Future Brand Check – The 4 Non-Negotiables for Brand Success

Future Brand Check – The 4 Non-Negotiables for Brand Success

The Media Association of the Free Press (MVFP) is continuing its initiative to strengthen journalistic media in the media mix. Following exciting discussions on digital monopoly power and brand building, the upcoming experience digital event will focus on a forward-looking topic: How can brands build relevance, trust, and impact today—beyond short-term click logic?

At experience day 2025 in Düsseldorf, marketing guru Mark Ritson took to the stage live and shared 10 hard truths that brands need to hear in order to stay relevant in the future. His message: visibility alone is no longer enough. Brands must be credible, relevant, and emotionally engaging in order to have a long-term impact.

In the third experience digital, we delve deeper into this discussion. Brands today face the challenge of building trust in a fragmented media landscape – especially in times of disinformation, AI-generated content and declining credibility of large platforms. Reach and visual contacts are inflationary, but real brand impact only comes from connections – emotional, cultural and social – that are communicated consistently, contextually and coherently.

In our panel, experts discuss how brands can remain future-proof:

You have no strategy, just tactics: Marketing must become strategic! What does strategic marketing mean for processes, data, and   the training of those involved in brand and marketing management and in agencies? And what consequences does this have for the media mix of campaigns?

You overinvest in performance and the 5%: Performance campaigns are significantly overweighted. How do I find the right balance between brand and performance?

You don’t harness the power of long & short: In order to harness the “power of long & short,” marketing managers and their agencies need to be able to measure and understand it. Print campaigns in particular have a long-term impact. What data is needed for this?

You just do advertising, not marketing: Marketing is more than advertising. Above all, it is also pricing policy – and the price has nothing to do with costs or competitors‘ prices. So how do brands need to be positioned in order to survive in the high-price segment? Which media environments play a role in this?

 

The initiative provides a forum for discussion about the future of brand communication—with the clear goal of making advertising effective, sustainable, and brand-building again. Mark Ritson’s truths form the basis for a strategic view of brands that want to remain relevant, trustworthy, and effective tomorrow.