Say what? The top marketing quotes of 2025
Marketing Week has rounded up the most powerful, poignant and purposeful marketing quotes of the year.
The ‘why’ in marketing is not to deliver communication, that’s a ‘what’. The why is growth.
Yves Briantais, Carlsberg
A shiny ad campaign can be one of the most exciting parts of a marketer’s job. However, marketing does not exist to produce advertising, it exists to drive growth for the business – this was the clear message from Carlsberg CMO Yves Briantais at Cannes Lions earlier this year.
Growth should be the ultimate goal, and that means marketers must understand what it is that drives that in their organisation. Marketers must therefore get to grip with the P&L, both what drives the bottom and top lines.
When marketers make their motivation driving growth, not delivering ad campaigns, it also means they must look at levers across all 4Ps to get there. This year our Career & Salary Survey found that most see their role being confined to communication or and promotion, with relatively few exerting influence over the other Ps.
Sustained growth cannot come from advertising alone, and so for marketers to truly drive business success they must step away from being just the advertising department.
Understanding and then having influence over the other levers that drive growth is absolutely crucial for marketing’s credibility within any organisation. NC
There’s not many ads in my whole career, I would say, that have ever got wear out, ever.
Margaret Jobling, NatWest Group
Margaret Jobling, NatWest Group CMO, wasn’t shy to tell Marketing Week that the desire to make new ads is a “disease of marketers”.
“There’s not many ads in my whole career, I would say, that have ever got wear out, ever,” she said when discussing an instance where she wished she ran another market’s pre-existing ad for Lynx rather than making a new one.
Particularly in 2025 when it may be seen as quicker, easier and cheaper than ever to get ads out thanks to AI, the use of influencers and social media, this quote is key for marketers looking to get the most out of their ads. Newness may not always be the answer.
Re-running an ad has proved to be effective – most recently within the Christmas context, as Amazon’s re-run of its ‘Joy Ride’ festive campaign topped System1’s rankings for another year, scoring 5.9 stars for long-term brand building. Similarly, Cadbury remains strong with its returning Secret Santa concept. Data from Kantar backs this up, with half of the top 10 best performing ads being repeats.
As Jobling suggests, why get rid of a winning strategy? AV
The true measure of whether or not you’re being successful with a brand is the pricing power of that brand.
Jennifer English, Johnnie Walker
Premiumisation is a goal that many brands strive for – and none more so than drinks business Diageo which has made it its stated goal to deliver higher quality perceptions of its liquids so it can charge more in turn.
The above quote, then, from Johnnie Walker’s global brand director Jennifer English sums up the marketing attitude at the company. That a marketing team that is unable to influence pricing perceptions isn’t achieving much of anything at all. And while it has been a difficult year for Diageo amid a slowdown in the drinks category, this attitude will see it right in the end.
Because, as our Language of Effectiveness surveyed showed, nearly nine out of 10 marketers (87.6%) agree that stronger brands are able to charge higher prices, but only three in five (58.9%) are able to do this in practice.
In a challenging economic environment which has persisted for years, it is imperative all marketers take heed of the quote above and take control of their pricing power. JS
Today, brands are by default suspicious. Messages from brands coming from corporations are suspicious messages.
Fernando Fernandez, Unilever
Unilever has long been one of the most respected marketing organisations. It owns a raft of huge brands including Dove, Marmite and Persil, producing some extremely famous advertising.
The company is in the business of building big brands. However, upon taking on the reins of the business, new CEO Fernando Fernandez declared that being a large brand came with pitfalls. When it comes to communications, consumers are less likely to trust messages coming from big brands, he said, going as far as to call brands “by default suspicious”.
His solution? Creators. Fernandez declared that Unilever would massively increase the number of influencers it works with, as well as the proportion of advertising spend it puts into creator marketing.
As the owner of some of the biggest FMCG brands globally, it is fascinating to hear Unilever declare that it is a necessity to outsource trust in its brands. While few have gone so far as Fernandez in declaring a trust crisis, it has been a year when many brands have been talking about upweighting their investment in creators and engaging with consumers differently. NC
Most other careers have some degree of start and finish, whereas with marketing – because of the ambiguity of success – there’s this constant sense of: ‘Are you delivering ROI? How do we measure ROI? Actually, should we do it? Is it measurable or is it impactful? It is valued?
Nishma Patel Robb, Glittersphere
Most (80.1%) of the more than 3,500 respondents to Marketing Week’s 2025 Career & Salary Survey have experienced imposter syndrome at some point in their career.
As the path to success feels harder to navigate, marketers risk becoming overwhelmed by the expectation they should be experts in data, tech, AI, human psychology, consumer behaviour and the evolving media landscape, Nishma Patel Robb explained.
Formerly senior director of brand at Google and now founder of female-focused personal brand accelerator Glittersphere, Patel Robb noted marketers’ self-doubt is being exacerbated by working with colleagues who think they can do the job better.
The language of imposter syndrome perpetuates the problem. The term shifts the emphasis onto how an individual can fix themselves, rather than how an organisation can tackle structural issues, she argued, describing the Marketing Week data as a “massive warning sign” for the industry. CR
[Marketing has] got the ability to change the trajectory of the business, not just the trajectory of the sales and profit, but the trajectory of the energy in the business.
Alistair Macrow, formerly McDonald’s
A rallying call earlier this year from former McDonald’s UK CEO – and marketer – Alistair Macrow who addressed the IPA Effectiveness Conference in October to speak about the unique qualities that marketers can bring to the business.
Macrow explained that while marketers do need to show results – be that sales performance or creative awards – what the C-suite really wants to see is that you understand the goals of the business and are working towards meaningful business impact. Marketers who can achieve that can make marketing a hub for growth in the company and boost its importance.
It’s a pleasing reframing of the endless ‘language of the boardroom’ psychodrama that marketers torture themselves with seemingly each passing year – and strikes a blow that marketing matters more than just mimicking the language of others – it should be a force of strength in its own right. JS
You’ve got to carve out time to be what I call the protagonist. Marketers are the protagonists. That’s our job and usually we’re really good at it.
Jo McClintock, Trainline
Marketing strategy is the foundation of any organisation, argues Trainline’s VP of brand and marketing Jo McClintock, who believes marketers need to be “active enablers” of strategy.
This means having the ability to assess the category, societal impact, consumers and the economics of the company, partners and employees to understand where the business should focus its attention.
Too often, she says, strategy is treated as something to fear. Without a clear strategy, brands risk defaulting to “quarter-by-quarter, campaign-by-campaign or channel-by-channel” thinking.
Adopting a “protagonist mindset”, she argues, helps marketers think bigger, set direction and challenge the organisation’s assumptions, rather than getting trapped in short-termism. GG
Is winning in the room at Cannes the same as winning with consumers?
Todd Kaplan, Kraft Heinz
Each year, brands spend thousands and thousands on entering awards and flying out to Cannes Lions.
This year, Todd Kaplan, CMO at Kraft Heinz, urged marketers to rethink their barometer for success.
He asked: “Is winning in the room at Cannes the same as winning with consumers?” A question that likely raised uncomfortable conversations for marketers and agencies.
Asking marketers to think about their favourite creative work from the festival, and whether consumers would feel the same way or be able to recall the ad in the first place, he suggested marketing is suffering from a “placebo effect”.
He said that while brands monitor their ads’ effectiveness through a range of tools like brand health, mixed media analysis and ROI to see if they’re going “in the right direction,” it’s all “very different” to properly understanding if a consumer digested the brand message.
“Did they change their philosophy and thought about that brand? Have they actually changed their behaviour?” he asked. MI
One thing that hasn’t changed in the last 30 years is marketers moaning about the fact they’re not listened to in the boardroom, which really frustrates me because it’s an admission of failure.
Philip Almond, Cancer Research UK
Philip Almond is a seasoned marketer, with a wealth of experience across brands as diverse as Diageo, Burger King, the BBC and Cancer Research UK.
Reflecting on the industry as he gets ready to retire, he highlighted the fact marketers still don’t feel they are being listened to by the rest of the C-suite, which for him is an admission of failure and something that must be addressed.
Almond’s advice? “Stop moaning…crack on, and start solving the business’s problems.”
Marketing is frequently described by marketers as being misunderstood by their organisation, and therefore undervalued and often the first to see cuts when times get tough.
It is therefore incumbent on marketing leaders to ensure their business understands the value marketing delivers. CMOs must show how what they’re doing is having an impact, and do so using language and metrics that are meaningful to the rest of the business. LT
No one owns the customer anymore. The customers own themselves and they control the relationships they want.
Andrea Burchett, Virgin
Marketers are obsessed with owning the customer and their journey. But it’s not so simple anymore, as Virgin’s chief loyalty officer Andrea Burchett outlined in August.
“No one owns the customer anymore. The customers own themselves and they control the relationships they want,” she told Marketing Week.
In a world where customers have more power than ever, she explained why Virgin is taking a different approach to loyalty. Rather than following the norms of loyalty schemes focused on “recency, frequency and value” she is putting “interaction, reaction and social” at the core of how Virgin creates conversations with customers.
It’s certainly a shift from how brands typically engage customers, and Burchett’s words – while some marketers may disagree with or feel confronted by the notion of not owning the customer – highlight how the relationship is evolving.
She urges brands to put loyalty at the C-suite level to better cultivate bonds with who they’re trying to reach. MI
As humans, we all love ideas. It’s fundamentally something that you can inspire in everyone and in every function. Marketing teams are often the beacon of that in an organisation. But they shouldn’t be the sole preserve of that. They should be curators and champions of it. They should unleash it to the rest of their organisation.
Michelle Spillane, Paddy Power
As brands continue to funnel spend into performance marketing and AI amid budget pressures, Michelle Spillane, managing director of Paddy Power Online argues that creativity is being side-lined in favour of short-term results.
She believes creativity must be embedded across the organisation, rather than confined to the marketing function. When nurtured beyond a single team, it can drive ambition, innovation and long-term growth.
Her comments echo a broader industry push towards renewed investment in brand-building. Karen Martin, IPA president and CEO of BBH, has previously warned the UK advertising industry has “got lost in short-termism”, with more money than ever being channelled into short-term tactics.
Spillane adds that while technological advancements present significant opportunities for the creative process, the ability to generate original ideas will remain “ultra important”, and perhaps even more critical in an “AI world”. GG
