Last week, I was humbled and honoured to be joined by a variety of clients, suppliers, partners, and close guests, at our annual Xmas in July event – where we featured 2 x industry heavyweights who gave us their 2 cents worth on the state of marketing for 2019. We were extremely lucky to have Mark Ritson interviewed by Tim Burrowes, and the conversation got quite insightful with these 3 key takeaways coming forth:

#1 The importance of saliency vs brand awareness

The point was made that rather than focusing on building and generating ‘brand awareness’, marketers should be focused on ‘salience’ instead. Brand Salience, is the degree to which your brand is at the forefront of a consumers mind, linked to the attributes you want the consumer to know about your brand, when they are ready to buy. Brand Awareness is the ability of your audience to remember your brand, but marketing thinking is changing & coming around to the view that being at the forefront of your consumers mind for the attributes your brand has – and not the awareness – is of critical importance.

#2 Trends are to marketers, what chocolate is to nutritionists

It’s easy to get swept up by the latest fad, the sweet treat, the tasty food.  But if you’re a Marketer looking after a Brand – don’t focus on trends – focus on strategy. TikTok was given as an example, of a platform that a lot of marketers are looking at, given some of these figures:

• Been downloaded over 1bn times, and has 500 million active users
• Seen a 275% year on year growth
• Users spend an average of 52 minutes a day on the app
• 41% of users are aged between 16-24

However, when all is said & done – TikTok is a tactic.  Not a strategy. For brands to prosper, they need to focus on strategy, which will ultimately lead marketers to the tactics you need.

#3 Shit, delivered at the speed of light, is still shit

In a world dominated by 2 media behemoths by the name of Google & Facebook, have allowed brands and media agencies to deliver advertising to market efficiently – and to some arguments – effectively. However, no matter the media channel you use, whether it be a high reach out of home billboard, or a targeted Display remarketing banner – the Creative in the work, is going to do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of communicating your message. In terms of how well an advertising campaign is deemed ‘effective’ – the creative in the campaign is still responsible for over 50% of driving efficacy.

So Finally

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of our clients for a wonderful year, and for helping drive and support our growth throughout 2018/19. Thanks to our staff for delivering the goods & results that drive our clients growth. Here’s to a fantastic finish to 2019, and I look forward to seeing everyone at next years Xmas in July!