Our Monthly Round-up of the key pieces in Marketing for April – we’ve chosen four key articles, a webinar and a podcast. And in case you missed it, we have also attached again the link to Zoe Scaman’s thesis on Strategy in the era of AI. Curated specifically for your sector, all our monthly reviews are now available on our website. http://haiconsulting.com/category/views/

Our April highlights:

1. Our top pick this month is a piece from the Harvard Business Review – April edition. Michelle Taite explains ‘How One Marketing Team Made AI Part of Its Daily Work’. In today’s always-on environment, AI tools can help marketers optimize and personalize their campaigns quickly and efficiently. But AI alone won’t yield meaningful campaigns. Impact-driving work requires both human ingenuity and machine speed — a combination marketers can’t fully embrace without daily practice. This article discusses how one team experimented with used AI to complement their creative marketers on various tasks, and how it resulted in their most impactful campaign to date.

Here is the link: https://hbr.org/2024/04/how-one-marketing-team-made-ai-part-of-its-daily-work?ab=HP-hero-featured-image-1

2. Secondly, we have picked this webinar by Mark Ritson, which he did at the end of March though we didn’t get the link until April. Mark has been brand vociferous for some time, but on 26th March, Mark attempted a world-first Mass Consulting Rally. Thousands of marketers came together as Mark led them through a series of diagnostics to work out exactly what they should focus on for marketing success in 2024.

Here is the link: https://mba.marketingweek.com/ritsons-mass-consulting-rally/

3. Thirdly, it’s a seriously good piece on Effectiveness, headlined by Laurence Green and Thinkbox. This immense new study brings together the econometric databases of Ebiquity, EssenceMediacom, Gain Theory, Mindshare, and Wavemaker, to create the most comprehensive analysis of advertising effectiveness to date. Collectively it has examined £1.8 billion worth of media spend across 141 brands and 14 categories. You can now what the sessions and download the slides.

Here is the link: https://www.thinkbox.tv/news-and-opinion/events/the-new-business-case-for-advertising

4. Fourthly, we’ve become quite a fan of the Moving Tribes substack and particularly its views on Retail. Ian Shepherd curates this one, its his home for writing, sharing content and other digital things, and in this piece he looks at ‘stealthy business.’

Here is the link: https://movingtribes.substack.com/p/stealthy-business

5. Fifthly, we pick a piece from the Creative Salon on the integration of Creative and media agencies or the reimaging of the Full Service agency. The move aims to bridge the gap between creative and media agencies, providing end-to-end marketing solutions. It was one of the boldest and biggest agency structural moves of recent times, reuniting media and creative.

Here is the link: https://creative.salon/articles/features/sarah-golding-t-pm

6. Sixthly, we pick a podcast from the Uncensored CMO, John Evans curates ‘a CMO Masterclass’ he interviewed Craig Inglis this month, on how John Lewis redefined emotional advertising. Craig highlights the role that marketing plays in driving positive change, by shinning a light on everything special. He discusses the role of the CMO – perception versus reality.

Here is the link: https://uncensoredcmo.com/130

Media: Brian Jacobs’ and his colleagues experience in media, market research and advertising ensures that clients make the most of the services that they buy, as well as being well placed to assess new opportunities. Calling for greater transparency – they also produce the Cog Blog which is an interesting media read. https://www.bjanda.com/blog/advertising-who-cares/

AI Special: We had this as our Top Pick last month and because feedback was so good – we decided we should include it somewhere again. This is Zoe Scaman’s thesis on Strategy in the era of  AI. A must read! https://www.canva.com/design/DAF_JFMQSX0/a_RRBMuSZ3Z9w-sKGgZe9g/view

Time for the Work: It’s congratulations to the RSPCA and AMV BBDO this month, for a spot ‘For every kind’ you might not have seen it due to the size of budgets, but we just loved it. https://www.rspca.org.uk/-/news-rspca-launches-for-every-kind-campaign-to-rethink-animals-in-200th-year#:~:text=The%20For%20Every%20Kind%20campaign,hit%20to%20call%20for%20Respect.

Back to Henley: I hope you had a good Bank Holiday weekend, the Town is getting ready for regatta – the boats are re-appearing on the river. Our weekly column in the Henley Standard continues where we interview local entrepreneurs. It’s called Let’s Get Down to Business. We were delighted this month to interview Richard Pinches, a photographer and videographer, who runs Meadows Farm Studios in Henley. https://www.henleystandard.co.uk/news/business/188539/lgdtb14424.html

We are here to help you with your agency ecosystem, growth plans, resourcing structures, and benchmarking to improve your marketing performance – do give us a call with any questions we can help you with.

Next month, we will bring you the AI highlights from the Adforum Worldwide Summit from New York.

Kind regards,

Will