Although I started my marketing career in public relations, by the summer of 1996, I was optimizing websites. Since then, I've been building and managing teams of digital marketers. After working with hundreds of employees and literally thousands of clients, I've learned a good deal about what it takes to be a successful digital marketer.

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Once upon a time there was a land far, far away where unicorns played in fields of golden sunflowers as a rainbow backlit the blue sky. In this wonderland marketers always said the correct thing and email open rates were always 100 percent.

This is a total pipe dream, yet marketers still shoot for that level of perfection every day. We are stuck in the mindset of the "Golden Pen," thinking one perfectly written message is all we need to generate marketing success.

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The drive was assigned to JWT as part of the bank’s recent review of its ad agency arrangements.

HSBC will redirect its sponsorship budget toward the anniversary celebrations. As a result, the activity will be run by head of sponsorship Giles Morgan, who currently looks after the bank’s rugby and golf properties.

Hill & Knowlton, the bank’s sports PR agency, will also be heavily involved.

Last week, HSBC concluded a five-month ad agency review of its £400m business.

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A 1% increase in advertising spend typically translates into a 0.2% increase in purchases, but for more creative campaigns purchase responsiveness gets closer to 0.3%, according to University of Cologne research which looked at more than 400 German campaigns from close to 100 brands across 10 FMCG categories.

The researchers, Professor Werner Reinartz and research associate Peter Saffert, measured five dimensions of advertising creativity: (1) originality (was the ad original, rare, surprising, unique?); (2) flexibility (does the ad link the product to different ideas, concepts, or subjects?); (3) elaboration (does the ad contain intricate or numerous details?); (4) synthesis (does the ad blend normally unrelated objects or ideas?); and (5) artistic value (does the ad excel visually, verbally, or graphically?).

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Millward Brown's Best Liked Ads list celebrates the countries favourite TV commercials and their advertising agencies in South Africa. These are the ads that have been rated as the 'most liked' by the South African audience, whom we believe to be the most important critics. There are lots of awards out there, but this one is chosen by the consumer - the person who ultimately chooses to buy your brand or not.

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Atkins has exited the company alongside HTC head of sales Mike Coombes, just days before UK chief Phil Robertson also left the company.

HTC did not give a reason for Atkins' departure.

According to some sources, Atkins and Coombes are to launch a start-up company.

Atkins joined HTC as head of marketing UK and Ireland in July 2011. Prior to this, he was commercial marketing manager at Freesat, the satellite TV service, between 2008 and 2011. He has also worked at LG, the Korean electronics giant.

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Merdeka LHS, founded by Malaysian industry heavyweights, may be able to restore value to what advertising people do.

VERY recently, something big happened in the Malaysian ad industry. When I say big, it has the potential to sear a seismic shift in the way advertisers look at ad agencies.

The launching of Merdeka LHS, an affiliate of McCann Erickson, is probably the best tonic for an industry fast losing its standing and lustre with clients and marketers.

For too long, the creative or brand agencies, as they are called − yes, the people who actually come up with the big ideas − have been slowly eroded to the “pretty pictures” people. Nothing wrong with that but these days that is as hollow sounding as some of the awards they win, except for their international accolades.

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IT'S a brand new year to look forward to and creative agency BBDO/Proximity Malaysia has already set its sights on what it plans to achieve.

Managing director Michelle Achuthan, who was appointed head of the creative agency in 2011, looks back at the time she's been in charge and certainly believes that what doesn't kill you definitely makes you stronger.

Having lost a huge client, telco giant Maxis, in 2011, the creative agency also went through what Michelle calls a “huge internal transition period” last year, and needed to get back in the game as soon as possible.

“It's been quite the ride,” she tells StarBizWeek.

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Insight used to be considered a personal quality and one that was essential to be a successful marketer. While other corporate functions, such as finance and logistics, were driven by cold, rational calculation, marketers were supposed to thrive at the human side of business.

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A decade back when Chintamani gave us lessons in financial planning on TV, we marvelled at the novelty of an animated character in an advertisement. Today, animated characters are fast replacing hunks and starlets on dozens of television commercials (TVCs) that sell everything from chocolates and phones to cars and insurance. In fact more companies are demanding their TVCs use animated characters. The reason? End users have a far greater recall of brands that use animation.

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