Authenticity has become the ultimate buzzword.

If I had a drink for every time I heard the word Authenticity at the SME conference a couple of weeks ago, I would have been sloshed before midday.

The brilliant Seth Godin once said “Marketing is a contest for people's Attention”, and unsurprisingly he is spot on.

The job of all marketing- irrespective of where it sits in the consideration cycle, is to capture people's attention and take some sort of action.

We often get brands coming to us with an idea of the output that they are looking for- ie I want a ‘viral’ video, I want a PR campaign, I need some 15 or 30 second ads.

The execution.

However, when you think of end result first, you can often take away from the most important consideration-what is the impact that you are trying to achieve?

What do you need to do strategically to move the needle of the business?

This week I’ve been thinking about partnerships.

As a concept partnerships are not new or particularly innovative, but, they can be a solid strategy to get new eyeballs on the brand.

This week I want to talk about a campaign, that by now you have likely seen pop up every time you pick up your phone for a mindless scroll.

It has something that has captured attention from all sides of the globe, people with very different backgrounds, within different subgroups and communities get involved with.

I am talking about Barbie.

April 1st, a date that I eagerly await… who will do the biggest and the boldest, who will raise an eyebrow, and who will manage to fool even the most foolhardy.

Whereas last year was awash with weird and wonderful new flavours and a surprising number of NPD aimed at pets, the three executions that stood out, were incredibly plausible. And in each one, I did have to check the date.

This month's wrap-up is devoted to. BBE: "Big Budget Energy"

This is a phase that was shared by the NICE Marketing Director, Sophie Bond in a talk that I heard last year.

Why is it important? Because people don't buy the best product; they buy the best product that they know about.

I’ve been listening to a podcast this week about Disney, ‘Disniversity’- it picks apart the films, shares the context from which they were made and analyses them from a societal perspective.

This is confession number 2 of things that I know that I shouldn’t do, but I am doing.

Becoming fixated on my competition.

I need to caveat that understanding where you sit in relation to your competition is a vital part of building your defensible value proposition, but understanding and obsessing are two very, very different things.

This week I want to talk about one for the most important but unsexy components of marketing.

It is top of mind because I am not currently doing either of them personally in my business (and I have been doing this stuff for nearly 20 years).

Feb 2023 is a wrap, and so it becomes that time of the month to reflect on the month that was and chat about the most memorable campaigns.

Despite it being the month of love, I’m not going to feature any Valentine's campaigns- if you missed my take on who did it best, here it is, instead this month, I’m featuring three brands that have got people talking.

If I were to ask you to name a creative marketing campaign, you would most likely come up with:

This week I want to talk about two big brands. Before you roll your eyes and say, but Carly, this is not relevant. We don’t have a gazillion dollars for marketing. I know that. This is more about what we can learn from them and then apply to the way we think.

The brands in question are Tiffany + Nike

I’ve not commented on it yet, but I have been playing with AI for the past 8 months or so.

I discovered DALL·E (image generation tool) last summer and have lost many, many, many hours to it. Some hours have been very worthwhile (all my presentation images are now DALL·E generated), whilst others have been a total time sink.

January the time of resolutions, declarations, and the longest time between paychecks, is almost at an end.

I can hear an audible sigh from all brands that are not fitness, health or vegan related.

Challenger brands.

The underdogs, the brands with big ambitions, but tiny budgets.

Going head to head with the incumbents will result in a massive flop, there is no way that playing the same game with less than resource will result in a win.

The power of a ‘good creative idea’.

Yesterday, millions of people woke up thinking ‘it’s blue Monday, the hardest, most challenging day of the year’.

2023… The big question. What should we be thinking, what should we be focusing on, where should we be investing our time, money and energy to deliver monumental returns.

I’ve been back through the archives and identified what I think are the top 10 campaigns from the year and why. There are some absolute gems in here, and if I were to do that thing where I try and identify a commonality, something that they have in common, I would say one thing. They all made me feel something.

Loyalty is the holy grail for all brands.

The one thing that people are told to fight for above all others.

Unfortunately, loyalty isn't actually a real thing.