Future of Strategy 2022: vital skills and worrying shortages

WARC’s Future of Strategy survey finds that, in a tumultuous world, strategists continue to gain influence, but talent shortages are a major concern for the profession. Here’s what you need to know.

Why it matters

From the COVID crisis through to today’s economic environment, uncertainty necessitates strategists.

Strategists’ generalist abilities stand out, as the report describes clients in need of professionals that can simplify, integrate, think big-picture, and address issues outside traditional marketing and move into new areas like responses to climate change. 

You can read the full report here.

Method

These findings are based on the tenth edition of the annual study, taking in responses from over 700 client- and agency-side strategists, as well as 12 in-depth interviews with strategy leaders.

The report examines “how strategy careers are evolving, the biggest topics impacting the function and what strategists need to do to meet high client expectations in an uncertain world”, explains Anna Hamill, Senior Editor - Brands, WARC.

Five ideas you need to know

1. Tumult keeps strategists in demand. Though the pandemic might have ended, the upheaval has not. Respondents feel optimistic about the value and influence they can bring both to their clients and agencies.
   
   
2. Agencies struggle in talent war against deep-pocketed competitors. Continuing a years-long trend, but with additional urgency, 46% of strategists are concerned about being able to find the right talent at a time when a majority (57%) report that they plan to hire to fill current gaps. Just 30% expect their next strategy role to be in an agency.
   
   
3. Thinking beyond marketing and about the business’s performance. Versus last year, 49% of strategists report working on upstream business problems with their clients as the discipline’s biggest opportunity – a ten percentage point increase on 2021’s results. But other questions are being asked too: a significant majority of strategists expect sustainability (82%) and DEI considerations (70%) to be more visible in client marketing strategies and briefs.
   
   
4. Strategists brace for cost-of-living crisis. Eighty-six percent of respondents anticipate the cost-of-living crisis will have a significant or transformative impact in the next year and 69% believe that it will be at the centre of marketing communications. However, the extent of concern depends on the region. In North America – which has a more optimistic mid-term economic outlook than Europe – just 50% of respondents believe that cost-of-living concerns will be more visible in client briefs, compared to 79% in Europe and 69% in APAC.
   
   
5. Diversity, equity, and inclusion needs work. Both at a client and at an agency level, challenges remain in this area with agencies continuing to lack internal diversity while clients struggle to deliver DEI agendas.
   

Go further

Expert commentary from leading strategists, who include Joyce Ling of Wunderman Thompson China, Aki Spicer of Leo Burnett Chicago, Anush Prabhu of MediaCom, James Honda-Pinder of We Are Social, Mehak Jaini of 22feet Tribal Worldwide, Eunice Tan of The Secret Little Agency and Nick Myers of OLIVER Agency, is available to read here.

The full Future of Strategy 2022 report which includes quantitative and qualitative data analysis and advice, is available to WARC subscribers.

A Future of Strategy podcast will be released mid-October.

NFL sponsorship hails Apple’s arrival in sport

The iPhone maker and the National Football League have struck a deal for the sponsorship of the Super Bowl’s halftime show, replacing Pepsi, and hinting at deeper shifts in Apple's business.

Why it matters

Apple tends to do its marketing differently, usually choosing to stay high-end, but taking the spot of a major CPG firm at the country’s biggest advertising event indicates the importance of the mass market to Apple’s evolving business.

Now used by the majority of Americans, continued growth will come both from intensification of existing users while continuing to acquire new users. Sport is already a strategic pillar to this, as evidenced by Apple’s successful move for Major League Baseball rights.

What’s going on

The joint press release aims to reflect how the music and sport combo of the halftime show chime nicely with Apple’s longstanding presence in music (and also, it says, sport), but it comes at a time when the kinds of sums demanded by the world’s largest sporting IP are only available from major west coast tech firms of Apple or Amazon size.

The New York Times makes much of how it could point to a deeper relationship emerging in coming months or years, reporting that the opportunity for the halftime sponsorship stemmed from talks about a deeper relationship.

With an expensive though little used streaming service to sustain, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that more, and more expensive sport will be available exclusively on Apple+. As its advertising ambitions grow, could it mean buyers going to Apple both for performance and more traditional-style TV inventory?

Sourced from NFL, New York Times, WARC

China’s half trillion-dollar wedding market and its discontents

The estimated average cost of a wedding in China is 8.8x a couple’s average monthly income, which has driven up the size of the country’s wedding market over 30% from 2020 to reach around half a trillion dollars (4.14 trillion Rmb).

Why it matters

Short-term growth in this particular market, however massive, doesn’t tell the whole story of China’s evolving attitudes to marriage.

An intellectual shift

Luxury news site Jing Daily pegs the rapid growth to the desire for unique, custom wedding experiences even as the official number of weddings fell by 6.1% in 2021 versus the year before.

A report from Daxue Consulting identifies in this surging market a deeper intellectual shift from more traditional wedding ceremonies toward ceremonies that reflect the changing tastes of individual couples. But it comes at a difficult time for the demography of the country.

A deeper trend

China has recently launched a marital and maternity survey to assess the ability of citizens to get married and have children amid precipitous drops in birth rate that could lead to population decline, which is a long-running concern. 

Some reports have linked the dip in rates of marriage to a need to fulfil a number of markers of success – having a good job and owning a house among them – before tying the knot, which has grown more difficult to achieve as prices have risen in a growing economy.

There is a cultural issue here, as delaying marriage is significant in a country where extramarital births are not explicitly outlawed, but certain local interpretations of the law make it very difficult for non-traditional families to obtain crucial state help.  

Declining births are also partly blamed on the effects of the country’s one-child policy, which ended in 2016, that contributed to an imbalance of more men than women in the population.

Still, it’s important to note that for many individuals the confluence of these wider shifts suggest a life in which people increasingly make their own choices. With far higher levels of education in younger generations – especially among women – marriage is no longer the primary objective for many young Chinese. It will take time for the system to adjust.

Sourced from Jing Daily, SCMP, FT, Daxue Consulting

Price is an essential element of a brand’s communication

Research indicates that consumers place far more emphasis on price as an influence on their perception of a brand than executives believe – part of a set of findings that suggest pricing should be part of the brief for the department that owns the customer relationship: marketing.

Why it matters

Prices are going up across the board, and to maintain any margin, consumer prices are rising too – this is a communications challenge, given the significance that buyers place on price, and should drive a re-think of marketing’s influence over pricing.

What’s going on

This is the conclusion of an article on pricing strategy in the Harvard Business Review, in which marketing professors and researchers from the universities of Ramon Llull (Barcelona), Munich, and Massachusetts, explain how price is far more than the result of a numerical calculation, but a signal of the business’s intentions, and look to theories in the field of linguistics for ways to approach it.

They make three recommendations:

• Prices reflect values. Certain brands have made good, fair prices a core value. Sometimes, this can be a case of showing slightly higher prices so long as there are no nasty surprises later in the interaction.
• Explain the price. Break down the costs or explain the rationale behind an eventual price, with transparency on internal costs like rent or wages humanising the eventual figure.
• Break rules. Sometimes, emphasising expense, or talking about it in totally new – even seemingly irrelevant – ways can elicit new comparisons.

Sourced from Harvard Business Review

Consumer confidence spirals downwards

UK consumer confidence hits a(nother) new low today but the picture is similar across Europe and the US where the spending habits of a majority of consumers are being reconsidered in the light of rising prices. 

Key figures

• GfK’s UK Consumer Confidence Index fell to -49 in September; the index has reached new lows in four of the last five months.
• Future-facing indicators are particularly bleak: confidence in personal finances in the coming year is down nine points to -40 while confidence in the economy in the next 12 months is down eight to -68.
• A separate study from First Insight found that, on average, 82% of consumers in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK, and the US have less confidence to spend ahead of the holiday season.
• On average, 68% of consumers are most impacted by rising food prices, most notably in Germany at 78% with the UK and Spain closely following.
• German consumers report the most significant inflation-induced change in their shopping habits and say they are shopping more for deals and staying within a budget.
• The threat of recession concerns at least 92% of consumers in every country and two thirds, on average, believe that a recession is already underway. 
• Almost one-third of consumers overall acknowledge that they are saving less because of high prices, and 17% report that they are tapping into savings to cope with the cost of living crisis.

Why it matters

Falling consumer confidence and belt-tightening ahead of the crucial holiday season means brands and retailers may need to re-examine their pricing and promotional strategies. 

Key quote 

“Consumers are buckling under the pressure of the UK’s growing cost-of-living crisis driven by rapidly rising food prices, domestic fuel bills and mortgage payments. They are asking themselves when and how the situation will improve” – Joe Staton, Client Strategy Director, GfK. 

Sourced from GfK, First Insight

Rising cost of living isn't stopping Singaporeans looking for love

Seven in ten Singaporeans (69%) are still eager to date even as the options for such activities become limited by the rising costs of living.

That’s according to a study on the impact of inflation on the dating lives of single Gen Z and millennial Singaporeans by Bumble, a women-first dating and social networking app.

Why it matters

Daters are now more budget-conscious – especially Gen Z who typically have less disposable income – and are increasingly likely to prefer free activities and splitting the cost of a date.  There’s an opportunity here for relevant brands to smooth the path of love, whether that’s by enabling lower cost activities that can sometimes be the most bonding or favouring the lucky few with nights out in high-end restaurants and bars. 

Key insights

• When faced with mounting financial pressures, Singaporeans are overall more budget-conscious and would prefer inexpensive date activities.
• Nearly three-quarters of Singaporean singles (72%) would prefer a free activity for their dates and Singaporean women are more likely than men (79% vs 65%) to pick a free activity.
• In response to rising costs, three in five Singaporeans (58%) said they would split costs with their dates, while more than half (52%) would use a coupon or a voucher to subsidise the cost of a date.
• Overall, Gen Z is more likely than millennials to pick a free activity; in particular, Gen Z men are more budget-conscious when compared to millennial men.
• Gen Z is more likely to pick a free activity (72% vs 60%), split costs with their dates (66% vs 50%) and offer to cook dinner so they do not have to go out on a date (50% vs 39%).
• Among women, there are no distinct differences between Gen Z and millennials in preferences on how they would budget on a date.
• Singaporeans tend to dine out as a first date activity, with go-to options being meeting over lunch or coffee at a cafe (42%) and having dinner at a restaurant (24%).
• But such F&B options are becoming increasingly more expensive as food inflation has been rising month-on-month to hit 1% in July 2022.

Background

Conducted by YouGov Singapore, total sample size was 1,001 single adults aged 18-41, fieldwork was undertaken from August 5-16, 2022 and the survey was conducted online.

Morrisons joins retail media goldrush

Morrisons, the UK grocery retailer, has launched an advertising business off the back of its extensive store network and online presence, with a “full-service internal advertising agency team” to service partner brands; in doing so it joins an expanding set of retailers looking to grow their share of promotional spend beyond the trade budget.

Why it matters

Morrisons joins local rivals like Tesco, as well as trans-Atlantic leaders like Walmart, in pursuing the estimated 15% annual growth in retail media spend to GroupM’s forecast $101bn by the end of this year. Some persuasive theories tie this shift to the massive effect that Apple’s updated privacy rules have had on the social media marketplace, helping to accelerate a shift toward first-party data solutions.

What’s happening

Retail Week (which is, like WARC, also owned by Ascential) reports that the new venture will be called “Morrisons Media Group”, a partnership with SMG,an agency group.

It plans to offer a suite of different services:

• Nebulously, it will “leverage creativity, data and technology and help brands advertise to customers through Morrisons-owned and external media platforms via one central function”.
• It also plans to evolve the service into a tightly targeted store-by-store offer and integrate loyalty scheme data.

In context: shored up margins

The news follows Morrison’s drop out of the top four of British supermarkets at the hands of the discounter, Aldi, which despite little to no online presence has taken a top spot thanks to its competitive offer amid the soaring cost of living.

However, revenue diversification toward a high margin business like media can help to shore up profitability in difficult times. An ability to tie ad spend to sales is desirable at the best of times, but when brands want more certainty, demonstrating effects will be vital.

Key quote

“We want to work more closely with our suppliers on targeted, high-performing campaigns that will benefit both their businesses and our customers. The new dedicated internal agency team at Morrisons Media Group will do just that” – Rachel Eyre, chief customer and marketing officer, Morrisons.

Sourced from Retail Week, Reuters, Mobile Dev Memo, GroupM, WARC

What data is OK to use when targeting consumers? 

Despite advertising’s privacy backlash, most consumers say it is at least somewhat acceptable to receive more relevant ads because of certain information that is collected, according to research* by the Advertising Research Foundation. 

What’s acceptable?

In terms of what information is most acceptable to use, “prior purchases” and “the media you use” ranked highest at 76% and 74% respectively. People were also more likely to share age, gender, race and ethnicity if it meant they would receive more relevant ads.

Why it matters

Consumers are simultaneously becoming more sensitive and more relaxed about data sharing depending on what exactly that data is. What’s clear though is that offering more relevant advertising increases the proportion of persons willing to share data for any reason by about 20 percentage points.

Key findings

• Consumers are less favorable about being grouped with others because of their mobility and location than they are about being grouped by age and gender.
• About 40% of people believe that any given step – like requiring opt-in – has already been taken, whether or not the step had been indeed taken (such as opt-in on Android devices).
• Around 40% of persons believe that companies are taking steps to support privacy while not necessarily being sure of the actual details.

*The 5th annual Privacy Study was based on a survey of 1,273 American consumers

Sourced from ARF

Media subscriptions are being cut and streaming video is first in line

A third of Gen Z and a third of Millennials in the UK are considering cutting their streaming video subscriptions in the next three months, according to research which finds that 23% of all those surveyed have already cut media subscriptions from their budgets. 

The figures, from research from automated consumer research platform quantilope being published tomorrow, contrast the numbers thinking about rationalising their video subscriptions with those who might cut music streaming subscriptions (14%) or print media subscriptions (9%). 

Why it matters

Consumers in general are more likely to have multiple video streaming subscriptions than music or print ones, hence these are first in line when they’re looking to save some money. Plus there are more ad-supported video streaming options becoming available to them.

Another option is sharing access: more than half of UK consumers (51%) claim to have free access to at least one streaming media app through sharing another subscriber’s account (compared to 31% of US consumers and just 17% in Germany). But with both Netflix and Disney+ having recently announced that they will be getting tougher about platform sharing, such “subscription squatters” could be in for a shock.

The generational divide 

• In the UK, 40% of respondents are willing to pay to skip over ads while streaming content, which is lower than in the US (55%) and Germany (45%). 
• Baby Boomers are least willing to pay to skip ads (58% say they are somewhat/extremely unwilling), in contrast to the 67% of Generation Z respondents who are extremely willing to pay.
• Boomers are least likely to consider axing their TV/Video streaming provider in the next few months with just 24% saying they are considering it compared to 32% of Gen Z and 33% of Millennials. 

The big idea 

Smart streaming providers could rethink how they target older viewers, whether by emphasising the different viewing experience that comes with a paid subscription, or by bundling a streaming service with another form of media preferred by this generation.

Sourced from quantilope

Are European telcos harnessing digital audio’s full potential?

Digital audio channels are increasingly being adopted within the media mixes of European telecom brands and there are untapped opportunities for brands to drive greater marketing effectiveness: Getting your brand heard – new research co-authored by WARC and Spotify – explores how.

Why it matters

The development of digital applications has slowly but steadily changed perceptions of telco service providers. Savvy telcos need to look beyond technology and network capabilities to rethink their traditional approach to marketing and truly engage with customers. Post-COVID shifts in customer experience expectations, sophisticated use of data and attention are all part of their thinking. 

Digital audio – with its distinctive opportunities for engagement, insight and personalisation – has become an increasingly important consideration within their media planning too. Based on a survey of over 360 telco marketers and ten in-depth interviews with industry experts, this white paper explores how digital audio can support the telco industry’s march towards better engagement and the reframing of their relationships with customers.

Takeaways

• Telcos increasingly want to reposition as techcos, as value shifts to device manufacturers and content platforms.
• 90% of European telcos have evolved their comms strategy in recent years with new channels, first-party data and personalised experiences paramount.
• Spend has skewed towards shorter-term performance channels but while digital audio has over 17% share of total media consumption, the spend on digital audio as a percentage of telcos’ total spend in 2021 was below 0.75%.
• Digital audio platforms are increasingly synergistic with other media channels and can help amplify campaign returns.

The big idea

Telcos that have leaned into digital audio rank the channel highly in terms of effectiveness. However, there is an investment gap between consumption of digital audio and ad spend in the sector. Awareness and education are cited by telco marketers as areas where they need greater support to understand more fully how to integrate digital audio effectively into their media mix.

The power of influencer recommendations in Southeast Asia

Some 80% of social media users in Asia are more likely to buy products recommended by influencers they follow, but the figure varies widely by market.

Highest to lowest 

A study, by Nielsen in association with Rakuten and reported in the 300th, analysed 6,000 responses from proprietary panels in 12 Asian markets and found that the repsondents were “much more likely” to buy recommended products in Indonesia (61%), India (60%), and the Philippines (60%).

Those markets were followed by Thailand (53%), Vietnam (53%), China (43%), Malaysia (39%), Singapore (36%), South Korea (30%) and Taiwan (24%).

Such a strategy was least likely to work in Hong Kong and Japan (both 16%). 

What audiences want

• Audiences in India, Thailand and Vietnam value “trustworthiness and authenticity” in influencers, while those in China and Taiwan tend to look for “likeability” and “inspiration”
• Brands shouldn’t assume that this applies just to Gen Z and Millenials: there are many over-50s following social media influencers in the Philippines, China, India and South Korea who are just as likely as younger followers to like and share a post.
• Mid-lifers engage with social media posts the most – through commenting, reposting, sharing, clicking on links.
• Youths are more interested in gaming influencers and beauty bloggers, while mid-lifers skew towards ‘kid-fluencers’, politicians and also gamers.
• Product reviews are the most appealing type of branded content across Asian markets, with the exception of influencer followers in China who prefer product demos. 

Key quote

“Influencers can be a powerful tool to increase brand awareness for marketers capable of hitting the right combination of persona, content and engagement. Brands that align themselves with the right influencers can become a trusted source for consumers – and the brand they remember when they want to make a purchase” – Arnaud Frade, Head of Commercial Growth, Nielsen APAC.

Sourced from 300th

The growing business of climate change

A series of launches and acquisitions point to the growing business of climate change, as consultancies, data platforms, and even media owners seek to sell their expertise.

Climate adaptation requires vast amounts of money

Wherever you stand on tackling climate change, whether through green growth or de-growth, the cost of adaptation will be vast if any change is going to happen. But the bottom line is it has to happen, and it has to happen across all aspects of the economy.

This week, ahead of COP27 in November, a new report emerged arguing that $1tn of investment is needed each year if we are to have any hope of meeting 2030 climate goals. While much of that is national and international infrastructure, businesses need to adapt too, and it appears there are significant opportunities to help them do so.  

What’s driving this

Many of these emerging businesses are a commercial response not only to the urgency of the problem – to which many firms have made big, loud Net Zero pledges – it also illustrates the complexity and, therefore, trepidation that such a challenge supposes for legacy brands adapting.

While cutting through the clutter is important, a risk is that climate work becomes a morass of increasingly complicated, opaque markets that achieve little.

Business needs to move away from carbon offsets

Time, the US-based news magazine, has launched a sustainability division: CO2 by Time.

Funded by a service fee to act as a “surrogate sustainability team”, its aim is to help guide large businesses away from notoriously dodgy carbon offsets by helping them to curate a “climate action portfolio”, a way of using that money – between $10,000 to $100,000 – to inform a blend of activities that more directly affects the environment.

It’s interesting to see such a service layer emerging from a media company and acting in effect like a kind of media agency – helping guide investment and measure impact or effectiveness – for climate response.

Even if some firms are just starting here

Meanwhile, Salesforce has spotted an opportunity to create a marketplace for carbon credits (offsets) that brings in a ratings element in order to guide users toward more effective, more verifiable solutions.

While it’s broadly understood that carbon credits are a last resort, they are better than polluting and doing absolutely nothing about it. Salesforce appears to be aiming to remove some controversy and help some businesses to make small steps forward.

Traditional consultancies build out green capability

Elsewhere, some of the big consultancies are bolstering their resources:

• Accenture acquired a climate change strategy consultancy Carbon Intelligence at the beginning of this month.
• BCG earlier this week acquired Quantis, an environmental sustainability consultancy.

Both note in their releases how their acquisitions demonstrate the centrality of sustainability/climate change to all major, high-level business transformation briefs. It appears to be a step in the right direction, even if we still need to accelerate.

Sourced from CO2, Bloomberg, Accenture, BCG, FT, WARC

Kingfisher sees COVID boost to DIY sector fade

Kingfisher, the home improvement company whose brands include B&Q, Screwfix, Brico Dépôt and Castorama, saw sales and profits fall in the first half as the effects of a COVID bounce wore off, but the business believes long-term trends are in its favour.

The numbers

• Sales were down 4.1% to £6.8bn in the six months to end July 2022; pre-tax profit fell 30% to£474m.
• E-commerce sales fell 19% as footfall returned to stores but penetration of 16% remains much higher than the pre pandemic level of 7%.
• Digitally-enabled sales now account for 24% of Kingfisher group sales. 

• The business acquired 2.8 million new customers during the first half of 2022 (exceeding pre-pandemic levels) and retention rates remain high.
• Sales are evenly split between the DIY and DIFM/trade markets (but the latter is seen as an important £50bn addressable opportunity in the UK, France and Poland). 

The trends

• As working from home becomes the ‘the new normal’ for many people (Kingfisher’s own surveys indicate people WFH do so for an average of 2.5 to 3 days per week), they have more time to look critically at their domestic environment.
• Average spend on home improvement by those WFH is as much as 40% higher than all active home improvers (in part because of the greater ‘wear and tear’).
• Nine in ten home improvers are looking for ways to reduce their energy consumption; six in ten are looking to improve the energy efficiency of their homes in the near future 10%. 
• Few people know or understand the energy-saving options available and Kingfisher believes it is well positioned to help them address this.
• Kingfisher is rolling out marketplaces in the UK and Europe to take advantage of incremental profit opportunities; ultimately it sees this channel delivering 40% of group e-commerce sales (excluding Screwfix).

Final thought

“Consumers continue to spend on repairs, maintenance and indeed renovations during these times, which is now reinforced by the new industry trends,” said CEO Thierry Garnier in the course of an earnings call. Analysts are less optimistic, however, with one referring to the “positive tailwinds” of lockdown being replaced by a “powerful headwind of a cost-of-living crisis”.

Sourced from Seeking Alpha, ShareCast

Why brands need to talk price

Communicating price increases to customers is an unwelcome task, but it’s better for brands to be upfront about it, says US academic Utpal M. Dholakia.

Why it matters

Writing on the Harvard Business Review site, Dholakia, George R. Brown Professor of Marketing at Rice University’s Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business, argues that if brand managers can bring the same focus to explaining a price increase to customers that they bring to introducing new features or extending product lines, then they are more likely to be rewarded with a price increase that sticks, while “customers will feel like valued partners of an authentic brand with their interests in mind”.

His advice is directed towards products and services unable to engage in below-the-radar activities like shrinkflation, but there are also lessons for CPG brands.  

Here’s three actions marketers can take: 

Avoid euphemisms 

Call it what it is: a price increase. It’s not a price adjustment, a price change, or any other euphemism you might come up with. Such messaging can damage customer relationships in a number of ways – it may arouse suspicion, be seen as patronising or lead to an angry social media backlash. “Attempts to obfuscate bad news rarely pay off for brands,” Dholakia notes. 

Explain the reasons clearly and simply

“After the size of the price increase, the perceived fairness of the motive for it is the second-biggest driver of how customers react,” Dholakia says. So don’t hide behind wordy messages that may seek to distance the brand from the action being taken. People know about inflation and rising input costs and won’t be hugely surprised if you raise prices – just keep the explanation short and to the point.

Have a customer-centric value narrative

A price increase is easier to accept if there’s something in it for the consumer. That might mean telling them that the brand has to raise prices in order to continue to provide the current level of benefits. If the alternative is degrading product quality, then that can reinforce the brand’s values to the customer. 

“A well-crafted value narrative conveys to customers that the brand has undertaken the effort to understand how its customers derive value and factored this knowledge into the pricing process,” Dholakia advises.

Sourced from Harvard Business Review 

Brands await renewal of Royal Warrants

Following the accession to the British throne of King Charles III, many high-profile consumer brands will require fresh approval of Royal Warrants granted under Queen Elizabeth II.

What’s a Royal Warrant? 

As official suppliers to royal palaces and households, some 875 brands currently have the right to use the Royal Coat of Arms on their packaging along with the statement “By Appointment to Her Majesty the Queen”. Most of these will now need fresh approvals and statements reworded, but companies can continue to use the Royal Arms in connection with the business for up to two years.

Which brands are affected? 

As well as luxury brands like Fortnum & Mason, Cartier and Bollinger, many everyday brands, such as Cadbury, Heinz, Kellogg’s, Marmite and Crown Paints also have Royal Warrants, as do drinks brands Dubonnet, Johnnie Walker, Gordon’s and Pimm’s.

Why it matters

The Royal Warrant can act in a similar way to marks like Red Tractor or Fairtrade, according to a Manchester Metropolitan University academic. “They streamline purchasing decisions and these products will make consumers feel elevated, buying into status and nostalgia,” Dr Amna Khan told the BBC. 

“That’s the best endorsement any product can get. All any logo wants to say is that [this company is] different and distinct – and it doesn't get much more distinct than the royal family.”

Footnote

When Queen Elizabeth II died, many brands and retailers made fools of themselves by portentously announcing what they would or would not be doing as a mark of respect. Arguably the only ones that should have said anything at all – and quite possibly not even then – were those with a Royal Warrant.

Sourced from BBC, Yahoo! finance, Guardian
^{[Image: The Royal Warrant]}