Affiliate marketing and strategic partnership are the same channel wearing different clothes. One is managed by a performance team optimising for last-click conversions. The other sits in a boardroom deck about long-term growth. In practice, the mechanics overlap considerably, and the businesses that treat them as separate disciplines tend to underperform in both. When affiliate…
Millennial brands are companies that built their identity, audience, and market position around the values, behaviours, and expectations of the millennial generation. The ones that survived past the initial hype did something specific: they connected a genuine business model to a cultural moment, rather than just borrowing the aesthetic of one. The ones that didn’t…
Growth partnerships are commercial agreements where two or more businesses share resources, audiences, or distribution to create growth that neither could generate as efficiently alone. When they work, they compound. When they don’t, they consume time that could have gone into channels you actually control. The problem isn’t that companies build too many partnerships. It’s…
The best marketing campaigns of 2025 share one quality that most award entries don’t: they moved a commercial needle, not just a sentiment score. This article breaks down five campaigns that did something genuinely different, examines why they worked, and draws out the strategic principles behind each one. I’ve spent a long time watching campaigns…
The largest ad agencies in the US are dominated by four global holding companies: WPP, Omnicom, Publicis Groupe, and Interpublic Group (IPG). Between them, they control the majority of major advertising spend across every category, channel, and geography. If you are a senior marketer evaluating agency partners, understanding who owns what, and how these organisations…
Brand meets creator is one of those phrases that gets thrown around as if the meeting itself is the strategy. It is not. Putting a brand logo next to a creator’s face is a transaction. Building something that works commercially, that holds up over time, and that does not embarrass either party when the audience…
Crisis marketing is how a brand manages its communications, reputation, and commercial activity during a period of acute disruption, whether that disruption comes from inside the business or outside it. Done well, it protects trust, preserves customer relationships, and creates the conditions for recovery. Done badly, it accelerates the damage and hands the narrative to…
A referral partner is someone who sends you qualified business in exchange for a reciprocal benefit, whether that is a commission, a return referral, or simply the goodwill of a trusted professional relationship. Unlike a referral program built around customer incentives, a referral partner arrangement is a deliberate, structured channel between businesses or individuals who…
Brands find authentic content creators by looking beyond follower counts and surface metrics, focusing instead on audience alignment, content consistency, and demonstrated category credibility. The process is less about discovery tools and more about knowing what you are actually looking for before you start searching. Most brands get this wrong not because they lack access…
A social referral strategy is a structured approach to converting your existing customers into a repeatable acquisition channel, by giving them a reason and a mechanism to share your product with their networks. Done well, it sits inside your broader partnership marketing framework as a low-cost, high-trust channel that compounds over time. Done poorly, it…
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