Mark Ritson: Distinctiveness is marketers’ main challenge

Making their brand distinctive is marketers’ main challenge but too many are focused on differentiation and are underestimating the impact of having a brand people instantly recognise, according to Marketing Week columnist and marketing professor Mark Ritson.

Opening the Festival of Marketing this morning (10 October), Ritson said: “Salience is the biggest part of the job. With the greatest respect to marketers, I don’t think most of them get it.

“It’s about whether your brand stands out to the customer, whether it looks like itself, whether it comes to mind. This is the big job, it is 70% or 80% of it. Marketers think their brands [stand out] because they work there every day and think ‘fuck, it’s everywhere’. Customers don’t notice.

“The first rule of brand should be, first they must know it’s me.”