My marketing thoughts, my marketing projects and anything in between. Since that £150 logo project to now, my journey in marketing, always learning. 20 years and counting in marketing working with small, medium and large businesses. Get in touch today - info@nutsaboutmarketing.com

Artificial intelligence inevitably featured heavily at Social Media Conference Cymru, but the most interesting discussion was not about which tool could generate the best image or video. The bigger question was what happens to creative value when the cost of producing content falls dramatically. That is where Dr Alex Connock’s session became particularly interesting. His argument was that generative AI is making competent content incredibly cheap, fast and scalable. Text, ima

Social Media Conference Cymru gave me plenty to think about, but the strongest theme running through the day was not really about platforms, trends or algorithms. It was about purpose. Social media teams are often surrounded by activity, metrics, requests and deadlines, yet the more important question is whether any of that activity is actually helping the organisation achieve something meaningful. Beth Thomas captured that perfectly when she reflected on being very good at u

The final advert can complete a sale without being responsible for everything that made the customer likely to buy. Marketing attribution often rewards the last visible touchpoint while ignoring the load of memory, experience and familiarity already sitting underneath it. The last interaction gets the applause A customer decides they need running shoes, searches online, clicks a paid advert for a familiar sports brand and buys twenty minutes later. The analytics platform reco

Most of the people who might buy from you are not shopping today. Marketing has to convert the demand that exists now while also improving the chances that future buyers know, remember and consider the brand when their moment eventually arrives. Current buyers are unusually visible People who are in market search, click, visit product pages, compare prices and fill in forms. Their behaviour creates useful signals that platforms and sales teams can observe. Because those signa

Performance marketing can become remarkably efficient at harvesting existing demand. The difficulty is that no amount of optimisation can create an unlimited supply of people who currently need the category. Efficiency eventually hits a ceiling A business discovers that search advertising works. It improves landing pages, tightens targeting and increases spend. Customer acquisition remains healthy, so the budget grows again. For a while, more investment produces more sales an

This week I started the Mini MBA in Marketing with Mark Ritson, and it feels slightly strange writing that after working in marketing for more than 15 years. Notepad out, headphones in, I have taken to my home office in the evenings and tried to make sense of it all. I've run my own marketing business since 2015, worked in-house at small and large businesses, worked with football clubs, created websites, events, sponsorship, digital campaigns and worked with plenty of busines

Think of Paris and there is a good chance you picture the Eiffel Tower. Think of London and Big Ben might appear in your mind, while Sydney can immediately bring up the distinctive sails of the Sydney Opera House. You do not need to see the name of the city alongside them because the image itself is enough to trigger the association. These landmarks are not distinctive brand assets in the traditional marketing sense, but they behave remarkably like them. They have become powe

There is a particular type of social media graphic that I am starting to recognise before I have even read it. It has too much text, an odd mixture of fonts, a slightly over-designed background, colours that do not quite belong to the business and a layout that somehow feels familiar even though I have never seen the advert before. Then I look a little closer and realise why. It is another AI-generated social media poster. The strange thing is that the businesses using these

Marketing people naturally enjoy new things. A new campaign gives us something different to create, a new visual identity is exciting to design and a new strapline gives everyone something fresh to discuss. There are absolutely times when brands need to evolve, but I think the industry can sometimes underestimate how valuable consistency is precisely because marketers become bored with their own work much faster than customers do. Someone working inside an organisation might

One of the easiest mistakes a business can make is to confuse an ambitious target with a marketing strategy. Targets are useful because they create focus and accountability, but they become dangerous when they are detached from historical performance, available resources, market conditions and the mechanics required to achieve them. I once worked within a marketing team where success was heavily judged by the number of marketing-qualified leads generated. There was nothing un

A polished website, busy social feed and full campaign calendar can coexist with weak marketing. The uncomfortable question is not whether marketing activity is happening, but whether it is changing anything that matters. Activity is not effectiveness Marketing has become unusually good at producing visible proof of work. Campaigns launch, emails go out, videos are published, events happen and dashboards fill with reassuring numbers. None of those things is inherently bad, bu

Why rural destinations need to think beyond social media, and start treating tourism marketing as economic development. There is a common misunderstanding about destination marketing. People often reduce it to social media. Post more reels. Make the Instagram grid look cleaner. Use better photography. Capture sunsets, food, coast, mountains, families and local businesses, then call it a strategy. Social media matters, of course. A destination that looks inactive online is mak

There is a strange problem in marketing. Much of the theory we learn is built from some of the biggest and most successful brands in the world, yet the overwhelming majority of marketers do not work for businesses like Coca-Cola, Nike, Unilever or McDonald's. They work for smaller companies, regional organisations, owner-managed businesses, charities, universities, sports organisations and SMEs where budgets are limited, teams are small and every pound spent has to work incre

Some of the best marketing opportunities I have worked on have not begun with somebody saying, “We need a marketing campaign.” They have started with an operational issue, a commercial conversation, a customer problem or an idea that sits somewhere between several departments. That is because customers do not experience organisations through the same departmental structures that exist internally. A customer does not care whether ticketing belongs to commercial, the website be

I have spent a huge part of my career working in digital marketing. Websites, social media, email, online advertising and digital content have been central to what I have done for years, so I am hardly going to argue that organisations should turn their backs on screens. But some of the marketing ideas that excite me most at the moment are physical. There is something interesting about a real object in a world where so much communication disappears with a swipe. A sticker, sh

For years I have described myself as an ideas man and a problem solver. Give me a coffee and a business or marketing problem and my instinct is usually to start thinking about what could be built, changed, communicated or created. That part of my personality has probably driven most of my career, from graphic design and websites through to social campaigns, events, sponsorship, email marketing and digital projects. What has changed over time is not my enthusiasm for ideas, bu

One of the things I enjoy most about event marketing is how much value can be created from a relatively short period of activity if the thinking around it is right. A major sporting moment might last an afternoon. An athlete interview might take ten minutes. A photographer might capture an image in a fraction of a second. Yet each of those things can feed multiple audiences and channels when the content has been planned as part of a wider system. This year has given me plenty

Marketers are obsessed with getting attention, but attention on its own is not particularly valuable if nobody remembers who created it. We have all seen adverts that are funny, emotional or beautifully produced and then struggled to remember which brand they belonged to. From an entertainment perspective they may have succeeded. From a marketing perspective, that creates a rather obvious problem. The brand needs to get some of the credit. This is why I have become increasing

Why tourism marketing should be treated as economic infrastructure, not just promotion. When a visitor economy is worth hundreds of millions of pounds to a local area, marketing should not be treated as decoration. It should be treated as economic infrastructure. Roads help people move through a place. Broadband helps businesses operate. Events bring people together. Marketing does something similar. It creates demand, shapes perception, directs attention and influences where

Marketing people spend a lot of time talking about growth. We discuss increasing penetration, attracting new customers, expanding market share, generating more revenue and reaching more people. Most marketing theory understandably assumes that an organisation ultimately wants more customers and a bigger business. Spend enough time working around smaller businesses, however, and a slightly different reality becomes obvious. Not every business owner wants to build an empire, op