Interview: Mark Ritson on consistency, pricing power, and the myths holding marketers back

In this episode, we’re joined by the brilliant Mark Ritson - marketing professor, columnist and founder of the MiniMBA in Marketing. We talk about the underestimated power of consistency in marketing, his “Bothism” approach to strategy and why insights from B2C marketing also work in B2B. 

Transcript

MichaelAaron Flicker: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Behavioral Science For
Brands, a podcast where we bridge the gap between academics and practical
marketing. Every week we sit down and go deep behind some of the most
important aspects of America's best marketing. I'm MichaelAaron Flicker.
Richard Shotton: And I'm Richard Shotton.
MichaelAaron Flicker: And today we're sitting with Mark Ritson educator,
consultant, columnist, and to us, one of the most provocative and influential
voices in modern marketing.
Let's get into it. Mark, welcome to Behavioral Science for Brands. Richard and I
are so excited to welcome you today.
Mark Ritson: Great to be here, Michael. Good happy New Year. We're just at
the turn. So Merry 2026.
MichaelAaron Flicker: Thank you so much. Before we get into our
conversation today, if you'll indulge me, I'd love to give our listeners a little bit
of background on you, and then we'll get into today's conversation.
So, yeah, I said in the, [00:01:00] oh, please.
Mark Ritson: Look, I'm, I'm, I'm English originally, but I've lived in the States
and then Australia for a long time. I was a marketing professor for about 25
years. Teaching at places like London Business School, Leonard, MIT, and then
at Melbourne Business School. And then I more, it's, it's, my career is actually
in reverse, right?
I started out as a professor when I was way too young and not very good, and
then I became more and more a consultant. So the professor professorial thing
got me into doing a lot of consulting work with a lot of big brands, and that
became the real job. And then in the last 10 years, I became an entrepreneur and
I set up mini MBA, which is basically training marketers at an MBA level, but
online and in a more.

Well, in a better way, basically. And that's my main job now. I, we, we train
about eight to 9,000 marketers a year. That's the hope this year. All, all, all
around the world. And that, that's my main job now is [00:02:00] running those
programs from, from Australia
MichaelAaron Flicker: and from, I saw on the website 40,000 alumni to date
for mini marketing MBA.
Mark Ritson: Yeah. Yeah. 40,000. So we've been going about 10 years. We've
covered about 40,000 and we have big growth plans ahead. So yeah, we, we are
gradually, I think we're, the best estimate we've got is very hard to work this
out. UK is our best market. We think we've trained 4% of British marketers. So
in some ways that's big and in other ways it still gives us a lot of, a lot of, a lot
of pie to eat.
You know,
MichaelAaron Flicker: I think how exciting that is and. One thing you left out
that's so generous of you, you were a longtime contributor of Marketing Week.
You currently are contributing, is it to both Ad Week and the Drum? Is that
right?
Mark Ritson: Yeah, well, a lot actually. So I I, I've moved more into columns
as time has gone on.
'cause I find it's the most enjoyable thing I do and it's the best way to [00:03:00]
promote me and mini NBA, so I write now for the drum in the uk. I write for
Adweek in the US I write for resume in, in Sphe and I write for horizontal in
Deutschland and the drum in, and the drum in Australia. So I've got a lot of
different, different columns going on.
But it's the fun thing. I try and do one in the morning each day before I do other
stuff and it's a, I find it a lovely way to start the day.
MichaelAaron Flicker: That's lovely. So we've prepared for you what we're
calling a quick fire round and Mark in all transparency, we've never done this
before. Okay. So you'll be our, you'll be our test case.
We've got five questions.

Mark Ritson: And I haven't prepped them. You were very kindly sent me the
questions. I definitely haven't read that. There's no interest in preparing
anything. Right.
MichaelAaron Flicker: I think that this makes for the most advice to all good
Richard Shotton: students. Yeah,
MichaelAaron Flicker: yeah,
Mark Ritson: yeah, yeah, yeah. The preparation is well overrated.
Just bullshit your way through it.
MichaelAaron Flicker: You are on the stand, Mr. Tson.
Mark Ritson: Okay.
MichaelAaron Flicker: Question number one. What's one brand [00:04:00]
that you think is doing brilliant work right now?
Mark Ritson: Ooh. Ah, e just one is the tricky bit. Ah, I'd still go Marks and
Spencer, I think in the uk. And if you allow me an international one McCain
fantastically efficient and, and, and brilliant at what they do.
MichaelAaron Flicker: Yeah. If you, for the listeners that don't know about the
Mark and Spencer or McCain, could you give us a Yeah. A little bit of why you
think it's so good?
Mark Ritson: So, marks and Spencer or m and s is a hundred year old iconic
retailer in the UK that had about a 15 year shitty time. But really has got itself
together now and is in the most competitive retail market, I think in the world is
is back on fire again.
And, and it's a, a perfect case study of revitalization. McCain is a different story.
McCain is winning prizes galore for its advertising. It, it, it's managed to
strategically get hold of a commodity thing like potato chips. [00:05:00]
Richard Shotton: Mm-hmm.

Mark Ritson: And essentially build brand build share, but really increase price
in what could have been just, you know, a private label commodity shit hole.
It's, it's built a phenomenal brand pedigree and, and whoever I, I don't know
anyone there. All I know is they're just doing Titanic stuff.
Richard Shotton: Jumping from brands to people. Mm-hmm. A little bit more
hypothetical, if you could have dinner with any ad person dead alive, who, who,
who would it be?
Mark Ritson: Ooh. Look I would say probably ag Laffy, who's the ex, twice ex
CEO at, at p and g is probably my favorite marketing hero.
I wouldn't mind, I've never met him, so I wouldn't mind talking to him. He'd
probably be top of my list. Yeah, I, I'd go, I'd go with, with ag.
Richard Shotton: What was so good about Ag G? What did you admire about
him?
Mark Ritson: I just think he did everything perfectly. I mean, he looked, all
you've gotta know is like p and g is still the high [00:06:00] watermark for
marketing for most people.
Right. And they brought him back, you know, he did an amazing tenure as a
marketing driven, CEO killed a bunch of brands, strategically fixed the
portfolio, got disciplined back to p and g, and then they went, look, we, we
really need you to come back and do it again. And he came back and did it
again, and then set up, you know, it, it, it's a, he's a phenomenal leader, so he,
he'd be, he'd be the, he'd be the guest.
Yeah.
MichaelAaron Flicker: Question number three, what's something that you
believed strongly and have now changed your mind on.
Mark Ritson: Oh probably the, the the priority on segmentation. So I, I was
part of the generation of marketers that were, were told by Ted Levitt that you
had to segment and then target, and then position, and if you went after
everyone, you were doing it wrong.
And the influence of Ehrenberg bass, in order to say actually [00:07:00] mass
marketing is very, very underrated. And there's an argument for mass marketing

changed my mind. I, I'm not, I'm only harp in that camp. I believe in two speed.
So I believe you definitely do mass marketing for the brand, for the long of it. I
still like the target segments for activation, for the short of it for performance,
but I never used to believe in mass at all.
It was always carve out a small chunk of the market. That's how you do it. I, I, I
don't buy that anymore.
Richard Shotton: Okay. Question four on the quickfire round. Hypotheticals,
you've got a magic wand. What marketing perception would you erase from
people's minds, from the minds of all marketers?
Mark Ritson: Oh, I think probably that brand building is delivers results in the
long term only.
So I think one of the big revelations of the last five years is that brand building
works short and long. It's performance stuff that only works short and doesn't
work long, and that that's okay. But if you run a good brand campaign, you'll
start [00:08:00] selling shit the next morning. You, you don't have to wait, you
know, two years for the initial impact.
And I think there's too many marketers laboring under that assumption.
MichaelAaron Flicker: If you could only share one marketing hill that you
would die on, something you would fight to the end on. Mm-hmm. Can you
share with everyone what that is?
Mark Ritson: Oh it's probably market orientation. I, i, i it, if we can just stop
marketers from talking to the market and listening from listening to customers
first.
Everything gets better. Like, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the station that if you
can get a marketer to be market oriented, the train normally goes from there in
the right direction. And if, if you don't start with that, it always goes wrong. So
yeah. Market orientation. We are not here to sell products.
We are here to satisfy the needs of customers. Sounds obvious, but it's not
obvious to most companies.
MichaelAaron Flicker: One, click down on that. What's the best way to hear
what the, what the [00:09:00] customer wants.

Mark Ritson: There isn't one way, right? So it, it, it, one of the tricks of, of
good market research is, is having a portfolio of tools that depending on the
context, enables you to access it.
You know, I'm, I'm, again, I'm a bist, right? So I love my qual, I love
ethnography. There's a place for groups. I love my quant, I love survey, I love
conjoint. I'm a huge fan of, of synthetic data. I think it's superior to, to most
human data now. And so yeah, I like, I like all of that. So it depends, I think is
my unfair answer.
Okay.
MichaelAaron Flicker: Your answer that did not answer, but it's perfect. It's,
it's perfect.
Mark Ritson: It wasn't an answer at all. Yes.
MichaelAaron Flicker: The answer is did not have a preconceived notion of
what's best, but to use all the tools in your tool belt Fair.
Mark Ritson: Yeah. Or, or make sure you consider them and then pick is my
point. Right? Sometimes we do too much, but it, it, it depends on where you are
at the, at that time.
Right. I've [00:10:00] got, I've worked with a lot of quant researchers that won't
do qual and sometimes that's all they needed to have done. Do you know what I
mean?
MichaelAaron Flicker: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Perfect. Perfect. Well, that ends
our quick fire round and now we'd love to open the floor. You started the
conversation by saying, happy 2026.
What's Mark Ritz? Top two things, maybe top three at most. What are the things
you're most focused on as for marketers, as we get underway in 2026?
Mark Ritson: I mean, for marketers, there's a couple for me. I mean, they're all
self-serving, obviously. We're gonna go big on the idea that being trained in
marketing makes you better at marketing, which seems pretty obvious to most
people, but not to the 75% of marketers that don't have any training in
marketing.

So one of the big agendas for me is to make it clear that most marketers aren't
trained in marketing and that leaves them at a significant disadvantage and
they're companies at a significant disadvantage. So that's, that's definitely on my
[00:11:00] list. America is on my list. So we've signed a partnership with
Adweek.
They will launched a Adweek Mini MBA. We've never really gone after the us
strategically at least we're about 5%, 10% American on the course and on the
mini MBA. But we've, that's just been, we've acquired people, you know, we've
never spent money there. So working with Adweek to really go after the US
and, and that's interesting because.
A, it's huge. You know, it's, you know, I always think of it as 10 times the size
of the uk. 'cause there's a network effect as well, you know, with American
companies and also it's America. I was trained in America, you know, I did my
postdoc in the States. I spent my first 10 years in the States. Marketing comes
from the States.
It was invented in America. So to be able to go back with mini MBA and maybe
make it successful has a symbolic value to me as well. You know, it's, it's, it
feels, you know, I'm, I'm closer to 60 than 50 now, so I'm, I don't want to use
the legacy word 'cause [00:12:00] I think that's horseshit, but I, I would like, I
would like to spend the last 10 years of, of my sort of operating time.
I hope I'm not gonna be dead soon. On, on that mission, it feels like it's a great
mission
MichaelAaron Flicker: because so many of our listeners are here in America.
Mark.
Mark Ritson: Hmm.
MichaelAaron Flicker: Give, let's give a space for one. Incremental click on
why the mini MBA meets that need of educating the 75% of marketers who
don't have that. Why. Why is it the right size?
Why is it the right depth? That wasn't in our planned questions, but it feels like
no.
Mark Ritson: Hey,
MichaelAaron Flicker: talk. Talk through it.

Mark Ritson: Hey, keep it, it's a great question for me to answer. Yeah. Thank
you. Well, look, I think there's two main things, right? It's better than any other
training on the planet. I, you know, I won a teaching prize at MIT six weeks
after I got there.
I'm a, you know, I'm a very, very good marketing teacher. You know, I was an
acclaimed professor. Most of the people running these online courses I've never
taught before. I taught for 25 [00:13:00] years, so I know what I'm doing. And
the course is amazing, right? Our net promoter score is 86, you know, I mean,
and, and we, we train senior marketers.
These aren't kids, you know, the average age is 44. So first of all, it's just better
than anything else out there, and we have the data to prove it. And second, I
think equally importantly though, it's done around the student. So there's no live
sessions. We've abandoned time. You do it from home and you do it wherever
you want to do it.
You do it in the gym, you do it in the commute, you do it in the office with your
colleagues. The idea of pulling people into a room for six hours with 99 other
people, it, it's a 17th century model. It's not how people learn. So, you know, the
combination of the best training in marketing in the world and, and the format,
which is a killer.
Yeah, it means we, we know we have a great product. The challenge now is
getting every, everyone in America to do it. And you know that, you know
better than me with [00:14:00] Americans. The good thing about 'em is, other
than there's lots of 'em, and they have a bit of money, is they love education far
more than Europeans.
So if we can get it working, we really feel like there's a huge opportunity.
Richard Shotton: Right. At the beginning when you were talking about the
training amongst Martys, you, you, you, you gave a stat of, you know, roughly
75% of martyrs not getting trade, and that's. Quite high figure. You'd imagine
75% of architects are hopefully are trained properly.
Why do you think as an industry it's resistant to that formal training?
Mark Ritson: Look, I think there's, there's a lot of answers to that. One of it is
we all think, we all start out as consumers, right? And it's not like with
architects, you start out living in a house and you go, Ooh, I think I could
probably design a house 'cause I've lived in one.

But in, in marketing, I think, 'cause we all started life as a consumer, we feel
like we're also already involved in the world of marketing. That's got something
to do with it. Second, a lot of the marketing training is shit. [00:15:00] And, and
it can be used as a very strong argument for not being trained. You know, most
university courses and business school courses in marketing are the, they're the
weak part of an MBA because the people teaching marketing don't work in
marketing and have never worked in marketing.
I don't think that's, that's the right way. So yeah, we are not, we haven't been
doing a good job. And then finally we have, you know, many of our significant
influential figures around three quarters of them, 'cause it goes with the average,
also don't have any training in marketing. And they go out of their way to also
suggest that, you know, you don't need to be trained in marketing.
It's a waste of time. 'cause they're rationalizing themselves. And, and all of that's
nonsense. You, you, you know, I have a very simple sentence, which I trot out
about once a month on LinkedIn when someone goes after me with their, you
know, you don't need this, you don't need that. And the sentence is just that
being trained in marketing makes you better at marketing the end.[00:16:00]
MichaelAaron Flicker: If you were to think about the best feedback you got
from the mini MBA program, things that people learned that they, they point to
and they say, mark, what I took away, like the actual learning I had, could you
share one or two of those?
Mark Ritson: Oh, look, there's two or three. I mean, we, we study this quite a
lot, right?
The confidence piece is huge, right? A lot of these marketers that haven't had a
training do feel deep in their soul, like their imposters and the cure for imposter
syndrome is one, get a train, get a training, and then second, just realize how
bad most people are. So the confidence thing is huge. The strategy thing is
huge.
So most of the marketers we train have just done tactical stuff and suddenly. We
can train them in the strategic approach that sets up the tactical approach and
that sets fire to a lot of them. Another big bit of feedback we get is the big
picture. Most people, even in their sort of 15th year of working in marketing,
are in one little niche of it.
They've [00:17:00] never seen the big picture, they've never joined it all
together, so they can't be a marketer. We, you know, the mini NBA marketing

covers everything, right? Not just comms, you know? So I think getting the big
picture is something a lot of them appreciate as well. And yeah, when you lock
it all together, you, you know, I think our current stat is about 94% of the people
that do the course say it has immediately made them a much better marketer.
So it, it just makes them better at marketing, which, you know, is, that's the
purpose, right? We're not here to educate. It's really not the purpose, right? We
are here to make people better at marketing and, and, and we do it, and they
love being better. Everyone likes improving. It turns out you.
MichaelAaron Flicker: Lovely. So we've, we, we, we've got all some
homework to do.
Let's turn to some of your biggest concepts because if we can explain these to
folks that could start to think about how to engage and, yeah. In one of Richard
and [00:18:00] I's favorite articles of yours, you argue that consistency is the
single most important aspect of marketing. Maybe you can talk about why
Yeah.
And why so many brands are challenged with this.
Mark Ritson: Yeah. I mean, the challenge is the interesting bit, right? I mean,
again, it seems like an obvious point. When you work on a brand or an ad
campaign or, or any part of marketing for a three or four year tenure, you start
to get bored with it. Because the crucial thing is the way we, let's take
advertising as an example.
The way we create an ad is diametrically opposite to how an ad is consumed.
We work on the ad for three months, we focus on it with enormous attention. It,
we remember every aspect of it. We, we are literally eight hours a day looking
at the thing, right? And then once it co goes out into the wild, consumers don't
know which brand it's from, are paying partial attention to it, haven't, don't
really know what the company is.
And so [00:19:00] what happens, again, if you're not market oriented, is
marketers start to forget. The vast majority of the market don't know who they
are, don't pay any attention to them, have no interest in what they offer. And so
consistency becomes crucial because for the most part, you are not operating
with a high level of attention, and most people aren't, aren't taking this huge
chunk of knowledge away each time.

So for me, consistency is really about just making sure there's a baseline of
presence and familiarity, because that's all you'll get for most of the, your
marketing efforts with most of the market. And that's okay, right? But when
consumers get, when marketers get bored with their campaigns, think, oh,
we've, we've done that, we've done a lot of purple, let's try something different.
Of course, they're entertaining themselves, but that's not the point. That's, we've
got it. The consistency is for the consumer.
Richard Shotton: Yeah. There's a, there's an amazing study. It's quite an old
one. It's a 19 77 1, but it's this guy [00:20:00] Lee Ross, I think it was at
Stanford, and he talks about this idea of the false consensus effect.
So essentially he makes the argument that again and again, unless you make
very big efforts to overcome it, we massively overestimate the prevalence of our
beliefs and behaviors. Yeah. So he does this super simple study, gives people a
thought experiment, says, look, you're driving through a street, it's a 30 mile an
hour zone.
You're doing 35. Policeman pulls you over, you bang to rights, gives you a
speeding ticket. But when you get home you realize the speeding ticket's riddled
with errors. You know it's the wrong registration number, wrong car make. So
he says you probably, if you contested it, you could get, you could get away
with it and get the fine rescinded, but you were actually guilty.
So what would you do is the question, would you contest or would you accept
the fine? Once people answer and doesn't really care which way they answer,
the real question is, okay, now you've answered, what do you think everyone
else would do? And what you find is if people would contest the [00:21:00]
fine, they think everyone else would.
If they'd accept the fine, they think most other people would accept it. That's it.
And I think that's what happens often with Martin. You know? Yeah. They feel
bored. They feel like they love this product, and therefore they're assuming
everyone else shares those passions. They don't put enough effort into.
Mark Ritson: It's a very good observation, Richard. It's very good because it, it
really, it really is quite obvious when you look at it that it's silly to do, but
you're absolutely right. I mean, it's a combination of that consensus effect and
lack of market orientation.
MichaelAaron Flicker: So, mark, we're talking about creative consistency.

And maybe you can help define for all of our listeners, what do we mean by
consistency? Do we mean running the same exact ad? Do we mean that parts of
the ad are consistent? Help listeners understand when, when we are advocating
for consistency, what are we advocating should stay the same versus what can
change?
Mark Ritson: Well, you know, there's, there's a sort of a continuum of
consistency, you know, at at the most extreme level. Yeah. I mean, we could
just be talking about running the same [00:22:00] ads for longer. We don't do
that enough. We are pulling ads far too early and we are not, we, we are making
too many ads that, that, so the first level is, yeah, it could just be that at, at a
slightly sort of less extreme angle.
It, it's making sure there's a recurring motif within the work. What system? One
called a fluent device. You know, you think about Spec Savers or Geico having
a kind of a pattern in the ads that it always plays the same way. A consistency of
story stellar artois back in the day, you know, reassuring the expensive, if you
keep coming back at the more base level, it's just having the same distinctive
brand assets present across all the work.
So even if you've got a new ad, you are using the same pallet to make sure it, it,
it looks like you. And then even at the deeper level, it's strategic consistency. So
it's not turning the wheel, you know, all the time with new positions and new
[00:23:00] targets. So right across that gamma, it's, it's basically getting it right
upfront and then allowing the work to, to, to build over many years.
I mean, the general rubric that I apply is, it takes about 10 years to get there.
When you get that, you know, number into your head, the, the bigger picture
and the the need for less twists and turns becomes apparent. I think
MichaelAaron Flicker: it, it's the concept of wearing in versus wearing out.
And you've talked a lot about the, the idea of wear out maybe just being too
heroize or too it's a myth.
It,
Mark Ritson: it, it's a myth. I mean, it came out of work that was done in the
seventies on a lot of college students. And, and like a lot of that work at the
time, it was very experimental and very a contextual, you know, so you can
prove things in a lab that aren't necess, that are scientifically true, but not
externally valid.

And, and I think maybe wear out was one of those variables. [00:24:00]
Certainly what we're seeing from a, a actual data that's been collected in the
wild is that, you know, I, I think that everyone's found the same thing, but
probably the best study is the system One study that looks at. 10,000 ads and
looks at how long they've been in market from first airing to current airing.
And we're talking about a few days to, I think it's seven years. And the data set
is absolutely flat in terms of average impact, average brand building impact. It
shouldn't be flat. If such a thing as wear out were true, we should see some fine
form of declining trend. It's not there. So for, for me, it's a, you know, obviously
yes, at some point you do want to change your ads, but in other cases they may
well keep working for you.
For many years and, and marketers have been far too impatient
Richard Shotton: with that data, could, could there be a bit of a problem with
survivorship bias? Like if you, if you've run an ad for seven days or [00:25:00]
whatever it was, presumably that ad was bloody awful, therefore you stopped it.
So maybe there is a little bit of wear out happening, but.
Survivorship by, its kind of balance it
Mark Ritson: out. I think there's maybe a little bit in there. The thing that
pushes back against it is that the ads that, you know, the, the young ads are still
in market. It's just that they, you know, they haven't necessarily been pulled yet.
Right. So the live ones are in there.
It still might be a, there might be a little bit of survivorship in there, but, but I
think also we've, we've got such a huge sample of data and, you know, analytic
partners have shown the same thing in with a different method. They're
famously, you know, they had, what, 50, I think it was 52,000 ads.
MichaelAaron Flicker: Yeah.
Yeah.
Mark Ritson: And they showed that, you know, 52,100 hadn't worn out and,
you know, 200 had 14. Yeah. 14 in some
MichaelAaron Flicker: real low number. Yeah.

Mark Ritson: So I think, yeah, the, the, the methods are certainly a, you know,
it's a tricky one, right? But generally what we're seeing is. The, the, the mental
models of marketers are incredibly impatient, and the reality of the advertising
they're [00:26:00] producing is far more durable.
Where, how long it goes is a different question to your point, Richard, but I
think ge, you know, I'm, I'm a rhetorical academic in the sense that I, I don't
really care about the stats, right? I, I want, I want to persuade marketers. To go
in market for longer. You know, it's like the field of Bette stuff where everyone
says, yeah, but they're only looking at the award-winning campaigns.
And I'm like, you know, I don't fucking care. Do you know what I mean? Like
what you need to do is invest more money in branding, you know? Now that's
not scientifically correct. It's in, it's inappropriate. Right.
Richard Shotton: But I heard Les eight make a nice analogy. He said, he lean
into that and said, yeah, it's, it's, it's not, is a sliver of campaigns and it's the
better campaigns that are in the IPA effectiveness database.
But he said, he, he, he said, use it. Think of it as a football analogy. It's like
learning about what football is by watching Man City Barcelona and Liverpool.
You know? Yes. Maybe it's a little bit different in non-league, but you can get
the basic rules. That's right. You can get the basic things. I thought that was a,
[00:27:00] a kind of,
Mark Ritson: that's a good analogy.
Yeah. I mean, the problem we get to is we get into the, I mean it's, it's bedeviled
marketing for 50 years. At some point, the American marketing academics
decided marketing was more of a hard science, and we went down this
ridiculous path of. Of being more obsessed with the statistical performance of
the data and the market research than what it was actually telling us.
In practice, we should have been more like, business schools should have been
more like law schools and they weren't. They became more like, you know,
chemistry schools.
Richard Shotton: What, what you be more like law law schools more like case
studies or what, what would
Mark Ritson: Yeah. Look less normal, logical to use a $50 word.

So we, we, we, we went down a path of saying, you know, marketing should be
more scientific. And so what we should do is we should have essentially these.
Very, very arcane high science journals doing extraordinary methodological
handstands to produce knowledge. And the problem with that is it attracts
people to the, to the [00:28:00] marketing academic field who are wonderful
academic researchers, but know fuck all about marketing.
Whereas in law school, you, you get very good lawyers and very experienced
lawyers or people that just love law, teaching law. We could have done with a
bit more of that in the marketing discipline, I feel.
Yes.
Well, and there's a reason for that, Michael. It, it, again, it goes back to not
having any education. So what a lot of these people are doing, I I, when they
talk about how, or that they, you know, I, I get this question monthly, right?
Someone will say to me [00:29:00] in a, in a world where consumer attention
spans are much shorter, where the old rule of marketing doesn't no longer
applies, where everything has changed, and, and you stop them and say, I don't
care what your question is.
You, you, you've, you've panicked yourself into a wobbly mess there. You
know what I mean? None of that is true. You know what I mean? You, you're
talking nonsense before you even get to your question, right? But that's what
happens in an industry where we don't have education. 'cause what we're trying
to say is.
Everything that happened before is, is, is irrelevant, and that's why I, I don't
need any training in this thing. It's all about what's happening right now, which
is where I am right now. It's, it's definitely linked to it as well. Everything we
are learning about marketing right now can be linked to what has happened in
the past.
We aren't changing any faster than we changed 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. It's just
that a lot of these marketers weren't there. When the internet arrived or when
TV supplanted radio, you know, it, it, it's a, it's an industry that's built on
[00:30:00] change, and that's great, but it doesn't mean that everything has to be
thrown out of a window.
And, and, but it helps the people that don't know the history of marketing and
don't know about it formally to be able to say this is completely different. I
mean, you look at product marketers, right? Product managers, they've invented

a completely nonsensical made up vocabulary that's half wrong and half based
on shit from a marketing textbook.
And it's like, what? You know, what are you talking about? You know? Give
MichaelAaron Flicker: us a few examples of that. Like what, what,
Mark Ritson: well, the, you know, the IC ideal customer profile, the ICP, what
the fuck? You know, look, you've just done segmentation and targeting and
portrait in a sort of shitty way all in one go there.
You know what I mean? It's, it's, it's, it's fascinating and they have no idea. You
know, I mean, the one that drives me potty is EE. Everyone's constantly trying
to talk about how the four Ps of marketing are wrong. And not none of them
know what they are, [00:31:00] literally what they are. Right? They've never
read the work.
They don't know how, they don't know what the original intention of it was. It
was, it's still relevant. 60 years later, we live in a marketing discipline that's
obsessed with advertising because we didn't remember what McCarthy was
telling us, which is there are four tactical horsemen, right? And promotion is
one of them.
Don't forget the other three. But we started saying, oh no, but there's another P,
which is purpose, and another one, which is philosophy, and another one, which
is people. Meanwhile, the other three Ps. That he told us, you know, you're
gonna have to watch out for, 'cause it's not just about advertising. All left the
building and went to other places.
So yeah, we, we, we, we reinvent this discipline without first understanding it,
which is a very, it's a very peculiar feature of marketing.
Richard Shotton: Hmm. Because that, that, that seems to be a, a, a theme of
what you regularly write about the over focus on promotion expense of the
other piece.
Mark Ritson: It's, it's not that interesting Richard, right.
I mean comms is, we all got [00:32:00] into marketing 'cause communications
got our attention as consumers, right. We need to. Then once you get behind the
desk, however, acknowledge that the promotional p is easily the least important

of the four, certainly the least valuable. Yeah. Product. Most of the, as I get
older and more experienced, most of this comes down to product.
You, we, Michael's asking me about mini MBA at the start. It, it, it's, we are,
we're marketing it. Okay. I think we're not particularly good at it, but we have a
better product and that's, you know, 90% of the game and marketers can be
involved in product is the lesson. Right. And price. Price is where it's at.
Right. All, all I've learned on my journey over the last 30 years is that it's all
about profit, not revenue. That. Price is the great driver of, of profit more than
anything else in that the company can, can, can actuate and that marketing's
influence on price when the marketer knows what they're doing is phenomenal.
You put those [00:33:00] three things together and you've got a, an amazing,
amazing formula for success. But we're bedeviled with an obsession with, you
know, small 32nd films, which, you know, I've a, you know, I, you know, my
standard line is they're about, you know, 8% total of the marketing field is, is
comm, is communications.
So advertising, you know, what would we say give it about half of that 4%, you
know?
Richard Shotton: So, so when it comes to pricing, what do you think are some
of the most common mistakes that, that, that brands make? What, what are they
biggest watch outs?
Mark Ritson: I mean, the main one is the, the way most companies set price is
without the marketing team.
And it's not like I'm like, oh, we should let the marketing team get involved
'cause they're my friends. Marketers significantly change the way we do pricing
if the marketer is a marketer and not an advertising person, right? So most
companies without marketing influence set price by looking at two things that
are irrelevant.
They look [00:34:00] at the costs of the product and they look at their
competitors' prices through their own eyes rather than through the eyes of the
consumer. And, and that's what finance people do. That's what they think is
important, right? Cost really has nothing. You, you've almost gotta take the
opposite approach.

You must liberate a company from even thinking about cost. It anchors them in
the wrong place. You know what I mean? You, you obviously, you have to
charge more than cost, but other than that, there isn't a lot of input there. We
must move to what is a consumer prepared to pay under certain circumstances
for the product.
And this, of course is the realm of marketing. So we need research to identify
the value and the, and the amount that a consumer would be prepared to pay.
And that can only be done by marketers who are trained in pricing and
marketing and research. The other one that is also huge, probably even bigger
than the initial setting of the price with research and more up your street is the
way we [00:35:00] present a price is more important than the actual price.
And you are probably the only two people that would understand that. I say that
and you go, well, yeah, that's fucking obvious. Yeah. We know that. Nobody
else knows that. Right? Everyone else thinks that the physical dollar amount is
more important than the way I presented it or framed it or anchored it or located
it.
And you know, again, you know, we could do, you know, a nine hour
documentary on it if you wanted, right? Yeah. But basically price setting should
be handled by marketers. Price changes should be handled by marketers, not by
finance people who have absolutely no clue about any of this at all.
Richard Shotton: Well, I think your point about price presentation is
absolutely fascinating.
I always thinking if working with a brand, it's one of the first things I wanna do.
Because if you've got a big website or in, or you're in control of your stores and
you've got a bit of scale, you can run lots of tests. There's an amazing body of
research into how to best [00:36:00] present prices. You know, don't talk about
the total amount, break it down to smaller units, change the comparison set, give
people three options, talk about differentials, not total price.
You can learn within a few hours which of these work for your brand. And it's
straight to the bottom line.
Mark Ritson: And, and the thing that you guys don't understand, not because
you're not stupid, because your world is, look what you can do with price at my
end. When you do that shit and optimize it, the impact on corporate profitability
is, it's insane, right?

It, it, it like, nevermind having a good ad. Fuck that. If, if we can experiment
with price and frame it and, and, and just add, you know, a, you know, a 1%, the
old Wharton studies are very, are very good. They, you know, they did it across
thousands of businesses. A 1% increase in price. It averages out at around nine,
10% impact on profitability.
Right. So it, it's, it's stunning what can happen. Right. And, and, and so yeah, I
mean, [00:37:00] pro, I mean, again, let's come back. We still need a good
product that you still wanna buy and rebuy, but let's put that one down and say,
we've got that worked out. Price absolutely. Is the next place you'd go. What is
the absolute price we wanna set with research?
And then how do you want to communicate and present it? Absolutely.
MichaelAaron Flicker: We had Les Burnett on last year, mark, and he had a
very interesting thing towards the end of our conversation. He said an an
understudied part in his opinion of in the field of marketing effectiveness, was
how. Great brand building can reduce pricing sensitivity.
Mark Ritson: Yeah.
MichaelAaron Flicker: And, and so this is to your point that you, you know,
it's not just the short where you can just display price differently to maybe move
the, the action in the moment, but great full marketing can increase your ability
to raise price and people will be less sensitive to that [00:38:00] change.
Mark Ritson: Yeah, I mean, I, I mentioned McCain when we started, right?
And if you look at McCain's IPA effectiveness winning paper the Grand Prix,
they actually don't increase unit sales at all in the uk. They just double the price
without any loss in demand. Yeah. And, and again, most people miss it. It's like,
yeah, but they didn't increase this, their actual unit sales.
And you're like, yeah, I know. And they couldn't, you know, that doesn't matter
because if you had a choice between increasing. Yeah, your total unit sales are
doubling your actual price. You know, in most situations, you know which way
you're gonna go, right? So, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I, I think it's a, it's a huge thing,
but you need marketers that understand profit and gross margin, right?
I mean, most marketers are running these 30% discounts because they think
that, oh, we'll still get 70% of the profit, right? But, but you won't, you know
what I mean? You've just eviscerated all of your profitability there. You know,

when most companies run a 30, 40% off [00:39:00] all, all systems being the
same, then you are, you are basically not gonna make any money.
Do you know what I mean? Like, of any kind at all. Unless you are, you've
increased your demand phenomenally and you've got unlimited supply. You
know what I mean? It doesn't make sense.
Richard Shotton: Mark, so we've talked about a couple of your themes that
you regularly go back to consistency, the over focus on promotion. I think the
other one that you. Regularly come back to, is an attack maybe on the kind of
the tribal nature of Martin that people fall into camps of either being, it's all
about distinctiveness or it's all about yeah.
Differentiation. You touched on both them, but you've got your idea of double
D. Can you talk to us about
Mark Ritson: Yeah. It has an unfortunate connotation with breasts, which I try
to avoid, but, and I'm not doing it like in a carry on style fashion, but you know,
you know, an unknown fact. I don't write the column titles for my columns.
Right. And so various associate [00:40:00] editors have gone with, you know,
double D marketing being the way, okay,
Richard Shotton: this was not your invention, you washing
Mark Ritson: your hands with, you need to get Russell Pars on to explain
wincing. I'm like, it's true. They are. I mean, I think I might have mentioned the
two D's, but when, when you write it as double D, those who familiar with the
over of Playtex will and Wonder Bra will, will have a different mental image.
Yeah. Look, I, I don't like the tribalism. Because again, I think marketing is
unusual in, in we are, we are a, both, this discipline almost every time that a a
little bit of both, not necessarily in equal amounts, gives you a better result than
choosing A or B. And we can do that with quantum qual research
distinctiveness and differentiation strategy and creative, digital and traditional.
We're about to do it with synthetic data versus actual human data. Right. Which
is better, you know what I mean? The, it turns out when you put 'em together,
they're really, really good A a as they would be, because both is them normally
wins, you know? [00:41:00] So for me, yeah, the battle with differentiation and
distinctiveness has been a harder one for a couple of reasons.

First 'cause I think distinctiveness is the great discovery of the last sort of 10,
15 years. And we thank Aaron Bur bass for that. But also differentiation was
incorrectly developed by Michael Porter in a way that was incorrect. So you
don't get to say that very often, but I'm, I've taken me a long time to get to the
conclusion.
But Porter's whole, whole approach to differentiation is wrong. Not, not its role,
but the way he defines it. As an, as native English speakers, we all know that
unique and different aren't the same thing. I'm taller than Michael. It doesn't
mean that I'm unique in my inches or that Michael lacks inches.
It's that we're different in that I have more and he has less of that thing that's
differentiation and it leads you down a totally different strategic path, which is
much more [00:42:00] realistic but, but ironically much harder to achieve and
then makes sense set next to distinctiveness. Then they become very powerful.
Right. But we've, thanks to Michael Porter, we've spent 30 years sending
marketers out, trying to find something. Unique that literally never existed in
the first place. Right.
MichaelAaron Flicker: I've read your writings on this quite a bit, mark, and so
I just wanna drive home the point for listeners, you use this example of
differentiation, meaning you can have more of something or less than another,
and you're setting that up against saying you need something truly unique in the
world.
Not true. You just talk for another 10 seconds about that. I just think this is the
point that we want to correct in people's thinking.
Mark Ritson: Yeah. Look, and, and, and the problem I've got with Erenberg
Bass is they correctly have shown that most brands don't have unique features.
And I'm like, I know I'm with you on that.
But some of them have more associations for fun or for, you know, friendly or
something, which [00:43:00] can be a very powerful relative driver. So what it
shows you is everyone's on a seven point liker scale. Everyone's gonna have.
Some associations on each of those attributes. And yes, it's correlated partly to
size of brand.
And yes, you've got to be distinctive first to get on the map, to have that. All of
that is true. But if you focus on one or two of those things for a very long time,

with really good creative, with more budget with better media choices, with
products and other PS backing you up over a period of 10 years, you end up.
With actual relative differentiation, which if it's on the two or three things that
are driving factors for consumers can give you a spectacular advantage in the
market. Yeah. So I, I, I still think that the distinctiveness piece is the most
important piece. 'cause both doesn't mean 50 [00:44:00] 50, right? That was be
naive.
I still think distinctiveness is 70, 80% of the game in most brands. But I think an
important piece is, and also we have this and this perceptions which enable us to
sort of, to squeak ahead in, in other cases. So for me, yeah, it's gotta be there,
but it's relative differentiation and it means when you do positioning, you have
to be choiceful.
The biggest problem in marketing right now is positioning is a shit show.
Everyone has too much. We are literally talking one or two things. You focus
upon in your communications, not a PowerPoint deck with, you know, when
you add up all the words, 30 or 40 words, that, that will achieve nothing.
Richard Shotton: Apologies for bringing this up because in your unique style,
you said it's the, a fair but dumb question.
Mm-hmm. You say the most annoying question you get asked is, does this
apply to B2B? Now, [00:45:00] what, why do you think that gets asked? Oh,
God.
Mark Ritson: It's, it's kind, it's like the tribal thing we just talked about,
Richard, right? Yeah. We've got to have some special niche for small brands all
of a sudden, and we've gotta have a completely separate niche for B2B brands.
My point is, you know, it's like chimpanzees and humans, and we can decide
who is who in the B2B B2C analogy. We are 98.7% the same. So, you know,
most of the stuff we can just get on with, do you know what I mean? I mean, my
big problem is someone will say to me, you know, but does this apply to B2B? I
see how it would work for B2C.
And they put it all together in this nice little Coca-Cola colored bag, you know,
and you go, no, no, no, no, no, B2C isn't a thing. Right? Because in that B2C
bag, you've got yeah, drinks, you've got yoga, you've got violins, you've got car

insurance, you've got, you know, sex toys, you've got fucking mortgages. You
know, it, it, [00:46:00] none of them are the same.
They're all different, you know? So you are different. They're different. There's
a co, there is a, you know, a, a a, a common 98.7% theme in this that we should
just recognize and move on. Do you know what I mean? I'm, I'm, I'm really
tired of it. We are literally 50% B2B, and 50% B2C on the mini NBA. The
syllabus is the same.
We see no deviation in net promoter score or happiness between the two groups
at all. You know, and if you look at the B2B Marketing Institute at LinkedIn,
they've done that brilliant work over the years of pulling mostly B2C theories
into B2B and then bringing some B2B theories, like the 95 5 rule into B2C.
That tells you everything. Right?
Richard Shotton: Oh, go on. So for the people that don't know the 95 5 rule.
Mark Ritson: Oh yeah. I mean it's John DO'S theory from Ehrenberg Bass
originally. It's linked to me though, and I think I wanna make that link more,
more, more, more famous. [00:47:00] Pete Weinberg and John Lombardo from
at the time were working at the LinkedIn B2B Institute, came to Sydney and
then flew first to Tasmania to get incredibly drunk with me.
And then. John, Pete just stayed in bed, but John to his credit, went to the
Ehrenberg Bass Institute with an enormous hangover at like 6:00 AM flew to
Adelaide. Met John Doz, and John was telling him about, you know, his, and he
said, he sort of mentioned it in passing, you know, that, you know, well,
obviously 95% of consumers are not in market at any time.
And, and Lombard was like, what was that? Say that again. And they made
John's theory famous. Right. So what, what basically do has discovered is that if
you look at any market, it started out in B2B, but it applies to B2C pretty, pretty
well. So you've got, basically, you've got 95% of the market who are. Not in
market right now.
I always use men with haircuts to illustrate the point. If you offered [00:48:00] a
free haircut service on the street today, 95% of men wouldn't stop because even
though it's free, they don't need a haircut, right? So they just keep moving. But
5% would go, great, I need a haircut. The minute you get that split, and it is not
95 5 in every case, but there's a proportionate amount everything changes and it
explains most of the good theories of targeting the 95 5 rule.

For example, if we think about the 5% who are in market, you want to go after
them with targeted rational product, bottom of the funnel communications,
right? But because there's 19 times more. Not in market. You probably wanna
spend more money predisposing the rest of the market because it's too late often
to get them when they come in.
So we are predisposing the 95% with top of funnel emotional mass marketing.
That's consistent so that when they are [00:49:00] triggered to be in purchase,
they carry our brand preference, the salience for that brand into their, into their
decision. And the data that has started to emerge says 70, 80% of the time the
brand that you did have salience for here.
Is the one that you'll buy here? Yeah. Now again, you want to do both, but I
think 95 5 is probably the most important new theory in certainly in 10 years in
marketing.
MichaelAaron Flicker: And if you, and if you're listening to this conversation
and you're excited to learn this concept, one of the best things for marketers to
track, to know how they're doing towards this goal is there, like how can they
know you made the compelling argument 10 year timeframe?
We want to pick a strategy. Yeah. We want to pick our assets. How do I know
I'm moving in the right direction? What are the, what are the things I should
look at, the signals or the leading indicators to know if I'm on the right track?
Mark Ritson: Look, again, we come [00:50:00] back to approaching it
differently, right? So for the 5% you've got good old fashioned ROI, which is a
highly appropriate metric.
Yeah. We give ROIA bunch of shit correctly, but not for the 5% I spent, you
know. A hundred thousand dollars targeting a bunch of people to buy a muck
rib sandwich. How many of them bought it within the next 24 hours? 'cause
that's the, the timeframe, right? We can see the cost, we can see the return. We
can test and learn.
So yeah, performance marketing and performance metrics for, for that is
appropriate. The problem is for the brand building stuff, you can show a, a
tentative link to what eventually happens later with econometrics and, and you
should do that. But on a day-to-day basis, if you, as you know, people ask me
all the time, what, what are the best me?

What are the, what are the killer metrics? And the answer is, well, what are your
objectives? That's the killer metric, right? It's whatever the objective is. So if
you are trying to drive salience, if you are trying to drive brand preference or
[00:51:00] consideration, they're the things you should be measuring o on the
long term from the mass market o on your campaign.
So brand metrics for branding and performance metrics for performance. And
don't mix the two up is the point.
MichaelAaron Flicker: Separate the strategies, separate the tactics, and then
separate the analysis for the results.
Mark Ritson: Yeah, I mean, I'm, I, I, I push back on people that say, look, the,
the long and the short, it's all the same at the end of the day. Well, it is
ultimately, but it is the key point about field and Burnett's work for me, which is
very important to my career, is that it's a really crap title.
It's a really good title for a book, but it doesn't capture the real width of their
work. It wasn't just long and short. It was mass and targeted. It was emotional
and rational. Yeah. It was 95 and it was five. Yeah. There's much more to that
work than just long term short term. Right. That made for a great book title, but
it really [00:52:00] hides the true width of their contribution to marketing.
And I think you do need two pots, like separate your budget. I, I see marketers
that can do this or can do that. There's very few that can do both. Most good
CMOs have got two distinct teams, and I think that's appropriate as well.
They're very different jobs with, with very different paradigms attached to them.
MichaelAaron Flicker: I'm watching our time and I'm going to think, Richard,
shall we ask Mark any quick, any, any questions on behavioral science that our
listeners would love and we want to get Mark's perspective on? Yeah, yeah.
Richard Shotton: Well, the only one I, I was, I was thinking of maybe quick
before they get, we get to that like you've got a very good line in, in pity quotes,
mark in the, in the columns.
And one of the ones I like that you said before is what people think of you is far
less important than the more brutal objective of getting people to think about
you.
Mark Ritson: Yeah.

Richard Shotton: Now, why do you think brands play it safe so often?
[00:53:00]
Mark Ritson: Oh, I, I think we've managed brands with too much emphasis on
image and not enough on salience.
And I think we have to change our approach, right. I, I think we can trade back
to my earlier point. You know, I think salience is 70, 80% of it and brand
image, brand associations, maybe it's 20%. Once you get that balance, it's clear
that you need to trade a lot of the control and perfectionism that we had in the
naughties in brand management.
You know, ooh, you could destroy your brand, you know, with, with
inconsistency and doing something that isn't quite right. We have to realize that
you still want to be on brand, but there's a lot more forgiveness out there. And
actually you can trade a little bit of taste, trade, a little bit of perfectionism so
that people notice you.
And I think my career is a good example of that. You know, I've done things
I'm very I say embarrassed about, but I'm not proud of, you know, I put my ass
on the front cover of, of of, [00:54:00] of the marketing week. That's a good
one. I did an article about the size of my penis, you know, it's pretty distasteful
stuff, right?
But it, it, I think it was essential in, in, in order to get to that salience point.
'cause if it's not interesting and salient, all, all the bets are off. So, yeah, I do
think we, we overconcern ourselves with the image at the expense of salience.
And you know, the first rule of marketing is they must know that it's you.
Richard Shotton: Yes. 'cause maybe the e the most, one of the most effective
ways to increase attention or awareness is sometimes to sacrifice a small
proportion of people disliking you. You know, there will be people who have a
Mark Ritson: Yeah.
Richard Shotton: You know, angry reaction to some of those tactics. But for
every one of those, it's probably 10 that know the name, know the that's it.
Article and and, and at least of thinking about it
Mark Ritson: and, and even the ones that are angry about a certain thing,
you've [00:55:00] achieved your salience and there'll be other battles down the

track, right. If you don't exist in their consciousness. You know, I, I mean, you
know, we talked about America at the start of the interview.
It's, you know, I, I'm neither loved nor hated in America, and that's, that's the
problem. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's, that's the issue. You know what
I mean? Without that, you don't, you literally don't exist. So, yeah, I do think
you have to take, I think you have to realize you are less well known than your,
you might think your brand is, and I think you have to also acknowledge that
people forget about your brand all the time too.
One of the implications of salience is it isn't like awareness. It's, it's a, it's a
constant battle to be at, at the top right, to come first, right? So, yeah, I think it,
it, it, it has to be, the main focus is constantly producing it. And again, the
contrast with brand managers is they think, well, I'm, you know, I've been doing
this job for 10 years.
Everybody knows our brand. You know, I, I work for Benefit Cosmetics many
years ago, a brilliant team, brilliant [00:56:00] CEO, who never really done any
research. And we did a bit of research. And in the US market, which we thought
was mature and basically done, we had something like 14% awareness. And
they, they thought there was something wrong with the research.
And I'm like, no, no, no, no. It's just that most of the market don't really think
about you. You think you are done because your sales have been a billion
dollars flat for five years. That's not the case. You know, the, the game always
goes on, you know.
Richard Shotton: And do you think there are any brands that spring to mind
who've not fallen for that trap of playing to things too safe who have actually
benefit through controversy?
Mark Ritson: Look, the classic one in the UK's brew dog, right? Which, which
you know, has had its challenges, to say the least with its operational structure.
But I think they're the first brand that worked out. And partly 'cause their
positioning was they were this real authentic craft ale, you know, and they were
gonna be real with their statements.
But that quickly you know, evolved 10 [00:57:00] years ago into, we're just
gonna put out it really offensive outdoor advertising, really offensive, you
know, brand names. Was it Pony Killer was one of their, one of their ails, you
know what I mean? Like it, oh,

Richard Shotton: dead, dead Pony Club, I think.
Mark Ritson: Dead, dead, dead Pony Killer and stuff.
I mean, you know, they, they realized that people talking about them in the pub
was kind of the goal. And what they said wasn't as important as Brew Dog
being there. And I, I, you know, the, the, the, the great example that I always
used was, was Marmite during Brexit. Marmite being a Unilever brand, they put
the price up because of the, the, the, the sudden departure from the UK was
gonna cause currency fluctuations.
So Marmite price went up significantly and there was a, a month of incredibly
negative PR about it in the British newspapers. Tesco said, we refuse to sell
Marmite 'cause they put the price up because of Brexit, blah, blah. You couldn't
have seen a worse result. U gov had huge declines in [00:58:00] that brand's
reputation, everything else.
And then at the end of the month, Marmite had sold more Marmite than ever
before. And the lesson is salience, right. That, to your point, yeah. People were
pissed off with Marmite, but fuck, they were talking about it like never before.
So we have to recognize that. Yeah. That is a key point. The only caveat is that
leads you into that blind alley of there's no such thing as bad publicity There is.
As, as Elon Musk is clearly demonstrating to us. It's just much less likely than
we once thought.
Richard Shotton: Yeah. Yeah. And maybe Elon Musk is a, an example of how
far you do have to push things to then start having an effect on, on, on, on sales.
Mark Ritson: Well, it's, it's that and also there's a couple of interesting factors.
Another one is how famous brand, well, family competition
Richard Shotton: and Yeah,
Mark Ritson: yeah. Well, how famous the brand already is. If it's a small
brand, you could have Hitler consuming it and it would be good for you because
you have like N point N 1% and suddenly you, you get a hundred percent of the
[00:59:00] market. Finding out a value.
See what I mean? So size of brand is important. The other one is whether the
publicity is running counter to your position. We forget now, but Tesla was a

progressive environmental brand not that long ago. So you, you add all that
together and Yeah. The, the Tesla situation is a perfect example.
MichaelAaron Flicker: Your raising of Elon Musk no, not, not a not a
personality.
Easy to miss. You've softened your stance on personal branding. Mm-hmm.
You've once said an idiot's discipline filled with charlatan's, and we have
learned that some of the rules of branding apply to individuals. But you could
talk about what made you strong feel so strongly in the past, and what's changed
either in the market or what's changed.
In the world that has caused you to change your opinion of that a little bit?
Mark Ritson: Oh, look, I still think it's pretty nonsensical, right? [01:00:00] So
and the but I, I have been, yeah, I, I think I, I was too dismissive of it is, is
probably what I would say, right? And what I mean by that is I, I think if you
look at how we typically position brands, we use three Cs.
So we look at customer C, what does the customer want, company C, what have
we got? And then competitor C, who are we up against? And we try and find
within that, how we would position a brand. The problem I always had with
personal branding was, the minute you start tweaking the company c in personal
branding, which is you, you look like a wanker, right?
And, and the, and you can smell the inauthenticity. 80 feet away that someone is
doing this because they're positioning themselves. Right. So my, my sort of, my,
my, my back, my back position on it now is I do see how if you don't mess with
yourself and you don't try and change yourself, thinking about what customers
think of you or [01:01:00] people think of you versus the alternatives is still a
worthwhile pursuit.
But the minute we start going, oh, you know, I'll think, I'll, I'll do this or I'll do
that, I, I mean, you know, I, you know, for good and for bad. This is, this is, this
is how I am. Do you know what I mean? But I have thought more about how it
is presented with those other two vertices to be fair. So, yeah. Yeah. I think I've,
I've watered down my position a bit.
It's still a lot of stuff about how to dress and talk and shit like that. Right. And,
and of course the, the rule there is do you know, to thine own self be true?
Right. Do it your way, you know?

MichaelAaron Flicker: Mark, we're coming towards the end of our
conversation, but we wanted to ask, what would you like to leave listeners with?
We've covered a wide range of topics, you've shared a lot of very compelling
ideas, but if you had to wrap it up for everybody, what's the thing you want for
people to leave [01:02:00] this podcast thinking or feeling?
Mark Ritson: Look, I think the main one would be if there's one thing we work
on with companies and, and with, with marketers when we train them, it's just
have your strategy before you get involved in anything else.
Right. And, and, and strategy isn't that complex, right? We've never had more
strategists in marketing and it's never been more confusing. Strategy is just three
things. Who am I targeting? What's the position, which includes the distinctive
assets as well. And then what's my handful of objectives? I, I, if, if people can
be clear on those three things for their brand going into 2026 there, they'll be in
a much stronger position on a, on a, on a multitude of levels.
So yeah, have, have a strategy. It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be
mind boggling. It should be on a page. And if you can just spend a bit of time
clarifying that and articulating it to yourself, you will be better off. [01:03:00]
Richard Shotton: You stressed. Handful objectives is the key there, limiting
them and the danger of adding on a whole.
Laundry
Mark Ritson: list. Yeah. Yeah. We've got loads of data on this. You, you want
a handful, literally you want four or five. If you have more than that, they don't
happen. They just become a shopping list. Right. So, you know, ultimately, you
know, strategy is deciding what you're not gonna do. So when it comes to
targeting, it's, it's, you know, zoo narrowing in.
When it comes to positioning, as we've said, it's a couple of things. And when
we come to objectives, it's three or four things that you're gonna do this year,
even if you're a big brand. You know, again, ag Laffy has the great quote. If, if
you have 10 or 11 objectives, they're not objectives, they're dreams.
That won't come true.
MichaelAaron Flicker: It is a lovely idea to end on. A reminder for all of our
listeners. Www. Do people still say that anymore? [01:04:00] www.mini

mba.com is the place to go to learn more about Mark Ritson's work on how we
can educate all of our marketing team members and all of our industry to
become smarter, more holistic marketers.
Mark, thanks for being with us today and to all of our listeners at home, if you
found this compelling, if you found this interesting, please share it with others
who would find it helpful because that's how we spread important good ideas
and like follow and comment. It helps us reach more of the right people that can
be helped by this conversation.
Until next time, I'm MichaelAaron Flicker.
Richard Shotton: And I'm Richard Shotton.
MichaelAaron Flicker: Thanks for being with us, mark.
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