Case Studies

How one CMO used MiniMBA to win an IPA Effectiveness Award – MiniMBA online courses with Mark Ritson

Rachel Morris — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:15:00 GMT

In a four-part series with MiniMBA alumni Darren Milton, we explore how the 4Ps saved a 100-year-old brand. In part two, we look at the promotional P – and an IPA Award-winning campaign that helped boost brand awareness by +500%

When Darren Milton was promoted to CMO in 2020, he knew it would take more than a killer campaign to fix the issues at the heart of Boundless. The 100-year-old membership club had been in decline for decades. Membership had hit a new low and brand awareness was sitting at a dismal 2%.

The MiniMBA frameworks behind Rangemaster’s brilliant new ad - MiniMBA online courses with Mark Ritson

Rachel Morris — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 00:15:00 GMT

When we saw the new TV ad from Rangemaster, we recognised some deft brand diagnosis work at play...

We reached out to MiniMBA alumni Zoë Carter to learn how ‘Part of the Family since 1830’ reached our screens. Zoë talks brand heritage, loyalist research, custom funnels and audacious goals.

AGA and Rangemaster are to range cookers what Hoover is to the vacuum cleaner. So, when Zoë Carter got the call that she’d be joining the in-house team at AGA Rangemaster as a Brand Management Consultant, she was ecstatic.

She had not long graduated from the MiniMBA in Brand Management and – even after two successful decades in the industry – Zoë couldn’t wait to put everything she’d learned on the course into practice, she says, starting with a thorough brand diagnosis for Rangemaster.

“The Managing Director at AGA Rangemaster is someone I’ve worked with previously and comes from a marketing background,” says Zoë, “so I knew it was going to be relatively easy to get him on board.

“I said: look, I’ve been given this method and I wholeheartedly believe if we just follow the process, we will end up with an incredible result.”

Under Zoë’s guidance, they followed the MiniMBA process “to the rule,” delivering one of our favourite ads of the year.

Rangemaster’s ‘Part of the Family since 1830’ campaign launched, rather cleverly, during the first episode of a new season of The Great British Bake Off:

We know that great brand-building advertising can drive short-term impact too, or “long drives short.” But even within a month of campaign launch, Rangemaster saw an incredible uplift in sales.

Sales are up 50%

“Sales, year on year, are up. They’re up over 40% in September and 50% in October and November!

“It was a brand campaign, so to be delivering those sales is fabulous,” says Zoë.

Diagnosing a heritage brand

In the excitement of managing a new brand, it’s tempting to jump in and start making tactical decisions. But the telltale sign of a trained brand manager is the discipline to step back and do nothing. Yet.

As Mark Ritson puts it, “You can’t manage a brand without first understanding the specialness from doing a proper diagnosis.”

We’ve previously outlined the three steps of a “proper” brand diagnosis here, but the journey begins with a walk through the company archives.

And so, “following the MiniMBA module on diagnosis to the letter,” she says, Zoë began her time at Rangemaster by immersing herself in the rich history of the brand.

“Rangemaster has been based in Leamington Spa since William Flavel invented the range cooker back in 1830. People have written books on it! We’re on the same site. The factory is still here. So when Mark says look at location, look at heritage, look at founders … that was incredible in terms of getting a good grounding in the foundations of the company.”

I would recommend loyalist research to every single brand manager

After gorging on all the secondary data she could get her hands on, Zoë moved on to qualitative research.

“We did two loyalist focus groups – which are just a joy to do. I would recommend them to every single brand manager. To hear people talk about your brand with such love and passion is very, very motivating.”

They also ran two ‘prospect’ focus groups with people already in the kitchen buying process, to understand more about their purchase behaviour and garner some more typical brand associations for Rangemaster.

“We ended up with the purchase journey and brand associations to test, which we then took to the quantitative stage – again, literally following the MiniMBA brand survey to the rule,” says Zoë.

And why not? It’s what Mark Ritson uses in his own consulting work. In Module 3: Brand Diagnosis, Mark shares the blueprint of his quant brand survey. The final step in brand diagnosis, the 10-item questionnaire gives brand managers everything they’ll need later to build a data-driven strategy.

Brand survey data can be used to feed segmentation, brand awareness and perception tracking, competitor analysis, custom marketing funnels and more. That’s why getting brand diagnosis right is so important – it sets you up for a much smoother ride down the rest of the track.

“One of the things I felt after doing the course is if you simply follow what you’ve been taught, you can’t fail. It gives you that confidence,” says Zoë.

“The brand survey data gave us, amongst other things, our custom funnel. Which very clearly showed that we needed to put all our focus on improving brand awareness – getting people into the top of the funnel.”

An awareness problem

A custom funnel is one of the most powerful diagnostic tools in a brand manager’s toolkit. And Zoë’s work on Rangemaster is a great example of why.

For a quick introduction to MiniMBA’s custom funnels, read: “Stop using generic funnels – here’s how to build your own”

“We built a custom funnel for Rangemaster and it quite clearly showed that we had category with rejection – people who would never consider a range cooker. They were all about a built-in single oven and that was over 40%.”

More promisingly though, the Rangemaster funnel also flagged an issue with low brand awareness that would not just be easier, but far more rewarding to fix.

“We had an awareness problem,” says Zoë. “But once people knew who we were, our conversion through the funnel down to sale was phenomenal. So, it was clear what direction that we needed to go in.

“We needed to raise brand awareness for Rangemaster, because we knew once we got people into that funnel, they were going to convert all the way through. And that’s been demonstrated the sales for September, October and November.”

We knew once we got people into that funnel, they were going to convert all the way through

As category leader, the funnel also gave Rangemaster a second, loftier goal. They needed to raise the profile of range cookers as a whole.

“When I last put a kitchen in about 20 years ago, I didn’t know anything else I wanted, but I knew I wanted a range cooker. At the time, they were the thing to have in the home.

“Rangemaster was – and still is – the category leader and because of the lack of investment from Rangemaster as the leading brand, the category has declined. One of the big jobs we’ve got is to put the category back on a path to growth.”

This meant pure distinctiveness wouldn’t be enough. The primary goal of the campaign was to build brand awareness for Rangemaster, but they also needed to position against the alternative: the built in oven.

“The way those brands present themselves – your Miele, your Bosch, your Siemens – it’s that Germanic, very clean, minimalist kitchen.

“We wanted to go head-to-head with them and talk about the British way of cooking and the fact a kitchen is meant to be lived in and experienced. It’s meant to be a fun, vibrant place.

“So definitely part of the thinking was: how do we position ourselves against the German brands to show that we’re offering something different and something more uniquely British?”

We wanted to go head-to-head with them and talk about the British way of cooking

Although the TV ad was a mass-reach campaign with a prime-time media budget, Rangemaster still had a very clear target segment in mind, Zoë explains.

“We did an amazing piece of segmentation work with our agency, Mr President, who helped us quantify the opportunity. I never thought I’d get so excited about segmentation! It helped us really clearly identify who we needed to be talking to.

“We identified an audience – our target segment – which is ‘people entering their big era.’ It’s young families, who’ve got probably a couple of young children, and their social life within the home is at its peak. Family gatherings, birthday parties, friends coming over to play, all that sort of stuff. A lot of hosting.

“It makes sense for them to have a range cooker due to the flexibility and the capacity that product offers versus a built-in oven.”

How Rangemaster became “part of the family”

The idea for the campaign creative came straight out of their loyalist research, says Zoë. “People talked about the product with such pride and said it’s almost like a member of the family.”

Instead of leaning into a low-hanging, soppy execution, Rangemaster took an unexpected (and much funnier) turn. The ad opens with warring in-laws arriving, unannounced, at a young couple’s doorstep – apparently too excited to wait for an invitation to meet ‘the new arrival.’ This soon turns out to be a Rangemaster, rather than the couple’s new baby.

“Mr. President came up with six incredible creative ideas. We decided to go back to our loyalists and we talked them through each concept. The new arrival was the out and out winner – people absolutely loved it.

“And out of that, the strapline was born. ‘Part of the family since 1830’ speaks to that emotional side, but the brand heritage as well. Without diagnosis, we wouldn’t have seen any of that.”

We’re in this for the long term

Importantly, this diagnosis work has not just produced a great brand campaign, but a forward strategy as they continue to invest in brand and category growth in the coming years.

“We’re very much in this for the long term,” says Zoë. “We will run the ad again in 2026 as it is. But the plan is to work with that idea.”

Beyond an immediate sales uplift, ‘part of the family’ has clearly struck a chord with audiences. There has been calls for the characters to reprise their roles in a long-running ‘OXO Family’ style series of ads, Zoë tells us. And suggestions are flooding in for Christmas storylines.

“I don’t know where we’re going to take it next – but you know you’re on to a good idea when people are really inspired by it and coming up with their own ideas.”

Looking further into the future, Zoë says, “We have a big, audacious goal. In most kitchen projects, appliances come last. You want the furniture, you want the look of the kitchen, and you spend all your budget on that…

“So, we’re thinking about trying to trigger a kitchen purchase due to that desire to have a Rangemaster product in your home. But that’s quite a long-term goal!”

The broader benefits of MiniMBA training

We’ve talked about the very tangible benefits Zoë took from doing the MiniMBA in Brand Management – a fantastic brand campaign that is already boosting sales by 50% and a strategy that looks set to deliver strong brand growth.

But there are broader benefits that factor in heavily too, Zoe tells us. “I’ve worked in marketing and been successful over the years, but always felt that I should get a formal qualification.

“As somebody towards the end of my career in marketing, my god, I wish I’d done it when I was younger (or it had existed when I was younger). I had all the right kind of thinking and right instincts in marketing, but I wasn’t ever approaching it in that logical, structured way.

“The other thing is my confidence. Now, going into meetings, having all the evidence-based argument that MiniMBA gives you is just amazing.

“I’m so passionate about this industry and I totally agree with Mark when he says if marketers are going to be taken seriously, it’s so important that we’re properly trained. I’m guilty of it too, because I waited this long to get formal qualification.

“The plan is to put the senior team here at AGA Rangemaster through the course next year.”

To learn more about brand diagnosis and why it matters, read: “The missing step in marketing plans: brand diagnosis.”

Or for a deep dive into brand diagnosis, brand strategy and creating brand campaigns that drive business impact, sign up for the next MiniMBA in Brand Management.

How the 4Ps saved a 100-year-old brand: Boundless’ CMO on the impact of MiniMBA - MiniMBA online courses with Mark Ritson

Rachel Morris — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 00:15:00 GMT

In this four-part series with MiniMBA alumni Darren Milton , we look at how the marketing mix helped a legacy membership club enter their biggest phase of new member growth in decades.

To kick things off, we talk about the Product P and learn why Darren says, “product is the biggest multiplier...”

To kick things off, we talk about the Product P and learn why Darren says, “product is the biggest multiplier…”

When a new CMO comes in from outside to turn around a failing business, they’re blessed with the gift of distance. It’s much easier to look around and pick apart what’s wrong.

When Darren Milton took up the role of CMO at Boundless, he’d already been inside the business for more than a decade – working his way through roles in creative, partnerships, brand and marketing. He knew the business and he clearly knew his stuff, but Darren also knew he needed to bring a fresh perspective to the role – and the business – if he was going to turn things around.

From “cost-centre” to marketing powerhouse: Goodman Fielder - MiniMBA online courses with Mark Ritson

Rachel Morris — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT

New Zealand’s largest FMCG company has transformed their approach to marketing – winning ground in market share, profitability and employer brand value

When Frankie Coulter became CMO of Goodman Fielder NZ, marketing was seen as a cost-centre – underfunded, undervalued and misunderstood. Rather than tweaking performance at the edges, he saw an opportunity to fundamentally shift how the business thinks about marketing.

Central to that transformation was MiniMBA. By embedding it into onboarding and development, Frankie built a team that spoke the same strategic language, challenged old ways of thinking, and proved that skilled marketers can drive serious business results.

Find out how a shift in mindset, backed by capability building, helped one company reframe marketing as an investment and reshape its commercial future…

New Zealand’s largest FMCG company, Goodman Fielder is home to some of the nation’s favourite food and drink brands including Vogel’s and Meadow Fresh. When CMO Frankie Coulter took up the role in 2022, he came with a mission: create a training ground for world-class marketers. Not just at Goodman Fielder, he says, but in New Zealand and beyond.

“New Zealand has a history of being world-class in so many areas, from rugby to aviation. So why should our marketing be any different? I wanted Goodman Fielder to be recognised alongside organisations that operate at a global standard, regardless of where they are based.”

Frankie set to work building a major business transformation programme. An internal audit highlighted three areas for focus: internal capabilities, marketing culture and performance.

Using MiniMBA in Marketing as the foundation of his transformation programme, his team of 26 marketers has now all done “at least one MiniMBA.” It has become a key part of their onboarding process – “regardless of what level people are,” he says. “Any new person that joins the company, I put them through MiniMBA in Marketing.”

Under Frankie’s leadership, Goodman Fielder has had a phenomenal few years. A culture of investing in people has become the new normal, and there’s been a seismic shift in the way marketing is viewed within the business. Some of the headline wins include:

+3.2% penetration increase on KALÓ yoghurt
3:1 ROI on Vogel’s bread
56-point swing in employer brand value
Team turnover dropped from 25% to almost zero
5 internal senior promotions
Frankie named New Zealand Marketer of the Year 2024

“Three years ago, people laughed when we said we would be a world-class marketing team. Now, agencies worldwide want to work with us, our team is more engaged than ever, and we are pushing the boundaries of marketing in New Zealand.

“We’re doing good work and people in the industry are seeing that. I don’t even need to recruit anymore – I’m getting people from Fonterra, Coca-Cola… sending me CVs.”

Reshaping Goodman Fielder’s approach to marketing

Frankie knew his first hurdle as CMO was to reshape internal perceptions of marketing in the business.

“Goodman Fielder NZ historically has not been a big believer in brands and brand building, even though we have some powerhouse brands with 100 years of heritage behind them,” says Frankie.

“We classified marketing as DME – direct marketing expense. The first thing I did was sit with the board and explain: marketing isn’t an expense, it’s an investment. We changed that to ‘Direct Marketing Investment’ and just by changing the language around how we approached marketing at a board level, it transformed people’s opinion of what they were getting for their money.”

We classified marketing as DME – direct marketing expense

Frankie’s next step was to get that investment spend up, making his case with both an evidence-based approach and a touch of theatrical flair: “I literally took a box full of white bags and put that on the table in front of the executive board,” he says.

“Our core portfolio is commodities, so we’ve got flour, sugar, bread, milk… I said, look if you don’t believe in marketing, I’ll put everything in a white box, but you’re not going to make any money. The value of the company comes from whatever design or brand logo we’ve got on the pack and then what people think, feel, believe about that.”

While this helped get the message across, Frankie still had a challenge ahead to get marketing budgets where he wanted them. He’d cut his teeth at Kellogg in the 1990s, where they were spending 16% of net sales value on marketing expenditure.

“When I took over in our business, we were spending between 1-2% on advertising and support. We’re a billion-dollar company and we were spending a few hundred thousand here and there across 14 brands.”

Throwing more money at brands is not a solution in itself. Proper marketing investment needs properly trained marketers behind the wheel to generate results. Frankie needed to show the board how skilled marketers with real spending power could impact the bottom line. And so, with the board’s backing, Frankie and his team got to work with their flagship brand, Vogel’s bread.

“I was able to demonstrate that by investing a dollar in marketing, I could get three back. That earned us the trust to go and spend more on other brands.”

While he was working on increasing marketing investment, Frankie took a similar hard-line approach to investing in his team.

“When I first started, all my team was doing was mopping up for other departments. Marketing would be the go-to for everything from ‘we need somebody to send samples down to Napier’ or ‘marketing can organise that’ – admin, basically.”

Determined to make ‘marketers’ marketers again, Frankie sat down with HR and drew up some new job descriptions to get everyone in the business clear on what his team would – and wouldn’t – be doing going forward.

“That clarity was absolutely critical to getting my team focused on what they should be doing, which is marketing and any activity related to understanding the consumer and the business.

It wasn’t a lack of talent; it was a lack of exposure

“We did an audit and found that many in our team had never worked on above-the-line creative, like television commercials or large-scale campaigns. It wasn’t a lack of talent; it was a lack of exposure. We were outsourcing the intellectual responsibility to agencies, which meant our team wasn’t learning or growing in those areas.”

Enter: Mark Ritson and his MiniMBA courses.

The culture impact

“Everything Mark Ritson talks about is what marketers used to get taught at companies like Kellogg, Mars, PepsiCo… and that’s why I have always resonated with him. He’s been talking about these things for 20 years – it’s just in a package now with MiniMBA.

“The reason why I’m attracted to the course is that MiniMBA is like a one-stop-shop where your teams can get completely trained. It accelerates the process of building people’s capability.

It’s what marketers used to get taught at companies like Kellogg, Mars, PepsiCo… it’s just in a package now with MiniMBA

“It’s great to see within my team because a lot of the tools MiniMBA teaches is how we used to do things back in the day… In my opinion, the Golden Age of marketing was the 80s and 90s. Your marketers were really good, they could all speak that common language, and they understood market orientation and creativity… And at some point, we lost it. There was a love and a passion for our profession that you just don’t see anymore.

“I came into the CMO role with the intention of recreating what good marketing and good brand management once looked like – that was my plan from day one.”

His plan is working. Staff happiness and retention is through the roof, they’re driving measurable business results, and his team are excited about their roles for the first time in years. Since taking over, Frankie has recorded a 56-point swing in employer brand value and team turnover has dropped from 25% to almost zero.

“We’ve gone from being a team that was undervalued and wanting to leave the company, to a team that’s in a happy place. We feel supported, we feel like we’re being invested in, and we feel successful.”

Frankie’s team development plan is underpinned by MiniMBA in Marketing, but he doesn’t stop there. Frankie supports his team through further capability training, external and internal Women & Leadership programmes, industry mentorship and on-the-job learning opportunities. His “Have a Go” model, for example, puts people into roles where they can step up – “even if they make mistakes,” he says. “I work on making people happy first, then I work on their capability.”

For Frankie, this means getting people in the right seats and upskilling further based on individual strengths and passions. For example, putting aspiring brand managers through MiniMBA in Brand Management.

The output of all this, Frankie says, is “awesome, awesome marketers.” He’s already made five senior promotions within his team, with three more rising stars on their way up.

“Any one of them could go work in any company in New Zealand right now and they would smash it. We are creating an academy of marketing that will benefit Goodman Fielder and the industry for years to come.”

The capability and cultural change within marketing is so infectious it permeates the whole business

This sea change isn’t going unnoticed throughout the rest of the business. Goodman Fielder’s Head of Retail Sales plans to follow Frankie’s lead, saying: “The marketing high performance leadership model is now the benchmark for the rest of the business to follow.”

While the Head of People and Culture has said: “The capability and cultural change within marketing is so infectious it permeates the whole of Goodman Fielder with positive energy and optimism for the future.”

Even Goodman Fielder Australia is taking note. After seeing the positive changes happening across the water, Goodman Fielder’s Australian CMO enrolled 10 of her people in the latest MiniMBA in Marketing class.

The business impact

Frankie had set the stage for a new era of marketing at Goodman Fielder by returning 3:1 ROI on Vogel’s. The business could now see – indisputably – the impact of marketing investment and brand building. This gave his team autonomy to go and apply their MiniMBA learnings with the trust and financial backing of the wider business.

“We are trusted in the business – and it’s not just me,” says Frankie. “My key leaders are trusted just as much, if not more than me on some topics. That is 100% down to MiniMBA, because we know what we’re doing and we’ve got results that prove it.

We are trusted in the business – and it’s not just me

“We are seen as a credible business unit and that’s thanks to MiniMBA. It’s your market orientation, it’s understanding your consumer and it’s Mark Ritson giving people the confidence to be – and this is the phrase I use with my team – intellectually curious about their brand and their business.

“With our agency DDB, we have been having many proper brand conversations that my team could not have had before doing the course and believing in themselves. It is so rewarding to see a team of people grow as much as mine has. The conversations and work we are doing has transformed.”

In 2023, with DDB Group Aotearoa, his team launched the first ad campaign for KALÓ yoghurt in half a decade. Starring a sentient supermarket checkout machine, the playful campaign resonated with consumers so much that market penetration increased by +3.2%.

Frankie says the best backhanded compliment he’s ever had comes from their Head of Operations, who said: “Looks like the world’s worst yoghurt ad is working. The factory is at capacity.”

This success is a now-consistent theme across the Goodman Fielder portfolio. Frankie and his team are driving brand metric victories in awareness and consideration, as well as market share gains of up to +10%.

Frankie’s role in the transformation at Goodman Fielder New Zealand was recognised at the YouTube NZ Marketing Awards, when he was crowned Marketer of the Year 2024.

“People are copying us now. I’ve got pretty much every CEO in the land wanting to understand how we are doing it. We are a very friendly society here, so we all get along, and my message to everybody is: it’s not that hard if you know what you’re doing. If you understand the marketing fundamentals and you apply them, you’re probably going to win for your brand and your business.

…we’re quite vocal about how investment in the capability of our people is helping drive our performance

“I would hazard a guess that you’re going to be seeing more companies from New Zealand and Australia putting their people through MiniMBA, because we’re quite vocal in the market about how investment in the capability of our people is helping drive our performance.”

Frankie’s plan for 2025 and beyond is to continue investing in marketing capability at Goodman Fielder. Giving his team the tools that they need and the confidence to use them, Frankie says he wants to raise the bar on performance – they may have “won” but they’re “not done.”

Interested in MiniMBA team training? Join leading global businesses like Google, Adidas, the BBC and Yakult. Contact our training team to find out more.

Cover: Khakimullin Aleksandr/shutterstock.com

How MiniMBA helped one marketer thrive client-side - MiniMBA online courses with Mark Ritson

MiniMBA — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT

When Ariane Sketcher made the move client-side, MiniMBA gave her the skills and confidence to hit the ground running.

Now thriving as Lead Brand Manager at Lotto24, she sat down with us to share how the course gave her the competitive edge to succeed.

Hi Ariane! Thanks for having a chat with us today. We’re eager to learn more about your career journey. Can you take us from the beginning to where you are now?

In 2013, I started at Ogilvy & Mather in what was meant to be a trainee role. Four years later, I had worked my way up to a Senior Account Manager. Eventually, I craved a new challenge, so I switched to client side.

That’s when I joined Otto. I loved the fast-paced world of e-commerce, and it was there that my VP noticed my potential. He encouraged me to deepen my marketing knowledge and got me enrolled in the MiniMBA. Honestly, that was a game-changer for me.

What was in the back of your own mind when you began to consider proper training in marketing?

Before doing the course, I had never formally studied marketing. I just learned on the job. I also noticed that many people in my team lacked foundational marketing skills. My VP wanted me to bring the knowledge of MiniMBA into my team, and it worked.

A year after that same VP left Otto, he poached me to join Lotto24. Now, I’m Lead Brand Manager, heading up a growing team. I work across product marketing, user research, KPIs, campaigns — you name it.

So, do you still share what you’ve learned from MiniMBA with your team?

Yes. I regularly share key learnings and guidance around marketing strategy and brand management.

At Lotto24, I have a colleague who also completed MiniMBA in Marketing, so we often exchange ideas. And, after attending the Festival of Marketing, I brought back even more insight from Mark Ritson’s presentation.

Was it easy to fit the course around your day-to-day work?

Surprisingly, yes. It fit well because the topics were directly relevant to my work at the time. At Otto, for instance, we were focused on research and measurement — understanding what was successful and what wasn’t.

At Lotto24, the challenge was different. It’s a marketing strategy-oriented company. However, as most of the focus was on short-term gains, I needed to introduce brand management and long-term thinking.

The course was incredibly helpful because brand management was fairly new at Lotto24. I had to establish its importance. MiniMBA gave me the tools to explain and justify brand management within the company.

Making the Case for Brand Management

Did MiniMBA training help you get stakeholders on board with your thinking?

Definitely. It helped me understand what to measure, how to measure it, and how to segment the market properly. However, I still find myself having to speak the language of finance when dealing with executives. I can present strong strategic reasoning. Sometimes though, senior people still focus on whether an approach brings in new customers right away!

That said, the course gave me the confidence and strategic framework to make stronger arguments about brand positioning and marketing strategy.

What kind of impact has MiniMBA had on your career progression?

It’s had a huge impact. I completed both MiniMBA in Marketing and MiniMBA in Brand Management within six months, and soon after, I got a promotion. The company even created a new position for me.

It’s had a huge impact. I completed both MiniMBAs within six months, and soon after, I got a promotion. The company even created a new position for me.

It also helped me realise that I didn’t want to focus solely on campaign management forever — I wanted to be a brand manager.

At Otto, I did exactly that. I was promoted from Senior Brand Manager to Expert in Brand & Campaigns, which allowed me to advise multiple teams. When I moved to Lotto24, I negotiated to join as a Lead Brand Manager. Now, I’m on track for another promotion to Team Lead of Brand Management.

Has the way you approach your work changed since taking MiniMBA?

After finishing the course, people did notice my new approach to strategy, positioning and marketing. And they began relying on my thinking. I was able to clearly lay out what needed to be done, what to focus on, and how to measure success. Now, people recognise that my approach makes sense, and that’s what has driven my career growth.

Confidence that Sticks

Would you recommend MiniMBA to others? And why?

Ariane: Absolutely. Mark Ritson emphasises confidence, and that really resonated with me. If you have confidence in your knowledge, everything else follows.

For me, the course was about learning and understanding marketing at a deeper level. At Otto, I didn’t have colleagues who could properly teach me brand management. I had to seek that knowledge out myself. Now, I can bring real value to my team.

Before signing up, did you have any doubts or concerns about the course?

At first, I was sceptical because I usually struggle with online learning. Previously, I preferred in-person classes where I can interact directly with the instructor. However, I was pleasantly surprised by how engaging and practical MiniMBA is.

It isn’t too theoretical — it’s entertaining, hands-on, and full of real-world examples. Ritson has a gift for making complex theories simple and actionable. And it isn’t dry at all; it is filled with case studies, humour, and practical insights, which kept me engaged.

I usually struggle with online learning … I was pleasantly surprised by how engaging and practical MiniMBA is

Did your company pay for the course?

Yes, thankfully! At that stage in my career, I would have been a stretch to pay for it myself. But given my career progression, it’s 100% worth the investment in time and money.

Did the exam and interactive tools make MiniMBA feel more worthwhile?

The exam was tough but valuable. I’ve taken other courses where I’ve walked out thinking, “Is that it?”. MiniMBA was different because the exam forced me to apply what I learned.

The interactive live modelling tools were also great. It allowed me to test different marketing strategies in real-world scenarios. The peer interaction was another big plus. Overall, the exam made the course feel truly worthwhile.

If you were telling a friend or colleague about MiniMBA, how would you pitch it to them?

I’d say it’s everything. It’s career progression, knowledge, and confidence.

You learn how marketing really works. It gives you the tools to really push yourself in your role and add value to your team.

And I still find myself revisiting my MiniMBA materials to refresh my knowledge whenever I need.

Ariane is one of 29,000+ marketers who’ve transformed their career with MiniMBA. Whether you’re looking to kickstart a new career or sharpen your edge, MiniMBA gives you the confidence to succeed it in your role. Find out how MiniMBA in Marketing can elevate your marketing game today.

Interested in team training? Join leading businesses and supercharge your marketing department with MiniMBA. Contact our training team to find out more.

Why this Google marketer chose MiniMBA over a master’s degree - MiniMBA online courses with Mark Ritson

MiniMBA — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Yanina Vidal joined Google straight out of uni. But it was MiniMBA in Brand Management that gave her the strategic edge to thrive. We sat down with Yanina to find out how the course levelled up her skills and propelled her career.

How one CMO is bringing creativity back to New Zealand with MiniMBA - MiniMBA online courses with Mark Ritson

Rachel Morris — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 01:00:00 GMT

MiniMBA delivers Golden Age marketing “in a package,” says Goodman Fielder CMO Frankie Coulter

Veteran marketer Frankie Coulter grew up at the likes of Kellogg and Kraft Heinz – institutions with a longstanding reputation for marketing excellence. When he took over as CMO at Goodman Fielder New Zealand, Frankie wanted to bring back some of the spark he remembers from what he calls “the Golden Age of marketing.”

As the country’s largest FMCG company, Goodman Fielder was ticking along happily enough, but the business wasn’t investing in creativity. They were leaving market share on the table and losing uninspired marketers to other careers or organisations.

Applying MiniMBA at a small budget B2B - MiniMBA online courses with Mark Ritson

Rachel Morris — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 01:00:00 GMT

An award-winning example of how MiniMBA learnings apply – no matter your end customer or the size of your budget

MiniMBA triple threat Chris Cotterill recently scooped the Prolific North Marketer of the Year award, as well as picking up a Best Campaign award with his team at Tribepad for their brilliant Stop the Bias campaign.

… And he’s doing it all – gasp – at a small-budget B2B.

Mark Ritson can scream it from the rooftops but a question that still comes up often is: Does MiniMBA apply in a B2B and/or small budget environment?

His answer is always yes and yes. But there’s nothing like a case study to bring something home. So, we wanted to shine a light on MiniMBA alumnus Chris, who demonstrates this beautifully in his award-winning work at Tribepad.

A recruitment software business based in Sheffield, UK, Tribepad currently employs around 60 people and serves close to 170 customers across multiple sectors and business needs. Their feature-rich applicant tracking system (ATS) powers the recruitment for well-known names like Tesco, Greggs, Liverpool FC and Sodexo, as well as numerous local government authorities across the country.

Chris joined the company in September 2021 as Head of Marketing, just as he was approaching the end of his first MiniMBA in Marketing, he says, “Flicking between my course notes and the real world of Tribepad.”

Since then, Chris has completed the Brand Management and Management courses (pocketing a perfect A-A-A score), been promoted to Marketing Director, and instigated real business change across all four Ps – with fantastic commercial results to the tune of increased lead volumes, customer numbers and recurring revenue.

We asked Chris to take us through his journey of applying MiniMBA principles as a fresh hire in a new ‘head of’ role.

As ever, that begins with a rock-solid diagnosis: market orientation, market research and segmentation.

Bang for your buck: diagnosis on a budget

“The Head of Marketing role was brand new for the business, so I was lucky enough to be able to act like a consultant in the early days,” says Chris. “I didn’t inherit a big, immediate to-do list.”

This meant that Chris had the time and space to step back and get a lay of the land. You can do diagnosis with a limited budget; you can do diagnosis with unconventional market research methods; the one non-negotiable in diagnosis is time. And the discipline to step away from the shiny stuff and use that time to truly interrogate your brand and your market.

As Mark Ritson says, when you join a new company, “An amateur or untrained brand manager immediately jumps in and starts making tactical decisions without really having any clue what they’re talking about.

“It’s much harder, but much more important to answer all those initial questions with a hunch of the shoulder, with a shake of the head and with the only answer which is appropriate when you begin managing a new brand, which is, ‘I don’t know. I’m going to find out as quickly as I can and then we’ll put together a winning strategy.’” (Module 3: Brand Diagnosis, MiniMBA in Brand Management)

“Prior to working at Tribepad I had predominantly worked in B2C, big budget, big brand telecoms across Plusnet, EE and BT – so, a very different world,” says Chris.

“We didn’t have the budget for a lot of bespoke first party research at Tribepad and there was an absence of readily available market insight. So, I had to try and apply the MiniMBA learnings as much as I could,” he says, “progress better than perfection.

“I contacted the ONS and got a bunch of data around volume of businesses by sector and size in the UK. I used that as a starter for estimating market size, with some assumptions about contract lengths, renewal rates and therefore ‘in-market’ volumes each year.

“I could then do some basic segmentation based on size and needs. Again, this had to be crude and I took learning from speaking to our sales team, industry experts, our account managers, our customers, et cetera to get a view of the biggest challenges that businesses were trying to solve.

“Based on our internal data I could then give an estimated value per segment using our own customer average contract values.”

A perfect example of the Ritson® Meaningful x Actionable grid in play, this market segmentation supported huge change across the business. While “crude” as Chris describes it, the work revealed a picture of the market that crushed previous assumptions about where they should (and shouldn’t) be focusing their energy.

Source: Tribepad. Actual market size and values redacted.

“Previously Tribepad was exclusively targeting enterprise level organisations with 1000+ employees,” Chris explains.

Taking into account John Dawes’ 95:5 rule, Tribepad was effectively targeting only a small number of organisations each year. But Chris was able to use his sizing work to demonstrate the massive unrealised potential of another valuable segment.

“I think there was a lack of understanding about exactly how small this market was in terms of volume, particularly when you consider the majority aren’t actively in-market in any given year. They were previously knocking away leads that were ‘too small,’ but the market sizing helped to show how big that opportunity could be. This diagnosis work led to the formal development and launch of a new product.”

They were previously knocking away leads that were too small

Today, Tribepad offers two distinct products. Tribepad Gro is a simpler version of Tribepad’s core ATS solution, targeted at businesses with teams from around 200 to 750 people. And they rebranded their large-engine, fully customised enterprise-level solution as Tribepad Pro.

“I also ran some brand tracking with a bespoke B2B research agency to get a view of core metrics like awareness, consideration and preference. This wasn’t hugely expensive and it’s something I now repeat on an annual basis.”

With his big-budget B2C days now behind him, Chris says, “Gone are the days of monthly brand trackers and econometrics and MMM and all that stuff. I think most of it is overkill, anyway.

“On the back of this diagnosis work, I created a full marketing strategy – which segments we should target and how we should position ourselves to win.”

Cracking brand positioning

“During my interview process, I’d sold the dream of cracking the Tribepad brand positioning,” Chris tells us. “This was obviously easier now we knew who we wanted to talk to, what we wanted to talk about and why.”

Mark Ritson says brands must seek both distinctiveness and differentiation. Stand out, and stand apart by being more, or less, of something than your competitors. For smaller brands, this is doubly important. So going forward, Tribepad would rise above B2B clichés like ‘innovative,’ ‘powerful’ and ‘award-winning’ and position themselves on their point of differentiation: Tribepad cares about making recruitment better for businesses and jobseekers.

A critical first step was to articulate that internally

A critical first step was to articulate that internally, ensuring that everyone from sales to customer service is aligned and on board. For the creative teams who would be bringing the brand to life, they created a more detailed “Tribepad Framework.” It asks and answers questions like: why we exist, the problem we solve, what we do and what you hear us talking about.

For the rest of the business (“who couldn’t care less about marketing frameworks or splashy statements”), they condensed all of that down into one simple positioning statement, or the Tribepad mission statement: To make recruitment fairer, faster and better for everyone.

“Once we’d got all the strategic building blocks in place, we were able to move onto the more tactical delivery plan to support.”

The promotional P: What does that look like for the customer?

“Creatively we try to be distinctive and stand out against the sea of boring B2B ads,” says Chris.

However, the system is rigged towards bigger (richer) brands. More money spent on media reach will almost always trump a great ad with limited budget behind it. But Chris could ensure his media investment was working harder by embracing the power of integrated marketing communications (IMC) and spreading his spend across multiple channels. One study by Analytic Partners found that an integrated campaign across five different media platforms boosts ROI by a mighty +35%.

Mark Ritson summarises this phenomenon with a simple equation: a x b > 2a or 2b. (Module 10: Marketing Communications, MiniMBA in Marketing)

“We don’t have huge budgets so it’s not TV or radio or OOH, but paid social, BTL, SEM and events,” says Chris.

While their top of funnel campaigns do the job of building brand awareness and helping Tribepad stand out from the rest of the boring pack, mid-funnel campaigns hammer home their position as a brand that is challenging the norm.

A fantastic example is their Stop the Bias campaign, which launched in 2022 with a damning report that revealed less than a quarter of job applicants believed diversity data was benefiting them. The research was supercharged a year later, with results published in the Stop the Bias Report 2024 – this time analysing representative data from over 2 million applications and nearly 70,000 hires.

The report credibly roots Tribepad in important (often mandatory) conversations around ED&I for businesses, while promoting brand preference and relevant product capabilities such as their Anonymous Applications feature.

“Stop the Bias was just one of our brand campaigns designed to show how we wanted to make recruitment fairer for everybody. It’s a little bit controversial in that we are directly challenging the people we wanted to sell our product to. But it felt natural and authentic and valuable.

“The work picked up Best B2B Campaign at the Prolific North Awards 2024, which was great recognition of the impact it had, particularly when you consider we were up against some big hitters like LinkedIn, Dulux, Bupa and more.

“It’s something we’ll continue to build on,” says Chris. “We’ve seen great results with increasing usage of some of our anti-bias features and customers talking to us about how to improve their processes to enable fairer recruitment. So, it’s not just positive commercial results but also a positive impact on the community.”

You can download the latest report here: tribepad.com/stop-the-bias

What does growth look like, three years on?

“Commercially, results have been strong. We can’t share exact numbers in this article, but lead volumes, customer numbers, recurring revenue and all that stuff has increased consistently over the past three years – even in the tough economic climate we now find ourselves in.

“On a personal level, I started to put myself into conversations in other areas of the business – gaps I’d noticed in terms of propositions and go-to-market strategy. This was on the back of some of the things learnt on the MiniMBA in Management and I think one of the things that helped my promotion to Marketing Director in August last year.

I started to put myself into conversations in other areas of the business

“Then in October, I picked up the Marketer of the Year Award at the Prolific North Awards. The judges said: ‘Chris has clearly made an impact, with his hard-hitting results. A valued member of the team, he has been a driving force for Tribepad’s achievements and growth, while having a commitment to his own professional development.’

“So, it’s fair to say that my MiniMBA journey has had a direct influence on me picking up that award!

“In terms of what comes next, I’m excited to keep building on the solid foundations we’ve established at Tribepad. We’re pushing for B-Corp status to further support our positioning and I’m challenging the team to be bolder in our creative execution.

“We’ve got some exciting product developments on the way and I’m sure we’ll continue to deliver against our ambitious growth plans whilst building a business we are proud of.”

Chris Cotterill is Marketing Director at Tribepad. Connect with Chris on LinkedIn or visit tribepad.com to see more of his impressive work.

Or find out what all the fuss is about for yourself on the MiniMBA in Marketing – sign up for the next course here.

Yakult Europe invests in a unified language of marketing - MiniMBA online courses with Mark Ritson

Rachel Morris — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 01:00:00 GMT

Find out what happened when Yakult brought teams together across their European division to complete MiniMBA in Marketing

Challenge: How to refocus marketing as a central driver of growth for the business and synchronise efforts – across borders and departments – by creating a unified language of marketing throughout their European division.

Solution: Yakult Europe brought together more than 20 employees to undertake MiniMBA together as one company. MiniMBA provides formal training on key topics such as research, strategy, pricing, distribution or product development and teaches highly technical processes that can and do give marketers the ‘right’ answers.

Benefits: Alignment around a common set of tools, best practices and shared understanding of marketing as a key driver of business goals; the experience has helped propel Yakult Europe forward in a multitude of ways. Yakult continues to actively deploy “MiniMBA thinking” today, with a thriving culture of shared learning at its core.

European Marketing Manager, Theo van Uffelen

Where it all began

Theo van Uffelen is European Marketing Manager at Yakult. He describes himself as “a big ambassador for looking at marketing as the whole craft,” rather than siloing off different functions to single-minded structures within a wider team, he explains.

Wanting to refocus marketing as a central driver of growth in the business, Theo led the charge in signing up colleagues across Yakult Europe to do MiniMBA in Marketing together as a team.

“The key challenge was to get everyone – with all the different languages and different markets and different backgrounds – to the same understanding and language when we talk about marketing,” Theo says.

By creating a unified language of marketing, Yakult hoped to synchronise growth efforts across borders, as well as across departments. Alongside marketers from each region, participants ranged from Managing Directors to heads of Finance and HR.

People came together from Germany, UK, Italy, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands; and the result contributed to significant changes in how the company works together across Europe today.

Moving forward, together

The idea to put people in non-marketing roles through MiniMBA might seem unorthodox but, for Yakult, it has proved invaluable in putting MiniMBA learnings into practice.

Aligning on “how we see marketing as a key force in contributing to the growth of the organisation,” Theo says, Yakult could “go forward, together.”

As a company built on scientific innovation, the importance of being market oriented was – at times – being overlooked.

“One of the immediate benefits was having a much more clear and substantiated view why it’s important to be outside-in thinking (market orientated), instead of inside-out thinking (product orientated),” says Theo, “or at least have a good balance between the two.”

Crucially, this has enabled more marketers at Yakult to help drive the wider discussions around growth.

“Writing marketing plans has become easier because we have the same definition and logic. Learning from each other has become a lot easier – not just across the markets but also across the disciplines.

“It didn’t solve everything overnight. We still have a lot of hard work to do, but MiniMBA creates the foundation upon which you can build further.”

Treating marketing as a science

“It’s not uncommon for non-marketers – people in finance, HR, production, whoever – to see marketing as the limited area of doing promotions or advertising.

“We partly have ourselves to blame as marketeers, because we tend to talk about these things most. Whereas the less shiny, less sexy elements of marketing like research, strategy, pricing, distribution or product development don’t get the attention of a new campaign.”

MiniMBA teaches highly technical processes that can and do give marketers the ‘right’ answers. Van Westendorp’s Pricing Model, Multi-Dimensional Perceptual Mapping and the Jobs-to-be-Done product development framework are just a few of the tools taught throughout ten distinct modules. Tools that demonstrate marketing is not a whim-based secretive art, nor is it the ‘colouring in department.’

“MiniMBA helped a lot in understanding that we need to listen better to consumers,” says Theo, “and use marketing techniques when we talk about product development, for example. We need to understand how pricing research is important for us to set the long-term strategy in terms of costing and technology development.

“A number of things have changed in the way that we work that has enabled marketers to make a bigger difference in the company.”

Synchro-skilling and a culture of shared learning

MiniMBA is a proven upskilling programme. 94% of marketers who complete the course feel ‘more effective’ as a direct result of MiniMBA in Marketing. This is manifest at Yakult today through more confident, “better marketers,” says Theo. But he also describes a process of synchro-skilling:

“Yakult is very much a science-based company. We are into having really, really smart brains, who understand microbiology and life sciences, and can explain to other healthcare professionals how the whole gut microbiota works.

“That means several people who drifted into marketing roles have different backgrounds. Some already had a thorough marketing background, others were people who came in out of the science realm or PR or dietitians, even.

“Getting everybody on the same skill level – or synchro-skilling, as I call it – was maybe even more important than increasing individual skill levels. It means the average level is going up and that makes it easier to enable cross departmental and cross market learning.”

For Yakult, this fertile culture of learning remains a key benefit of completing the course as a company. MiniMBA helped “build a foundation to enable self-learning” that the team actively prioritises today.

MiniMBA thinking as policy

“Our ambition is still to have new starters join the course as much as possible. Once they have been able to land and get to know the company, we want to expose them to MiniMBA thinking.

“This is irrespective of their skill level or education. We have people coming in who have a solid marketing education already. We still ask them to do the course, because it’s a good refresher and it’s a good synchroniser.

“Even people coming in from Yakult Japan, we immediately introduce them into MiniMBA thinking. Not that they are less educated, but they sometimes have a different paradigm or way of looking at things – and this helps us synchronise.”

Beyond completing the course, Theo highlights the benefits of revisiting the learnings on a regular basis as a team, to truly get the most out of what MiniMBA has to offer.

“It’s more about the application of knowledge, than the gathering of knowledge per se. I think a pitfall for everyone is being consumed by the daily urgencies and not thinking about how we are applying this in the best way.”

It’s more about the application of knowledge

A key output of MiniMBA in Marketing is that it helps businesses define and structure their marketing process. From research and planning to objective setting and tracking KPIs, the course delivers an effective set of processes that can be adapted or applied in any marketing environment.

“When you harvest it right, MiniMBA delivers a lot,” Theo says. “It takes discipline and conscious thought to say, ‘let’s plan a monthly check up.’ Or have that meeting that is not urgent – but important – to assess how are we doing.”

The results

“Measuring impact is difficult to catch in exact numbers,” says Theo, “but you can feel that it’s there in the way we talk about consumer orientation and how we practice marketing.”

Marketing coordinators have since become marketing managers, which can’t be attributed to MiniMBA training alone, of course, “but I think it definitely helped,” says Theo.

“For many of the participants, it was not so much about gathering the points to get a promotion, it was more about gathering the knowledge to be a better marketer.

“We see marketers now being much more confident, whether with their colleagues, people from other departments, or presenting to management, in saying: this is the right way to do it and here’s why.”

There is the sense that Yakult is moving forward again, Theo explains. “It’s in remarks like, ‘Yakult is now ready for the next phase of growth’ or ‘Yakult is getting ready for the next phase in development and how we work together.’

“It’s in these kinds of remarks that there is tangible proof of Yakult investing in its people, investing in one language across all markets, and investing in creating the foundation for new growth and new thinking.”

there is tangible proof of Yakult investing in its people, investing in one language across all markets, and investing in creating the foundation for new growth and new thinking

A final unexpected benefit, Theo tells us, is the bonds that have formed through the experience of studying together for MiniMBA.

“People have become really good friends,” he says. “We had the marketing managers of Germany and Austria and one science-side person from my team working together for the exam – and that created a bond that is still there.

“It was nice to see people understanding the value of complementarity and using that. In teams, sometimes you see people who are different bumping into each other. But now at Yakult we say, ‘Hey, you’re different! That’s good. Let’s work together.’ Because in a complementary relationship, we are much stronger than in a competing relationship.”

Interested in MiniMBA team training? Join leading global businesses like Google, Adidas, the BBC and Yakult. Contact our training team to find out more.

Cover: Ned Snowman/shutterstock.com