The big winners of 2023… according to Helen Edwards

So, we’re nearly done with 2023 and it’s time for the new Marketing Elfmas year-end awards, voted for by an elite panel of industry pundits. Well, just me, essentially. My prejudices, my bugbears, my column. So, if you’re not happy with something below, you know at whom to throw your mince pies.

The So-What Award for irrelevance: British Airways ad campaign

Feted at D&AD and Cannes, genuflected over by ad creatives, prompter of scratched heads and shrugged shoulders for most of the marketers I know. Why? Because it’s about travel, not BA. That archly clever tone is not going to prompt renewed emotional attachment for a jaded brand that increasingly ticks no boxes. Over 500 executions. So what?

The Bye-Bye ‘Beleaguered’ Award for brand revival: Marks & Spencer

Marks & Spencer was one of those brands that journalists couldn’t write about without inserting the word ‘beleaguered’, but it hung in there, refusing to follow BHS and Debenhams to the great retailer graveyard. With a British sense of stoicism, M&S went through one turnaround after another for about… 10 years. But finally, this year, it has pulled it off: fashion editors are writing about the M&S sartorial ‘must haves’, beauty editors talk about its eclectic range of brands, the sandwiches have always been good, and dammit, I even bought a jumper.

The Jabberwocky Award for absurdity: Laddering, with a special commendation for brand archetypes.

Another year of seeing research moderators forcing bewildered consumers up a ladder of benefits that should have stopped with ‘It worked, so I was happy’.

Another year of seeing ‘the Sage’ in the brand personality of anything B2B and ‘the Caregiver’ for anything to do with family.

Why? Just why?

The Peter Pan Defying Ageism Award: Sir John Hegarty

An example to us all at 79, still going strong in the industry with his Garage Soho project, sought out as a speaker and looking like a cool Richard Branson. It was great to hear him in an interview with London International Awards (LIA), speaking up for the industry with energy, enthusiasm and genuine wisdom.

Life expectancy is increasing, retiring isn’t an option for many of us, so must we meekly accept that marketing is a young person’s game? Answer: John Hegarty.

The King’s New Clothes Award: Behavioural science

There seemed to be so much there that was fine and smart and impressive. Intricate experiments were devised to reveal surprising biases in human cognitive processing, inspiring stories were embroidered to show how nudges could improve societal wellbeing, eye-catching tenets were fashioned to show us how we could better manage our brands. And that was in the days when it was content to call itself just ‘behavioural economics’. Now, it has become a self-declared ‘science’.

That naked ambition was held up to ridicule this year by investigative data analysts, who showed that dozens of the experiments on which the discipline is based have never been replicated and accused the authors of recent published papers of falsifying data. Even Daniel Kahneman, one of the founders of the discipline, now has his doubts. “When I see a surprising finding, my default is not to believe it,” he said recently. “Twelve years ago, my default was to believe anything that was surprising.”

The Award for pointless change

Obviously, this goes to X, the social media network formerly, and still, known as Twitter. Elon Musk had his reasons; it was meant to signal Twitter’s transition to a ‘super app’. As rebrands go, it looked good value: no multicolour palette or range of typefaces for which to develop a 182-page brand guidelines document, no Super Bowl ad to announce it – just whack it up and insist that the platform’s 300 million-plus monthly users weren’t tweeting anymore, they were Xing, Xeeting or sending Xs.

Meanwhile, Musk’s controversial endorsement of extremist beliefs has given him bigger problems to solve: the platform has seen a 54% outflow of advertising dollars, from big corporates formerly known as customers.

The Keep Calm and Carry On Award: Toyota

It was looking tricky for Toyota in the face of the government ZEV guidelines encouraging car manufacturers to go fully electric, with punitive fines if they didn’t. Twenty years of selling hybrids and evolving hybrid technology didn’t cut it; now it was electric or nothing and Toyota was behind the global pack.

But with typical Japanese modesty, Toyota has been quietly getting on with solving the problem. In September it announced the launch of its new electric vehicle factory, which will be producing fully electric cars with revolutionary next-generation batteries that promise rapid recharging (20 minutes), greater range (1,000km) and lower cost (40%). What do you know, an electric car that even with the UK’s dodgy charging network looks viable.

The Halleluiah Award: Unilever

Finally, some common sense on brand purpose. THANK YOU, Unilever CEO Hein Schumacher. Back in October, Unilever marketers must have heaved a collective sigh of relief when their new CEO announced that the company would stop ‘force fitting’ social or environmental purpose to all its individual brands. Now they can focus on how those brands add real value to people’s lives – and if that’s making chips taste great with the addition of a dollop of eggy, vinegary white stuff, then that’s enough. It points the way forward for big brand-owning business: let the corporate brand do the heavy ESG lift, and give the product brands a bit more room for manoeuvre.

Now Unilever’s troublesome active investor Terry Smith, who had lampooned the corporation’s obsession with higher purpose, will have to find another stick to beat it with.

The Helen Edwards Award for unfounded optimism: 2024