Richard Harris

The importance of being on the ground at trade events shouldn’t be underestimated. Whether it's relationship building or keeping up with the iGaming zeitgeist, having back-to-back, genuine conversations about the varied industry opportunities and challenges of partners is the best way to improve your value and know your true place in the market. That’s not to say that there aren’t events where you wonder if they justify that amount of time out of the office. Thankfully, last week’s NEXT.io Summit was certainly not one of those, and it was a breath of fresh air and a pleasure to be in attendance out in Valletta. I’d love to see more gaming events have a stronger focus, instead of being catch-alls for a broad region, and Pierre Lindh⚡️and his team are demonstrating just why that should be the case. The focus on quality panel content that has genuine interest and networking meetups that go beyond just filling a room should be applauded and when planning my calendar in future, these types of events will be at the top of my priority list. #NextSummit #iGamingmarketing #gamblingevents #malta

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Brand of the Week - Insight 4 - #Revolut Over the week we have looked at the effect of #Revolut's UK banking License award announcement has had on their Brand Equity, Brand Momentum and Consumer Emotions, all resulting in a positive effect But what was the overall impact, what did #revolut gain from the positive effect of this announcement?? Using QuestBrand’s Competitive Intelligence, when you join these singular positive effects up, it has an overall impact for #Revolut within the finance industry, as you see in the chart below, #revolut ranked 1st among its competitors, #Fidelity, #Trading212 #Freetrade by a huge margin.   Looking ahead, the question remains, what next for #Revolut and their growth,   If it were me, I would capitalize on this market position and momentum by using data based insights, making decisions to further impact their sales funnel, inform advertising campaigns, change the market perception and differentiation of the brand to continue to fuel growth.   All of this can be seamlessly achieved through QuestBrand, providing real-time consumer data and insights using unique data collection methodologies. Reach out to discover more about leveraging QuestBrands insights & measurement for your business for continued success.

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https://lnkd.in/eqbSYC8Q Would AI-generated Ad's make you reconsider TV ad spend?... For me that isn't the biggest barrier - the general cost and confusion of 'what you get for your money' with a lot of businesses needs addressing rather than jumping on AI as the solution. Why not offer AI as a solution to optimising your ad spend with channels/airtime/programming schedule? That way both the broadcaster and the customer wins... 😅

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👨‍💻Troy Muir👩‍🚀 writes an insightful synopsis on the latest insights from the 12th edition of the  For Love or Money™ research study. #loyalty #loyaltyprograms #loyaltyprogram

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I heard the guys at System1 (Uncensored CMO) saying Q4 Golden Quarter in the UK is the most competitive ad market for #retail adverts 😮 ...but after watching far too much #BGT live I can't help thinking a Summer of epic British ads is about to dawn on us 🤩 Like this new 'It's Scanner Time' Aldi ad giving me all the feels: https://lnkd.in/dDs59hxq ▪ Branding early and throughout ▪ Quite literally smashing the competition (& cleverly without saying "Morrisons", "Asda", "Tesco", "Sainsburys") ▪ Communicates Quality as well as Value ▪ Subtle nod to Christmas feasts (implicitly brainwashing us early?) ▪ Music is a banger, and the funny story-line, invokes feeling! Although... - #CantMatchThis TikTok activation has more #AD influencers than customers taking part (+ hashtagging a phrase that needs an apostrophe should be illegal!) - The TV ad features their 2023 accolade for Good Housekeeping Food Awards Best Supermarket... the title was lost to Marks and Spencer for 2024 a few months ago 👀 UK Shop prices are down for 36 consecutive months, despite increasing cost pressures. So the #supermarketwar is fierce as ever... Well, lets hope we get some terrific ads to enjoy out of it at least 🤓🍿

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👀 Seeing double? Do not adjust your sets. Simon Horswell, Senior Fraud Specialist (and all-round celebrity) and Laura Noye, PR Director here at Onfido, gave a very real and very spooky demo of the rise of deepfakes and how to spot them 🕵️ It's not all doom and gloom though. Here's how Onfido is keeping businesses two steps ahead of the deepfake threat with AI: https://lnkd.in/e3y6-kjf

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One of my favourite Marketing people has been a guest on the latest IntelligenceBank Podcast. Really worth a listen, especially if you are into Marketing Compliance in a heavily regulated industry. Tabcorp Marketing Operations reduced their time to market by 99.1%. To hear how they pulled it off, check out the conversation between Brand Intelligence co-host William Tyree and Chris Yates from wagering giant Tabcorp. Listen to the full episode here: https://lnkd.in/ga5Km35a #MarketingEfficiencies #DigitalAssetManagement #MarketingRegulation #MarketingApprovals #CreativeBriefs #Disclaimers #intelligencebank

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According to Edelman Smithfield's Report TRUST is still a major problem for financial firms. Awareness of the Consumer Duty has risen among UK adults, but this clearly hasn't solved the problem. So we need to be building trustworthiness through authenticity and transparency. That's my takeaway, but do read the Money Marketing article yourself. Give me a shout to talk about how I can help you build a trustworthy and authentic brand.

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Do you make the most of your agency contacts? I was pondering this question after a super insightful catch-up with DAC UK Managing Partner Mike Fantis. Mike and I go way back when he was my agency partner in crime, driving digital transformation at David Lloyd Leisure. We stayed in touch over the years and caught up last week to share notes. Our conversation covered a vast range of burning marketing topics: 🍪 Cookies A key topic for marketers to take action, given the whirlwind of if, when, and how Google might make its 3rd party cookies crumble. Don’t be lulled into complacency by the latest delay announcement. Getting your cookie strategy right in order to create better customer experience through personalisation should be HIGH on your agenda to achieve sustainable growth. Check out a helpful podcast with Performance Marketing World featuring Mike on this topic. 💍 Brandformance marketing Yes, the happy marriage of brand and performance marketing that the respective marketing teams should foster to win big. Siloed operations are the death of marketing effectiveness and efficiency, hindering short and long term growth. It’s ONE joined goal: to make more prospects and customers realise the value your organisation has to offer! 🧪 Measurement: MMM, attribution & co Measuring marketing performance, what a rich topic! Mike and I covered the pros and cons of the various measurement options out there and went deep on how to enrich the data pools of media mix models (e.g. integrating CRM data or social sentiment). The stronger the data pool, the better the insight! If you feel you don’t have enough long term data, don’t wait. It’s better to start building a model and feed it with data over time in order to build up a stronger and stronger insight picture as time goes by. 🤖 AI’s power on marketing channels AI needs to make good what the increasing complexity of the marketing channel landscape has created over time: fragmented customer journeys and poor personalisation. Take most businesses' email marketing as an example. Complex, bitty, often out-of-sync with the actual consumer journey. Dire. Channel ROI results are mainly driven by low cost, not truly high commercial outcome. Marketing teams of this world: Use AI to reignite this and other channels! It’s time to delight customers again! 🤝 Inhousing, outhousing, or hybrid for marketing execution? The right answer here depends entirely on the organisation’s need at a given point in time. Yet, the key takeaway here is to always treat your agency contacts as true partners. They have an objective outsider view, see what happens across industries, they are knowledge aggregators and tech testers. Treat them as your partner in crime. And while you might be working with many different agencies throughout your career, make sure to keep those relationships warm, present and past… …as they make for insightful conversation. Thanks Mike! 😜 #marketing #cookies #brandformance #measurement #ai

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Has Tesco got the power to be number 2 in the marketplace space in the UK? It believe it certainly does and its power is data (Clubcard Data), to be able to offer highly targeted advertising based on what you shop online or in-store. With over 1.1m grocery shoppers a week, it must be taken seriously. Please let me know what your thoughts are. Read my thoughts in the Daily Mail here > https://lnkd.in/gas5F2Zxe #tesco #marketplace #ecommerce

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The UKGC’s quarterly data is out, and - believe it or not - it’s genuinely a decent read and a well-presented way to ingest trends that maybe don’t always make the headlines.   Here’s my two chips' worth:   📈 Stricter regulation and marketing restrictions don't seem to mean much to customers with Slots GGY up 10% YoY and Euro 2024 fever pushing ‘real event’ betting up 16%. 🎮 Esports betting is still one to watch with growth looking steady, but it still has a way to go to justify all the hype and I'm not sure the UK is ready to bite yet. 💪 And retail betting is powering on. OTC figures are holding strong. Has the slow evolution of the betting shop finally created a breeding ground for the next-generation of high street bettor? You can take a look yourself here: https://lnkd.in/en3Yb8Hk   #UKbetting #UKGC #bettingtrends #igamingmarketing  

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Planning isn't ALL about media audience. UKOM endorsed data from Ipsos iris shows how B2C sites and apps are performing too. Any agency will have lots of data from their client - but what about their client's competitors? Using web analytics for planning insight? Primarily browser based, little deduplication, unlikely to be nat rep...you're missing SO much. #mediaplanning #datainsight #standardsmatter

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Retail Media is one of the recruitment bright spots in the media world.  For years, agency people stayed in agency land - and brand marketers or retailers side did not cross over into the agency world. This should not be surprising as the skill sets are different. However, Retail Media is triggering a wholesale series of changes in how retailers can drive new revenues and how brands can acquire customers. The skill set required to set up and operate a retail media network is much more like a media agency than classic retailing.  Retailers are good at retailing, not necessarily selling media.  There will be a lot more of these sorts of "Adland Exec joins Grocer" 😁 announcements from retailers as they fill in gaps in their skill base. Of course, social networks, eg Pinterest are part of the offsite propositions that many retailers will offer as part of their onsite/offsite/in-store channels. And, of course, Amazon are the "OG" of retail media 😁 Good hires all round by Nick Ashley & the team at Tesco.

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Pret's subscription model wasn't about loyalty, it was about customer acquisition 🫴 I keep seeing Pret's £30 a month subscription referred to as a loyalty scheme; including in their own financial reports. Now, with their latest move to change it up there's a sense that this was a failed loyalty scheme. But if I flip it on its head, I see it as one giant sampling campaign, partly invested in by the UK population! If you want to get people to pay money for something that they're not quite sure on the quality, value, taste, then one of the ways to get it into their hands is to offer it to them for free or at a low price. And if you want them to continue enjoying your product regularly, you can aim to create a habit around your product. You could do this by giving away lots of your product around the same time every day to embed this ritual into your customers' lives. Brands are leaky buckets, and following the pandemic Pret had a mostly empty bucket! To grow, brands need to aim for light buyers, and continuously bring more people in to your brand than your competitors. I see Pret as looking to get a competitive advantage over other coffee shops by getting competitors' customers to make the switch to Pret, thus stealing market share. When they make the switch to their cheaper subscription but with less 'payback', I imagine there's an assumption that all these 'loyal' customers are so invested in Pret that they'll continue to visit and buy. Yet coffee is a commodity. People will generally go to the coffee shop closest to them in their moment of need! Unless Pret has coffee filled with magic, there's very little reason to choose one coffee chain over another. But, I'm optimistic. I imagine Pret will keep plenty of customers, many of whom were not Pret customers before, because of a successful initiative in driving trial. And if I'd like one thing to come out of this, I'd love to see the next financial report refer to this subscription as a customer acquisition strategy, not a loyalty one 😉

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Talking about cookies? Really? Yes, but that's because it's a big topic, and one that's getting more important as time goes on. I was pleased my talk (seemed to) landed well and generated a good amount of questions! If you need any advice about tracking or cookies, then drop me a line

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🚨 Black Friday is almost here! 🚨 In this blog post, our Technical Director shares some great insight and key takeaways from previous years to help you maximise your Google Shopping potential. #blackfriday #ecommerce #googleshopping #onlineshopping #retail #marketing

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Inclusion is not just a priority, it’s a business imperative. The latest article on the Advertising Association’s All In Champions highlights why agencies must do more to stay ahead in creating inclusive workplaces. I had the privilege of sharing adam&eveDDB’s commitment to fostering a culture where everyone feels they belong, and where underrepresented talent, particularly ethnic minority talent, can see clear pathways to leadership. The article dives into the evolving challenges agencies face in meeting the reinforced All In requirements and offers insights from leaders across the industry. If you’re passionate about driving change or simply curious about how we can do better, this is worth a read. #DEI #AllInChampion #Leadership #InclusionMatters

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It strikes me on this election day that political betting has gained unprecedented traction for this specific UK General Election. With previous events focusing on brand awareness, generally led by PRs with chalkboards outside Parliament and novelty stunts here and there; this time around it seems that the offering is coming first with genuine betting interest justifying it.   Whether due to product maturation or a certain few unscrupulous individuals pumping certain markets, the quality and coverage of political betting has definitely stepped up. The Racing Post has provided in-depth analysis of marginal constituencies - an intriguing complement to opinion polls - and the election date scandal has undoubtedly raised awareness and defined opinion.   Regardless of what happens overnight and into the coming days, with the US Presidential Election following soon after, I’d expect this commitment to political betting to continue for the foreseeable.   #politicsbetting #generalelection #igamingmarketing

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