. ...

Long-term brand growth demands rigorous research, detailed planning and a relentless focus of activity. Sue Burden, a director at Added Value UK, describes the three main stages in developing a brand ...

The diamond industry is in a crisis, billions of pounds in debt and with both prices and demand largely static. Despite the best efforts of industry giant De Beers to reverse this trend, this article ...

John Singer, principal of Blue Spoon, argues that traditional consumer-centric models are no longer suitable for marketing, and that a fundamental re-think based on a network-centric approach is calle ...

The first 100 days in a new job are difficult for any executive, but especially for marketing directors. This article explains why: budgets are never secure, the marketing function is diffuse and uniq ...

Argues for the importance of instinct in successful business and marketing innovation. As businesses have grown they have become complex and compartmentalised, and have sought to limit risk by relying ...

Argues that it is dangerous for a company to lose sight of the basics (investing in its big brands) by diverting resources into too many peripheral activities. Procter & Gamble in the late 1990s did t ...

Argues that successful marketers must have both the mathematical rigour of Einstein and the imagination of Picasso. They must be more than internal organisers operating within a given world view. Lead ...

An edited version of the Annual City Lecture to the Worshipful Company of Marketers, November 2005. Lord Heseltine stresses the importance of marketing professional services at a time when global supp ...

CEOs and market researchers talk a different language. CEOs talk in terms of results – the bottom line, the share price, key financial ratios. Research or consumer insight managers typically use terms ...

Joe Zawadzki, founder of Poindexter Systems, an online and site optimisation agency, argues that the goal in poker (as in marketing) is making good decisions on the basis of imperfect and changing inf ...

Every day 50 million people stop at one of McDonald’s 31,000 plus restaurants in more than 100 countries. A critical element of McDonald’s global branding is the ‘freedom within a framework’ policy w ...

Describes the `Six Sigma' service for marketing process improvement. The current demand from CEOs for accountability of media and marketing spend is driven by results which are generally poor, as is s ...

Offers thirteen guidelines for successful brainstorming within companies (meetings for generating new ideas). It is essential to plan, prepare and conduct this operation correctly; if not, it can dama ...

Judie Lannon talks to W.Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne about how blue ocean strategy is helping companies seize new growth opportunities in today’s business environment by understanding the logic and pr ...

The industry has already extracted much of the benefit to be had from improving productivity and concentrating on core brands. Meanwhile, its dynamics are changing. What comes next? McKinsey analysts ...

This paper describes how the concept of ‘slow’ could be applied to market research. The author coined the concept of ‘Slow Research’ at the 2004 Technovate seminar. The idea was to describe a way in w ...

This paper shows the need for totally different thinking. There are three sectors of thinking: network thinking; future open thinking; and strategic thinking. Only the combination of these aspects of ...

John McGrath, CEO of food and drink giant Diageo, explains his plans for making the company's great brands (including Guinness, Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff, Pillsbury, Harp, Häagen Dazs, Burger King, etc ...

Describes ACM (Asset and Competency Based Marketing), a framework for thinking systematically about markets. Marketers should work with CEO and board of directors to get best answers to key questions: ...