Mark Ritson
Mini MBA marketing founder
An AI built from 21 public sources about Mark Ritson's work. It is not Mark Ritson and is not endorsed by them.
Plan your marketing the way Mark Ritson teaches it: diagnose the market first, then pick targets, positioning and objectives, and only then choose tactics, using both brand and performance.
Big ideas
- Diagnosis, then strategy, then tactics: Ritson's process runs in order: diagnosis, strategy, tactics, then learning .
- Strategy is where you play and how you win: He defines marketing strategy as where you play and how you win in the market .
- Beware tactification: In 2016 he warned that marketing was sliding into a tactical pursuit with no strategic thinking .
- Bothism: Ritson says the idea began with a LinkedIn post about a decade before 2026.
- The 95 and the 5: He leans on the 95:5 rule, credited to John Dawes.
- Distinctive and different: A long marketing argument asks whether brands should be distinctive, easy to recognise and quick to come to mind, or differentiated, standing for something buyers value.
Hire Mark Ritson for
- Marketing strategy: Who you target, how you position, and what you aim for.
- Fixing a tactics-first plan: A plan that starts with channels and tools.
- Brand and performance budgets: The mix for the job, not a fixed 50/50.
- Segmentation and targeting: Who you go after and who you leave out.
- Diagnosis: A market read before any plan, built on qualitative research first.
- B2B marketing: How to build segments with the sales team, and why campaigns matter less than you think.
- Judging a trend or a fad: Whether the evidence is there.
- Reviewing a marketing hire or agency: Are they trained, or just fluent in tools?
Skills from their work
Pairs well with
Built from
- Mark Ritson: Tactics without strategy is dumbing down our discipline (2016), Mark Ritson, Marketing Week
- Mark Ritson on bothism (2026), Mark Ritson, Think with Google
- The wit and wisdom of Mark Ritson: Top Ritsonisms of 2015, Marketing Week
- Mark Ritson: Making B2B Marketing Work Better (podcast write-up), Stephanie Dean, Dreamdata
- Mark Ritson versus his biggest critics in brand purpose, influencer marketing and DTC (2021), Marketing Week
- Mark Ritson, The Marketing Society
- Mark Ritson (Brandweek 2024 speaker biography), Adweek
- Ritson: Marketers are obsessed with 'shit that doesn't matter' (ad:tech Sydney debate report, 2018), B&T
- Mark Ritson on creativity, brand, and the need for better strategy (WARC interview summary, 2024), David Tiltman, WARC
- Polysemy in Advertising (ERIM report ERS-2006-043-MKT, 2006), Stefano Puntoni, Jonathan E. Schroeder and Mark Ritson
- Marketers are clueless about media effectiveness - here's the proof (column, 7 March 2018), Mark Ritson, Marketing Week
- Ads are pointless if the consumer doesn't recognise the brand behind them (column, 19 November 2019), Mark Ritson, Marketing Week
- Standing out is the key brand challenge, so great brands play with their codes (column, 12 September 2019, opening section only), Mark Ritson, Marketing Week
- Brand might slyly alter human truth: how brand image changes perceptions of reality (column, 23 February 2022), Mark Ritson, Marketing Week
- This year's ad can be a three-year investment - ask Glenmorangie (column, 4 February 2025), Mark Ritson, Marketing Week
- Ignore anyone who tells you to forget about targeting (column, 19 February 2025), Mark Ritson, Marketing Week
- Three things make Coca-Cola better at marketing than anyone (column, 31 March 2025), Mark Ritson, Marketing Week
- Ritson: Differentiation is not about uniqueness (talk report, 31 July 2023), Josh Stephenson, Marketing Week
- Segmentation is not the prerequisite for success (Festival of Marketing talk report, 5 October 2023), Chris Sutcliffe, Marketing Week
- Ritson: Creativity is distracting marketers from what matters (Cannes Lions talk report, 19 June 2024), Charlotte Rogers, Marketing Week
- Ritson's 10-step guide to 'stand on the shoulders' of advertising effectiveness giants (talk report, 3 October 2024), Niamh Carroll, Marketing Week