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As more consumers identify themselves as 'brands in their own right', marketers need to harness this huge influx of information, remain focused on creating an emotional connection with customers and [...]

Consumers may hate it when their favourite brands change but they will also drop your brand from their shopping list if you fail to meet their changing needs (MWlinks.co.uk/MarketingUturn). A [...]

I have been an unhappy customer this week. Standing in the shoes that our own customers would have occupied, I was entirely dependent on the whims of a service centre. [...]

Simplicity is vital if customers are to get the best experience from a brand (MWlinks.co.uk/ SimpleBrands). Some of the most successful brands today have simple marketing messages that are consistent [...]

Our 'man on the inside' provides a view from the top of the marketing tree This week, my team and I pulled together a proposal to invest in the visual [...]

Five insight experts tell Lucy Handley their high points from last year and their plans for this - including coping with a budget squeeze - and the skill to getting [...]

An automotive purchase is not taken lightly. Brand strategy plays a crucial role in selling cars, but marques must focus on customer care, the actual brand experience and the personal [...]

Email has long been established as the killer outbound channel for providing customers with relevant and personalised content but it should not be used in isolation (MW 6 October). To [...]

Regaining the trust of consumers poses a tough challenge, requiring major behavioural change and a leap of faith in your staff ver the years, Marketing Week has raised many weighty [...]

I agree with the view that social media needs to have a business case rather than just being seen as a tool for engagement (MW 1 September) and that interaction [...]

STEP ONE The nursery programme Gala Coral head of group customer relationship management Antony Smith believes brands make the mistake of trying to get money off new customers and cross-sell [...]

Gala Coral's customer relationship team has devised Six Step, a programme to ensure that not just senior managers, but frontline staff know what to do when customers' engagement wanes. By [...]

As the amount of data available to marketers has grown, the industry has had to become more savvy about what parts of it are likely to prove most useful when [...]

What is a single customer view? Organisations capture data on customers in a wide range of operating systems across the business. All of this data may be stored in a [...]

David Reed Interest is reviving in the concept of the database as an asset that can be valued on the balance sheet. With the potential return of heat to the [...]

Should agencies take a more strategic role in helping clients with design? I think the universal truth is that clients have always wanted this. Brands have always wanted us to [...]

Customer loyalty, multiple sales channels and social media are just three challenges facing the retail sector. Six experienced executives give Marketing Week their views. By Jo Roberts Marketing Week (MW) [...]

When we talk about marketing, many people reach for case studies from national brands or well-established agencies. This means commentary often excludes the lion's share of the activity that really [...]

David Radford Group marketing director, LV= Engagement should be a conversation between equals. The customer chooses when and how they engage with us, whether online, over the phone or whatever. [...]

Jennifer England Head of consumer public relations at Asda Regardless of what the numbers are saying, the loss of trust in banks, the Government and big business isn't something that [...]

O2's 21 million customers makes it the biggest telecoms company in the UK. Larger, as we learned last week, than its former parent BT (19.4 million landlines). There is no [...]

What to remember when managing customer relationships Marketers must remember that consumers: * Are critical and questioning of all that they buy. * Are increasingly marketing-savvy and marketing-literate. * Are […]

Kevin MacDonald Insight manager, The Carphone Warehouse We proactively encourage customers to give us feedback so we can continually improve the customer experience we provide. Positive feedback is always great […]

Don't forget contact centres need to be integrated with the rest of the brand. Kevin Thompson, head of customer services at Sage's Small Business Division, says: "Service is part of […]

As companies use internet-based technologies to make their call centre operations more efficient, they need to remember that getting customer contact right is a vital part of improving brand perception. […]

Here's some free advice for media owners... Make sure consumers value your offering and are prepared to pay for it Free, as every junior brand manager knows, is the most […]

Sponsor of the Brit Oval Sponsorship and corporate hospitality might not seem like an obvious investment choice for OCS Group, a company that offers property support services like cleaning and […]

Far from disappearing during the recession, corporate hospitality is evolving. One-size-fits-all packages are being shunned as clients demand innovative, personalised events that won't break the budget. By Jo Roberts Corporate […]

The client/agency relationship has always been a complicated one and, while things can be made easier, that's not going to change The subject was debated at the Venice Festival of […]

Marketers must treat targets as individuals It's a commonly accepted maxim that prospects and customers alike have always responded to communications that are both intimate and relevant. But how guilty […]

Designing with customers in mind has recently started to gain momentum. Last year CADinteractive hosted a usability round table and, as practitioners, my peers and I all felt that clients […]

The rapid growth in popularity of experiential campaigns has seen traditional field marketing techniques take a back seat. But Steve Hemsley discovers both still have a valuable role to play […]

Developing customer equity doesn't require rocket science, just honesty, trust and an ability to look beyond making an immediate profit, says Alan Mitchell Pick up any annual report and see […]

Customer-centricity has become a "motherhood-and-apple-pie" ideal that every company pays lip-service to. Even Kmart, which recently became the biggest retail bankrupt in history, had "creating a customer-centric culture to better […]