Let’s celebrate good marketing rather than ridiculing the bad

Which marketing work first to comes to mind when you think about 2024? Apple and Jaguar probably have a greater share of mind over brands such as Lucky Saint, Octopus Energy, M&S, McDonald’s and Greggs, for example, although the latter have been doing great stuff in the UK. Apple’s share price does not appear to have suffered too much because of one false step on its iPad advertising, and Jaguar was already out of the consideration set of the many pundits deriding its rebrand last year.

It’s irrelevant whether this was good work or not; the point is more that as an industry we are quick to criticise and slow to praise. Wouldn’t it be refreshing if we could focus less on one campaign, and more on celebrating successful cases and applauding those marketers who had succeeded in aligning their organisations behind the most effective work? Could this be a resolution for the new year?

Brand building is a team sport, and that means all functions need to understand how what they do contributes to winning with customers and consumers.

This is the thinking behind my new book, Effective Brand Building, which is published by Kogan Page this month. The point of writing it was first and foremost to be useful to marketing leaders and their teams, who are trying their best to build their brands despite the exceptional internal and external challenges we have all faced in the last five years, and will likely continue to face in the times ahead.

I’ve written it with empathy, and for the practitioner. This is in deliberate contrast to the often divisive and derogatory tone I see towards marketing work in social media and on other platforms, which I think holds us all back. Many people are quick to pile on with their opinions on brand work – whether it’s a change in a distinctive brand asset or a new campaign.

As marketers, we need to champion those who do the work. Those who grind it out day to day in organisations which may not understand or appreciate brand building, organisations which sometimes leave the tough questions to the next people, and which chase quick wins over lasting success.

We have a well-documented skills gap as organisations have pulled back on training, thus lacking common language, frameworks and repeatable processes. Various studies also demonstrate in many organisations that the role of marketing is not understood or appreciated. Brand building is a team sport, and that means all functions need to understand how what they do contributes to winning with customers and consumers. Though it is a team sport, marketing needs to champion brands and get the whole organisation onside, as well as suppliers and other agency partners.

The tools that work

The best marketers know how to take the best approaches from different schools of thought rather than follow one doctrine slavishly. The best marketing leaders cherry-pick what works and are less concerned about setting one approach against another – it is a distraction from the hard work of growing brands. This collective wisdom, with its simple, repeatable approaches, is especially useful for organisations lacking consistency. There is nothing mandatory other than the belief you can make your life easier and deliver better work if you define and stick to some common tools, and work to a timeline which links both to the needs of your customers and your business planning cycle.

I believe it all boils down to three things. The first is getting clear on the fundamentals of effective brand building – the most powerful things you need to know about the dynamics of brand growth, understanding consumer demand and insights. I believe many marketers miss the importance of their business context in determining how to manage brands – what motivates people and how they are rewarded, as well as strategy, information flows and decision making. It’s also critical to develop the right marketing capability so you have the team you need deliver your ambition.

The second thing is developing the right brand strategy – knowing how to conduct an audit, identifying the most fertile opportunities for growth, thinking about investment choices and then turning them with your agency partners into ideas which integrate across all touchpoints.

The third element is about knowing how to translate this into a properly budgeted annual plan that illustrates the likely outcomes, and integrates communications work with pricing, range architecture, and being present and visible in the places where your consumers are. To be effective, you need to set clear KPIs, have a learning mindset and have illuminating and simple approaches to measurement.

Perhaps applying these lessons will help at least one brand or organisation get better at uncovering what the consumer is looking for. And perhaps it will help someone create better work, which we can learn from and celebrate as an industry.