In these round ups, we aim to pull the most poignant parts of Mark Ritson’s online editorials into one, easy-to-find place.
And since we are champions of helping marketers become better at what they do, we’ll also throw in useful tips, guides and resources to help you better manage your brand and deliver a solid marketing strategy.
This week, the theme is ‘here’s what not to do’. From participating in price-discounting and positioning against a brand purpose, to tactification and the significance of exclusivity, Mark had a bone (or four) to pick with these marketers.
The Drum: Black Friday is a global price trap and marketers keep falling for it
Read the full article on The Drum
Black Friday. What started as a nightmarish Friday after Thanksgiving in 1950s Philadelphia has been cleverly remarketed as a global phenomenon, a shopper’s haven and the biggest day of the year for sales.
Oh wait, I can hear a rampant Mark Ritson protesting. “Price discounting remains the most stupid f***ing thing you can do”. Here’s why:
The first, very simple reason is profit evisceration. Whilst price-discounting may temporarily boost revenue, you need to ask yourself if those sales are profitable.
“Most companies are lucky to enjoy a gross margin above 30%. You need one hell of a sales surge to justify wiping that out with deep Black Friday promotions.”
This is where the slippery slope of tactical addiction begins. Businesses see a spike in sales and before long, it becomes too tempting to ignore. The only way to replicate that spike? More discounting.
“There is a reason we refer to discounting as a drug. Marketers get addicted. And when they do, brand equity, then margins, then the business go down the toilet.”
If you need even more convincing that price-discounting is damaging to your brand, Module 8 of the MiniMBA in Marketing will leave no doubt.
Learn why marketers must have influence over pricing, how to set prices that maximise profitability and why you should never, ever participate in price-discounting.
ADWEEK: How Target Lost the Middle Class, and Walmart Cashed In
Read the full article on AdWeek
Target and Walmart. Two mighty US retailers who, at one stage, were in much closer competition than they are now. What’s changed?
Over the last five years, Walmart has stuck to a single, tight, benefit-based position, “Save Money. Live Better.”
Meanwhile, Target went down the route of using brand purpose as their position. “The company’s marketing grew increasingly dominated by DEI initiatives, Pride collections, supplier diversity programs, and social justice commitments.”
Here’s some of what happened as a result: “Target’s sales dropped by more than 5% in the second quarter of 2023 after conservative hostility over its Pride merchandise. When the company scrambled to remove this merchandise, it appeared insincere and faced a second backlash from the very community it set out to initially support.”
The lesson here is that the purpose of purpose should only ever be purpose. Brands should invest more in these areas, but not under the premise of increasing sales and profitability. They should do it because they care about them.
Mark Ritson shares his tried and tested way to develop a clear, benefits-based position for your brand in Module 5: Brand Positioning of the MininMBA in Brand Management.
Or if you want to sense check your own brand positioning and learn why ‘purpose’ isn’t a good fit for most brands, read ‘Climbing the benefit ladder: How far is too far?’
ADWEEK: Timothée Chalamet Didn’t Mean to Drag Marketers, But He Did
Read the full article on ADWEEK
The recent promo for Timothée Chalamet’s new film, Marty Supreme, unintentionally shines a light on the problem with many modern marketing teams – tactification.
“Tactification means the almost total obsession with execution that afflicts most marketers and comes at the expense of a broader, deeper grasp of the discipline.”
The 18-minute promo features Chalamet sharing his ideas for the promotion of the film with the agency team in a satirical Zoom meeting setting. Ideas that include drenching the Statue of Liberty and Eiffel Tower in ‘hard-core orange’. It’s pretty funny, and you can watch the full 18-minute promo on ADWEEK.
Without meaning to, the promo highlights an ongoing problem: jumping into tactical ideas without thought or consideration for the customer or marketing strategy. Any well-trained marketer knows this is not the way.
“The sequence has been clear for millennia: diagnosis informs strategy, strategy directs tactics. When you start with tactics, all you ultimately achieve is what Sun Tzu called “the noise before defeat.”
Without this sequence, how do you know the right thing to say, the right people to say it to, and why you’re saying it in the first place?
The MiniMBA in Marketing is also taught in this exact sequence. Mark Ritson will walk you through the key steps involved in marketing diagnosis, strategy and tactics across 10 learning modules.
You will learn how to do marketing properly – and why there is so much more to our art than billboards, TikTok and sponsorship deals. Sign up to our next intake here.
The Drum: Great cinema is losing one battle after another. Blame lackluster marketing
Read the full article on The Drum
The film industry is seeing massive losses in box office revenues. Is Covid-19 still to blame or do the film studios also have some explaining to do?
“The most critically lauded film of 2025, starring one of the world’s biggest movie stars and helmed by one of America’s greatest living directors, is haemorrhaging money like a room full of besuited Japanese assassins after a big night with Uma Thurman.”
As the world exited the pandemic, film studios saw and seized the opportunity to have greater control over distribution, access to viewer data and reduced revenue shared with cinema chains. They slashed theatrical windows and along with them, killed the exclusivity and emotional response generated from anticipation.
What they failed to consider was this; “films with less than 30 days of exclusivity in theatres see diminished box office returns and weaker long-tail digital performance. The sweet spot existed. The studios chose to shrink it.”
This teaches marketers an important lesson: Demand will outperform availability in the long run. Never underestimate the power of exclusivity and ‘the launch.’
“Build trajectory, slow availability and beef up demand. Basically, be the original Ghostbusters with its 502-day window rather than last year’s anaemic Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire with 45 days.”
Before you make any big strategic moves like the film studios from this article, stop. Ask yourself: are you putting yourself in the mind of the customer? Use the MORTN Scale to find out how customer-centric your brand is.
Images (from top): Warner Bros., Andrey / Adobe Stock, William A. Morgan / Adobe Stock, A24