Marketing Global Ambassador and awards judge, Hugh Burkitt, examines his favourite winning case studies from the last five years of Excellence Awards
Marketing Society Global Ambassador, Hugh Burkitt, selects his top ten case studies from the last five years - along with the year in which they won.
1. Easyjet (2014) - case study
This Grand Prix winner described the brilliant work done by Carolyn McCall as CEO and Peter Duffy as CMO that transformed Easyjet and tripled its stock market value. I particularly admire the way they improved every aspect of the marketing mix – starting with the product itself. They tackled their terrible record for punctuality, and also ended the nightmare practice of forcing passengers to fight for un-allocated seats, because this was – erroneously - thought to be the fastest way to turn an aircraft around. Ryanair’s CEO - Michael O’Leary - publicly congratulated Easyjet on their marketing in his own Annual Report that year and then went on to demonstrate the sincerity of his flattery by imitating many of their innovations.
2. Macmillan Cancer Support (2015) - case study
This is a personal favourite partly because I am proud to have been a trustee for many years of Barnardo’s - so I know how difficult it is to keep the message of a large and complex charity clear and consistently compelling. Charities exist in one of the most competitive markets of all – the quest for donations from the public. Barnardo’s, incidentally, won our Not For Profit Category in 2012 - without any influence from me - but MacMillan won our Long Term Marketing Excellence prize in 2015 with a paper that gives a masterclass in how the right brand communication can improve all aspects of fund-raising.
3. Maltesers (2017) - case study
Maltesers managed a highly unusual triple win in 2017 by walking off with the Customer Insight, Marketing Communications and Cause Related Marketing category prizes. Their “Looking on the Light side of Disability” campaign was not only funny, it was effective in selling Maltesers and in changing attitudes towards disability.
4. John Lewis (2017) - case study
There is so much hype about the John Lewis Christmas campaign each year that marketers can get bored by it. In 2017 the John Lewis campaign was overlooked by our marketing judges, but our Finance Directors can sniff out what is really good value for marketing money, and they picked out John Lewis as their number one for return on marketing expenditure. And if you believe the econometric analysis, the four Christmas campaigns from 2012 to 2015 delivered the John Lewis Partnership a cool £177 million of additional profit.
5. BT Sport (2014) - case study
There was much debate in 2014 about whether the launch of BT Sport was a Brand Extension or a Brand Revitalisation. In the end we decided it was both – and it won both categories. It was a game-changing move for a hitherto rather dull telecoms brand.
6. Always (2016) - case study
We don’t get as many P&G entries as I would like to see, but this one is definitely worth a detour...
7. Tesco (2017) - case study
When I began work with The Marketing Society fifteen years ago, Tesco under the leadership of Terry Leahy as CEO and Tim Mason as Marketing Director was Britain’s most admired brand among marketers, and achieved an astonishing doubling of its profitability to over £2 billion per annum.
Then they over-reached themselves and lost a fortune on Fresh’n’Easy in the US….and Leahy’s successor was hustled out of the door for failing to get Tesco back into growth. Enter “Drastic Dave” Lewis from Unilever, and with Michelle Mcettrick in the brand marketing seat, I am genuinely pleased to see that they have turned round the Tesco brand.
8. Amnesty (2016) - case study
The Marketing On a Shoestring Category is often worth a look, and this spoof campaign by VCCP for the London Arms fair of 2015 reached over thirty million people and did a brilliant job for Amnesty …all on a shoestring.
9. Guinness (2015) - case study
In my own advertising days my biggest nightmare was confronting a global marketing executive who was convinced, as they often were, that if only they could run the same advertising all over the world, advertising effectiveness would be transformed. It never was. Here Guinness give us a brilliant example of how to create a global brand position – “Made of More” - that has inspired brilliant local creativity. Their reward has been both increased sales and many creative garlands.
10. Lego (2015) - case study
I once travelled all the away to remote Billund in Denmark to visit the original Legoland, in the hope of finding some clue that would help my agency win the pitch for the LEGO account. To my lasting regret we lost out to WCRS, but all agencies worth their salt would love to work on LEGO, as it has such creative possibilities. Which are well demonstrated here by this campaign - when an entire ad break on ITV was filled with commercials re-made with Lego to promote the Warner Brothers LEGO Movie..