In a recent cautionary blog post I discussed our lack of scientific knowledge concerning the small movements we see in brand image trackers. Mark Ritson replied with a  column in Marketing Week where he accused me of not be a true scientist, along with some other surprisingly personal comments. That’s pretty nasty given that I’m a working scientist, and I lead a 70+ group of mostly young scientists within the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute. If only for them I need to set the record straight…

1) Mark said that I’d refused to discuss Koen Pauwell’s criticism, writing “he blocked Pauwels on social media yesterday when he aired his contradictory perspective”.  NO, I DIDN’T. As I wrote to Koen (when, contrary to Mark’s assertion, we were discussing his perspective) I largely only block people on twitter if they are trolls or (in this case) if they tweet tiresome Trump jokes/posts:

Mark also gave this as an example of me “shutting down debate”.  I’ll let you be the judge. If anyone thinks this is an example of me even just shunning debate, let alone shutting it down, please write and tell me.

2) Mark said that I said brand knowledge has no impact on behaviour. Koen, sort of made the same accusation. Given all I’ve written on mental availability that’s a pretty odd thing to say about me. Koen Pauwell’s work shows that awareness-related metrics sometimes move before sales do. That supports my work; it’s certainly nothing I’d disagree with, and it wasn’t what my blog was about. I wrote about brand image. Brand trackers routinely report on small changes in brand associations. My cautionary note is that (contrary to what some brand consultants will tell you) we have a very poor understanding of what these movements might mean in particular circumstances, or for a particular brand.

3) Ritson said that I don’t use longitudinal data (wrong) and wrote “ignore Sharp on measuring and valuing brand image. It is not his epistemological forte” (sic).  For the record, here is Google Scholar’s list of my research publications ranked by citation impact. It’s not difficult to see 20+ years of brand image and equity research.

Please read my blog post again. I think Ritson’s arguing about something quite different to what I wrote about, and that’s the strategic value/imperative of differentiation. So I’ll write something about that later and then he can have a go at me again but at least this time he’ll be on topic (and hopefully playing the ball not the man).

B.S.
August 2018