Ribena. You tickle me pink. You turn me over and rub my belly, you make me believe again in the creative process; you are a beacon of hope in what feels like a time of perpetual creative darkness. A wizard with a full erection at the contest of bearded men with semis.

This is the era of putting up walls and maintaining steady growth at the expense of making friends and brands worth billions. Turn on your television and every advert is so safe they’re teetering on the edge of pointlessness. Advertising is eating itself. It’s becoming redundant by towing the line of somebody else. Are the people signing off on television adverts so out of touch that they don’t understand we can now fast forward the ads? To stay safe isn’t enough, the modern day TV advert needs to be so good in its own right that it makes someone hit the pause button and actually watch it. The modern TV advert can’t just fit in, or it will be fast forwarded over - it needs to stand out. Someone at Ribena understands this, whereas the people at Cadbury now appear to have the same gorilla that used to be in their ads in charge of marketing. Now, the gorilla can play the drums, for sure, but I wouldn’t put him in charge of marketing because he likes Phil Collins. On the up-side you could pay the gorilla bananas. But, overall your brand would suffer. The gorilla would make pretty good security too. Terrible on the phone, but great at getting rid of PPI calls. Could possibly pull a human apart limb by limb in a board meeting, or punch a shark to death. Overall, it's a business no no. Anyway, I digress...

In 2011 Cadbury recorded a net income of £447,545,760 [1]. I didn’t mind. Cadbury gave us the drumming gorilla. It gave us those two kids with the twitchy faces. Even when their ads didn’t quite work, they were trying to push the envelope. They earned their profit. But fast-forward to 2016, and Cadbury are no longer pushing the envelope, they are filling it with cash and stuffing it into their pockets. Today, Cadbury avoid paying UK tax [2], and have cut the size and content of their chocolate bars. Their adverts are now so cheaply produced they’re slapping their logo over old You Tube videos, like some first year art college project. Cadbury has become the 16 year-old art student with potential who runs up to his teacher with a terrible picture of a sunflower on it, and we are the parents sticking the drawing to the fridges in our homes, and saying things like it’s the most beautiful sunflower we’ve ever seen. NEWSFLASH: the sunflower looks like a depressed stick and the student is taking the piss. He can do better, but he treats you as stupid. Remove the picture from the fridge, ask for a better sunflower, stop buying Cadbury products, demand better adverts.

Cadbury have decided to please their short-term financial overlords over their brand. Well, step aside Cadbury and hello Ribena, you lovely round-faced blackcurrant legend.

The Ribena advert forces people to hit the pause button when skipping the adverts because it’s something worth seeing. Being a successful TV advert is no longer about being the one good advert in a series of ten during the traditional ad breaks…it’s about being the one advert people stop to look at out of five hundred adverts skipped. That’s the new power of being creative. That’s the new price of maintaining the status quo and not looking after your brand. The brands that reach this understanding first are the brands that will thrive.

I can see the Ribena creative pitch now…

Creative: So, we have flying hedgehogs, an owl with human lips that fires lasers from its eyes, a rabbit pops up near the end wearing sunglasses and a fake moustache, we’ll have robin’s riding blackcurrants, hedgehogs on balloons, maybe someone who looks a bit like Beyoncé carrying a flag on the back of a swan…A goose with a bow tie, who isn’t afraid to be different…
Ribena Executive: NO.
Creative: We thought you might say that. But you haven’t heard the soundtrack yet.
Ribena Executive: Security. Hi. Can you come into my office immediately; I’ve got some crazy creative from Riben…
Creative: ZIBBE DOO ZIBEE DOO ZIBBEE DOOO ZIBEEE DOOOO ZIBEE DOOO ZIBBBE DO.
Ribena Executive: Hang on security. I've got to make another call...Chuck! Chuck, it's Marvin. Your cousin, Marvin Berry! You know that new sound you're looking for? Well, listen to this!..

^^ That should also be the follow up advert. Ribena, get in touch.

So, there you have it. Cadbury, you melted our hearts through great advertising and product, but then you got greedy. You cut the budgets across the board to line the fat little pockets of your board members.

Cadbury is dead. All hail our new creative overlords, Ribena.

To discuss content marketing and how it can help you and your business, email [email protected]

Source [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadbury
Source [2]: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/adf59a06-9c24-11e5-8ce1-f6219b685d74.html#axzz4AEWdVSM2

A good marketing expert has to capture and communicate the truth: what is at the heart of your brand? Who are you, why do you do what you do and why should anyone care?

So how does your business become a success? How do you use marketing to your benefit, while protecting your brand and making loads of moola?

Here are 4 tips on how to become better at marketing:

Carpet bomb London with 10,000 bananas

There's no point being the best at something and only letting your Mum know. And there's more weight behind showing you are the best, than shouting in peoples' faces I'M NUMBER ONE. If you sell the best bananas in the world, you can wait for the first person to buy one and eventually word of mouth will spread. By the end of week 1, you might be selling 10 bananas a day. OR, you can hire a plane, wear a Bananaman costume, and carpet bomb London with 10,000 free bananas attached to tiny parachutes that have your contact details on. By the end of that day, you'll be the number one banana distributor in the world - and it won't be you saying it, it will be everyone else.

More BLAM, less SPAM.

Nobody likes spam. Back when it was a food, it tasted horrible, ubiquitous and inescapable. And today when people receive spam emails, they get a horrible taste in their mouth, see spam everywhere and can't escape it. If you have an emailing list as a business, this list is gold dust, but it will soon crumble into complaints and thin air if you fail to be interesting to your audience. Never email the equivalent of your business taking a selfie with a load of money - think before you email. Send only emails that are going to interest your audience. Interesting articles on subjects they like. Link the articles back to your website. Drive traffic, and increase sales through being interesting.

Embrace the age of authentic marketing

This should really speak for itself - stop bullshitting. Stop lying. If you are selling a car, you can't say that it can fly and talk the language of cows...because you will soon be found out and your brand will be harmed. Focus on what you are selling, and if you can't think of something good to say about your product, then you need to improve your product. Never lie. Never exaggerate. Classmates.com told the world it would find your classmates, and sent emails to people telling them a lost friend was trying to get in touch. This was a lie. Classmates.com was sued for false advertising for almost $10million. When considering time has moved on since then and that we now live in the social media age, one lying advert and your business could die.

Test the chair before you tame the lion

You wouldn't become a lion tamer without testing a few different chairs out on a few different lions first. Likewise, in modern marketing everything can be tested...So there is no need to throw £100,000 behind a campaign and hope it works. You can show a select group various types of copy. You can run email tests and see what appeals to who and when. You can write articles to drive awareness, and measure what articles are the most popular. You can run campaigns on Twitter and Facebook, tweak the demographics and messaging and learn from your audience what they best respond to. You can do this for small amounts of money - figure out what you know is going to work, and then spend big.

To discuss content marketing and how it can help you and your business, email [email protected]