Staying profitable is more important in inflationary times. We discuss how to achieve this with Marketing professor, Mark Ritson.

Since he was a junior professor, Mark Ritson had one goal: to break through the narrow readership circles of academia and be read by everyone in the marketing industry. A goal he’s doubtlessly surpassed having won multiple awards for his column in Marketing Week. With every piece he strikes a chord with marketers, makes them think, but equally, he polarises the industry.

When Kantar’s Mary Kyriakidi met Mark on his mini-MBA in Marketing, his tone wasn’t provocative. His teaching approach was nurturing and didn’t end on completion of the course. Mary channeled her lingering inspiration from the programme to write series of articles about what brand equity is and the conundrums faced by the modern marketer.

In this episode of Kantar’s Future Proof podcast, Mark offers his point of view on the most pertinent questions (or dilemmas) of the modern marketer, declares his admiration for Kantar’s Meaningfully Different framework and urges brands to go beyond brute salience. “We’ve gone too far”, he says “and belittled differentiation. The minute you get to the long-held propensity for brand equity to reduce price sensitivity, you are in a different world”.

Didactic, explosive and as entertaining as ever, Mark fights back on the tyranny of OR of our times and explains why brand building should absolutely not stop during recessionary times. Also, how a little bit of healthy paranoia can help us to do a better job.