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Our weekly digest of marketing-related news will keep you up to the mark on everything from FMCG to brand strategy, loyalty programmes to fashion marketing.

  • People like ads to make them laugh

    Funny ads are becoming harder to find, according to Dom Boyd, Kantar UK MD for insights. He argues that people don’t want ads reminding them of how tough things are. People are hardwired to respond to humour. It not only gives brands a chance to stand out, it is also one of the most powerful ways of creating an emotional connection which in turn triggers memory associations. Laughter is also one of the best medicines in times of crisis so brands should be bold and not be afraid of making people smile and laugh!

    thedrum.com, 27 July 2020 (Boyd)

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  • Strategies for sales and marketing alignment

    Sales and marketing alignment or “smarketing” can be hard to get right. The author has talked to various marketers about their experiences in this area but found that none of them had the same advice or used the same processes. She decided to compile a set of best practices. Here she proposes a few alignment strategies before providing ten of the best tried-and-tested “smarketing” tips.

    blog.hubspot.com, 23 July 2020 (Samsing)

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  • Marketers use of social listening

    For a long time now, marketers have been turning to social media to gauge sentiment and respond to people, but the current pandemic has made it more important than ever to listen to consumers. Research by Gartner back in March found that 51% of marketing leaders around the world used social listening platforms to keep abreast of consumer needs during the coronavirus.

    emarketer.com, 16 July 2020

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  • Whether to outsource…or not

    Outsourcing marketing tasks to a third-party can help to relieve some of the pressure faced by an overstretched marketing team. This article looks at the advantages of outsourcing and which parts of the overall marketing strategy would be best-suited to outsourcing rather than being dealt with in-house.

    blog.hubspot.com, 6 July 2020 (Creswick)

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  • How to be resilient and efficient

    As businesses start to ramp up again, their challenge is not just one of short-term survival but about building resilience to protect themselves from future, unexpected shocks. Resilience takes many forms but this article focuses on operational resilience defined as the, “capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and retain its basic ability to function”.

    managementtoday.co.uk, 30 June 2020 (Birkinshaw and Gallien)

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  • TikTok launches business ad product

    TikTok has launched TikTok for Business aimed at attracting brands to its advertising products at a time when they are moving away from other platforms. TikTok which already has various advertising options, is using the initiative to actively help brands with advice on how to use the platform. At the beginning of the year, TikTok became the most downloaded non-gaming app; this puts it in a good position to attract ad spend at a time when Facebook is facing its largest-ever advertising boycott.

    thedrum.com, 25 June 2020 (Watson)

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