Marketing Week

Expanding the occasions your brand is relevant to is a powerful way to drive growth. That's why KFC UK & Ireland's announcement last week really caught my eye. 🍗 ➡️ 🧋 The fast-food chain is launching a new speciality drinks brand 'Kwench by KFC', selling products like boba, shakes and iced coffees, with a Gen Z audience in mind. In the QSR industry, expanding into new dayparts and occasions is crucial for sustained growth. Greggs has driven later opening hours to become more relevant to evening meals, coffee chains like Starbucks have created drive thrus to catch the on-the-go consumer, Wagamama has even started a breakfast menu at some locations. KFC has been at it too, introducing rice bowls to give consumers a healthier option. But with the best will in the world, there's only so many occasions fried chicken can play a role in. That's where the new Kwench brand comes in. The chain wants to get to a stage where it is bringing people through the doors specifically for its speciality drinks, thus opening the door for KFC to play a role in far more consumers occasions than before. But KFC is, of course, famous for chicken, and getting the brand to a stage where it comes to mind in drinks occasions will be its main task if the initiative is to drive real growth. “Right now, today, when people think of KFC, people don’t think of drinks,” KFC's Leo Sloley told me. “Actually, the biggest challenge we have here is around changing perceptions, changing habits.” It'll be a long-term journey for the brand, and one worth watching to see whether this chicken giant can become famous for drinks too 🧋 Read the full Marketing Week story linked below ⬇️

“You can't wait until you get the job... you've got to already start thinking like the boss.”   What does it take to move from marketing director to CEO? In the latest episode of The Marketing Week Podcast, former giffgaff | Certified B Corp CEO, Ash Schofield, sits down with deputy managing editor Charlotte Rogers to retrace his leadership journey.   Ash joined Giffgaff in 2013, drawn by the “whiff of revolution” in the air at the business then was just three years post-launch. He eventually transitioned from being a “punchy” marketer director and “self-appointed champion of culture” to a CEO focused on co-creating a market disruptor with real staying power.   🎧 Listen to the full episode here: https://lnkd.in/ex2NckgK

Changing perceptions and habits... KFC UK & Ireland is investing £37m in ‘Kwench by KFC’ as it looks to expand its appeal among Gen Z consumers and reach people across different dayparts. Leo Sloley, strategy and innovation director, explains that the range is about finding new occasions for customers to enjoy the brand beyond traditional meal times. The launch represents a strategic move to evolve the brand’s identity and tap into shifting consumer trends: 🥤 Changing perceptions: Sloley acknowledges that consumers don't currently associate KFC with drinks, making the shift in habits and perceptions the brand's "biggest challenge." 🕒 Expanding dayparts: While the brand typically appeals to lunch and dinner crowds, the Kwench range is designed to drive visits across other times of the day. 👟 Staying ‘60 years young’: The range, featuring boba tea, lemonades, shakes, and iced coffees, aims to help KFC become the "fastest growing restaurant for the next generation." 🌟 Drinks as the 'main event': Reflecting a growing trend among younger consumers, the initiative treats specialty drinks as a primary draw rather than just a "side order." 🍗 Balancing the brand: While targeting a new generation, the range is designed to complement KFC's fried chicken, ensuring the brand stays true to its core identity. Read the full discussion here: https://lnkd.in/e5yu6TWQ

Last chance: Is your content ready for the AI-driven landscape of 2026? This is your final opportunity to join Arthur Mstoyan and Julius Hemingway from Storyblok as they break down why content health is your new critical competitive advantage. 📈 Content Health vs. Content Debt: Why structure and freshness are critical for 2026, and how outdated content quietly undermines performance. ⚙️ Visibility in an AI Landscape: How content clarity directly impacts your visibility, conversions, and brand trust. 🤝 AI as a Partner, Not a Crutch: How to ensure your content operations are robust enough to leverage AI effectively without sacrificing quality. 📅 Date: Wednesday, February 4th, 2026 ⏰ Time: 11:30 AM UK Time 🔗 Final call - register for the Storyblok webinar here: https://lnkd.in/eH7REnuk

Last year we exposed the scale of burnout and imposter syndrome running rife in the marketing industry. Today, Marketing Week’s 2026 Career & Salary Survey reveals the situation is getting worse. The numbers are shocking, but also highly consistent with how marketers feel day in, day out. 🔹 Two thirds of marketers have felt overwhelmed over the past 12 months 🔹 Some 60.7% are feeling undervalued and over half (55.1%) emotionally exhausted 🔹 Almost two thirds (65%) of working mums feel overwhelmed, while well over half feel undervalued (60.8%) and emotionally exhausted (56.6%) 🔹 Unhappiness is being felt at the highest levels. Over half of CMOs and marketing directors have felt overwhelmed, undervalued and emotionally exhausted over the past year We will be sharing a series of features exploring marketing’s mental health crisis, the culture of silence stopping people speaking out and why feelings of imposter syndrome are intensifying for half of marketers. Link below to our story with all the stats so far.

While the lack of women in leadership roles across can have an impact on the number of women making it to the C-suite, it can also impact the wider culture in B2B organisations. In my second #WomenInB2B feature for Marketing Week, I spoke to Rachael Hunt, Neha Chohan, and Helena Buhr about their experiences of the workplace across a number of sectors. “At junior levels, marketing is very female,” says Hunt. “As you move up, it drops off. Leadership becomes male very quickly.” Full article below:

In her latest column, Dr Grace Kite argues that the "doing more with less" era isn't a permanent shift, but a symptom of a transition between two major waves of innovation. As we move from the plateau of ecommerce into the adoption of AI, renewables, and biotech, we have entered a period of "techno-limbo" and what happens next could redefine marketing strategy for the next decade. Kite explores why the current pause in growth might actually be the best time to stop playing it safe: 🌊 The ‘Long Wave’ theory: Why economists believe we are on the cusp of a great surge in growth, moving away from the "uncertainty" of new tech toward a period of rapid, high-impact adoption. 🏗️ The first-mover advantage: Why brand building right now—while your competitors are still holding back—is the foundation for becoming a market leader in the 2030s. 📉 Escaping the efficiency trap: How the current pressure to "outthink rather than outspend" is a temporary hurdle that will eventually give way to bold, large-scale marketing plans. 🛑 A warning for certain categories: Just as the high street lost out to online gambling in the last wave, Kite examines which sectors might struggle to survive the shift to an AI-driven economy. 📈 The 1996 comparison: Why 2026 feels remarkably similar to the early days of the internet, and what that tells us about the prosperity on the horizon. Read the full column: https://lnkd.in/eXbsMKuy

🧑💻 Overwhelmed, undervalued and emotionally exhausted...   That's how most marketers are feeling according to our 2026 Career & Salary Survey results. The data reveals a profession under significant pressure, with a widespread reluctance to speak up about mental health.   Here are five ways marketers are feeling the impact: ⛓️💥 Reaching breaking point: 65.3% of marketers have felt overwhelmed over the past 12 months, with 60.7% left feeling undervalued and 55.1% emotionally exhausted. 📉 Declining engagement: 53.4% of marketers are no longer enjoying work that used to engage them, while 53.3% are feeling detached 👔 C-suite pressure: 50.9% of CMOs and marketing directors have reported emotional exhaustion. 👩👧 Impact on working mums: Over half have felt undervalued (60.8%) and emotionally exhausted (56.6%) in the past year 🤐 Reluctance to speak up: Two-fifths of marketers would not tell their manager if they felt undervalued or exhausted.   Read the full breakdown: https://lnkd.in/e4DKSXJG

📬 Been a busy week? Here are 5 big stories marketers need to know: 🎗️ Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Research UK has appointed Claudia Nicholls-Magielsen as its new executive director of marketing; the former Simplyhealth chief succeeds Philip Almond to lead the charity’s brand strategy. 📺 Sky Media UK has launched an AI-powered creative toolkit to help SMEs produce TV ads in seconds, following similar moves from ITV and Channel 4 to lower the barriers to entry for television advertising. 📱 Meta is reportedly planning to trial premium subscriptions across Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, offering exclusive AI capabilities and "enhanced" features while keeping core services free. 👜 LVMH has highlighted the "strong desirability" of its flagship brands like Louis Vuitton and Dior despite a slight dip in annual sales, citing resilience in the face of ongoing global geopolitical crises. 🏆 Marks and Spencer has been named the UK’s top-performing brand for the fourth year running according to YouGov data, with the retailer outperforming rivals on quality and reputation. 👉 Sign up to our newsletter for the latest marketing news straight to your inbox: https://lnkd.in/gdR3h6_3

Is "Content Debt" quietly undermining your marketing performance? Most brands aren’t ready for how AI is fundamentally changing content discovery. If your content is unstructured or outdated, you risk losing visibility in a world where AI assistants are the new gatekeepers. In this sponsored session, the experts at Storyblok explain how to transition from a volume-heavy strategy to a "healthy" content ecosystem that drives ROI. Key takeaways: 📈 Content Health vs. Content Debt: Understanding how structural gaps in your assets impact your long-term visibility. ⚙️ Content Operations in the Age of AI: Why clear organization is the key to maintaining brand trust across new discovery channels. 🤝 AI as a Partner, Not a Crutch: Strategies to scale content across channels while maintaining high standards of freshness. 📅 When: Wednesday, February 4th | 11:30 AM UK Time 🔗 Secure your spot: https://lnkd.in/eH7REnuk Arthur Mstoyan Julius Hemingway