Our latest thinking
and thought leadership
The rebrand of Jaguar – Go woke and/or go broke?
The hottest topic this week among marketing people and the adland was the announced re-branding of the luxury car maker Jaguar. They pivot from a very traditional top notch segment car manufacturer to a Gen-Z, woke-ish electric vehicle only brand. Even the iconic jumping cat symbol has been removed. In the announcement they themselves stressed…
Why wearout in advertising basically doesn’t exists
The concept of ad wearout – the idea that a campaign initially works and then loses its impact – is not new. But perhaps this theory has less to do with consumer behavior and more to do with billing models in the advertising industry. Or are you surprised that you see around this time each…
The truth about short term performance and long term brand building
2 weeks ago I wrote a posting on Linkedin featuring an article in the popular German business & management magazine WirtschaftsWoche that quoted popular marketing leaders from top tier brands like Nestle, Vodafone, L’Oreal and also leading agency speakers that came to the conclusion that they were over-invested in performance marketing over the past years.…
The case of Nike and the power of distribution
There was a lot of buzz recently about Nike and its CEO John Donahoe, who got dismissed from his precious position after all. The economical impact was dramatic as well: Nike Q2 24 financial results. 25bn of market cap lost in a day (70 in 9 months). 130 million shares exchanged in the stock market…
How to build successful Client Agency relationships
The history of client and agency relationships date back to the early days of marketing and advertising and was ever since under constant transformation. The continuous fragmentation of agency types and ongoing pricing pressure from big procurement lead client organizations are just only two of many challenges this industry faces. No wonder this results in…
Why you should not over-promise to your clients
“Yes of course, all this formats are also included in our proposal” or “Sure, we can deliver the entire campaign within the next month” are typical confirmational answers of someone in an agency telling the client that everything will run as she/he expects it. Sometimes those things are said without checking internal the do-ability of…
Growth is not a strategy
“We want to grow at x% by y” is a typical top tier management saying at annual starter meetings or at mid-year motivational meetings, when things don’t go as expected so far. The entire company is getting whipped up by this saying to get more revenue from their clients and achieve the growth agenda at…
A lesson about dull ads and not delivering the promise
Before starting of with the actual marketing part of this post, I need to give you some cultural insights, as the product I am going to speak about is a very regional phenomena from Austria and South of German: the ‘liver-cheese’. Put in between a roll the liver-cheese is a typical snack, comparable to a…
Cannes 2024 – Some take aways
The world famous Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity was happening this week, and I as usual kept an eye on the news and side stories from the event. If you are working in the advertising industry, it is the one award show everyone looks forward to take home a lion trophy. There has on…
Marketing and AI:a realistic perspective as of 2024
Adland and (mostly) all other marketing people are going bonkers about AI since the launch of the first chat-GPT Version over one year ago. We see the use of generative AI in visual context that replaces manual work of graphic designers but also in other areas of the marketing field like branding, strategy and many…