The Solo Stove CMO story is one of the more instructive case studies in recent marketing history, not because it involves a celebrity campaign gone wrong, but because of what the fallout revealed about how brand decisions get made and who carries the consequences. When Solo Stove fired its CMO in late 2023 after a…
Risk management in public relations is the discipline of identifying, assessing, and preparing for threats that could damage an organisation’s reputation, relationships, or commercial standing. Done well, it shifts PR from reactive damage control into a structured, pre-emptive capability that protects brands before a crisis lands, not after. Most organisations treat PR risk as something…
Public relations manipulation is the deliberate use of communication tactics to shape perception in ways that serve the communicator’s interests, often at the expense of accuracy or public understanding. It operates on a spectrum, from the relatively benign (framing a product launch in its best light) to the genuinely corrosive (suppressing inconvenient facts, manufacturing grassroots…
A brand strategy is the documented logic that connects what a business is to how it shows up in the market. It defines who you serve, what you stand for, how you communicate, and why anyone should choose you over the alternatives. Get it right and every downstream decision, from creative briefs to channel mix…
The PESO model organises marketing communications into four media types: Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned. It gives PR and marketing teams a common language for planning integrated campaigns and understanding how different channels work together to build awareness, credibility, and commercial impact. Most senior marketers can name the four categories. Far fewer use all of…
International growth strategy is the plan a business uses to enter, scale, and sustain commercial performance in markets outside its home territory. Done well, it connects market selection, go-to-market sequencing, resource allocation, and localisation into a single coherent approach. Done poorly, it is a series of expensive experiments that drain budget and erode confidence in…
Positioning for advantage means deliberately occupying a distinct, defensible place in your market so that buyers choose you over alternatives, not because you spent more, but because you mean something specific to them. Done well, it compounds over time, making every pound of marketing spend work harder and every sales conversation start from a stronger…
A positioning statement is a single, internally facing sentence that defines who you serve, what you offer, why it matters, and why you are different from the alternatives. It is not a tagline, not a mission statement, and not a brand manifesto. It is a strategic anchor that every go-to-market decision should be tested against….
Developing a brand strategy means making deliberate decisions about what your brand stands for, who it serves, and how it behaves consistently across every touchpoint. Done well, it gives your entire organisation a shared direction. Done poorly, it produces a document that sits in a folder and gets ignored the moment the next campaign brief…
Organic customer acquisition is the process of attracting and converting customers without paying for each individual click or impression. It compounds over time through content, SEO, referrals, community, and reputation, and it tends to produce customers with lower acquisition costs and higher lifetime value than paid channels alone. Most brands treat it as a secondary…
Practical marketing intelligence
for people who think.
© 2026 The Marketing Juice