It’s almost impossible to consider the 2013 marketing year through anything other than a personal lens. For Marketing, it’s been a pretty dramatic 12 months, from the arrival of a new editor (me) to the transition from a weekly to a monthly print title, along with the relaunch of marketingmagazine.co.uk and the App Store debut of our tablet edition.
Perhaps if it hadn’t all gone so wonderfully well, I would indeed be languorously reminiscing here about horsemeat, #fbrape, Prince George and dozens of other marketing stories that have kept us in business in 2013. Instead, I’d like to point out that the new Marketing has been a triumph. We’ve received several hundred emails and letters of praise and congratulations, our website has just recorded its highest-ever traffic score, we’ve had thousands of downloads of our tablet mag, our Twitter followers are nudging 200,000 and we’ve just had our most successful commercial month since the boom years.
Contributors have included former Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion, photographer Rankin, Telefónica’s Ronan Dunne, Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart, Coca-Cola’s Jon Woods, retail guru Mary Portas, advertising icon Sir John Hegarty, P&G’s Irwin Lee, designer Wayne Hemingway, fragrance designer Jo Malone and many more. And our regular writers, from Will Harris to Passionbrand’s Helen Edwards, from BBH Labs’ Mel Exon to Brand Learning’s Mhairi McEwan, are compelling must-reads.
I mention all of this not just because I’m in the mood to swagger, and because the brilliant Marketing team here deserve even more applause, but because our successes reflect the healthy state of the industry we serve. A strong business magazine is always a great prognosis for the sector it covers. Marketing is thriving because marketing is thriving.
Of course we have our challenges (we’re in publishing, for goodness’ sake), as marketers, too, are under more pressure than ever. But together we are facing a future full of opportunity and possibility. It’s fitting, then, that we close the year celebrating not just Marketing, but 100 of those CMOs who are the benchmark of excellence in our business. Congratulations to them, and merry Christmas to all.