The Best of Marketing Chronicles in 2024

Holiday break, Volvo's EV, and Socrates

Author

Pedro Porto Alegre
December 11, 2024

Welcome to Marketing Chronicles. A newsletter where marketers come for expert industry commentary at the intersection of strategy and creativity — every Wednesday sent before daybreak. If you like what you see, join us for free.

In this edition:

  • Column: The Best of Marketing Chronicles in 2024

  • Inspiration: Volvo’s EX90 Advert

  • Timeless Wisdom: Socrates on “Opinions”

Note: It’s December and I’ll be taking a few weeks off from the newsletter. The next edition will reach your inbox on January 15, 2025. Until then, I’ll leave you with a few books that I’ll be digging into over the coming weeks:

  • Why Does The Pedlar Sing? by Paul Feldwick

  • Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

  • slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations by Nancy Duarte

Happy Holidays and a fantastic New Year!

Column: The Best of Marketing Chronicles in 2024

Every December I like to look back at what I’ve learned in that year and reflect on how far I’ve come. It’s something I don’t believe we do enough of in this fast-paced life we live in the 21st century.

So, here are my Top 3 articles from this year. This isn’t based on open rates or CTRs, but based on what I believe to have been my best work.

If you’ve joined recently, I encourage you to take a peek and share with your friends. And if you’ve stuck around so far, I’d like to say THANK YOU for your support.

The newsletter has surpassed 650 subscribers recently, and my Medium account has reached over 1,000 followers. While these are not impressive numbers by mega-newsletter standards, to think that there are this many people reading what I write is what keeps me motivated and disciplined to sit down and write every week.

While I do this to consolidate what I’m learning, I’ve come in touch with so many amazing folks in my day to day who tell me how much they appreciate my writings. The marketing profession is such a fruitful career that has enabled me not only to make a living, but to have a ton of fun while doing it.

Writing 1,500 words per week is something I’ve never imagined I’d be doing with my free time, but it has been an absolute joy to share my weekly thoughts with you all — I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it.

Here’s my Top 3:

Delivering effective creative feedback is something we are not taught in school. Oftentimes it comes as informal training on the job, or a manager who shares their approach, or you simply wing it.

To write this article, I’ve spent several hours researching and talking to colleagues about how they approach creative feedback and I’ve landed on the learnings in this article.

I eventually created a Lunch & Learn presentation to take my agency through it, as I believe that great work takes more than one person creating it — when multiple minds come together and know how to communicate and collaborate with one another, that’s when the magic happens.

Since going from working at PepsiCo and into the independent agency world where most of my clients are small to medium size, I began to realize that growing small brands isn’t exactly the same as growing big ones.

While the fundamentals of marketing remain the same, there are some nuances that must be taken into account in order to be more effective.

This article came at around the same time as Small Business Week in Calgary, and it was exceptionally well received by entrepreneurs and scale ups alike.

Because of it, I created a 2-hour workshop around this topic and delivered it to a group of members at my local Better Business Bureau chapter here in southern Alberta.

The work was inspired by my work experience in helping smaller brands grow, as well as a body of work that encompassed papers from Les Binet, Mark Ritson, and other giants in the field.

Over the years I’ve had several clients come to my agency asking for social media services.

While I see social media as a critical piece of the puzzle, I’ve noticed that too many on the field were approaching it completely wrong.

And I don’t use the word “wrong” lightly — in this article I outlined my reasoning behind this take with some data to back it up.

This was a fun article to research for because I got to talk to folks that used to manage social for Red Bull global, were directors of social at top agencies in Canada, as well as having lively debates with my own team of strategists nearly on a weekly basis leading up to this column.

I also wrote a shortened version of this article for the Account Planning Group (APG) of Canada, which sparked some great conversations, as well.

I hope you’ve enjoyed what I had to share in 2024, and that you continue to read it in 2025.

As always, you can find me on LinkedIn and BlueSky where I share more informal takes around marketing and other topics — and I also post my columns to Medium for those who prefer reading it on that platform.

Happy Holidays and a fantastic New Year!

Inspiration: Volvo’s EX90 Advert

Every car company has started to reveal their EV option.

Most of them are portraying some grand vision of the future, others are depicting their cars as futuristic reimaginations of the present, and some are not advertising at all (*cough cough* Tesla).

And then there’s Volvo.

Volvo is sticking to its guns — our cars are safe, no matter the type.

This spot tells a wonderful story that connects deeply with the audience Volvo is trying to go after, one which in all likelihood are not considering Volvo for their next purchase.

But with this ad, Volvo is telling young couples: I see you, I get you, here’s a good EV for you.

Timeless Wisdom: Socrates on “Opinions”

"Anyone who holds a true opinion without understanding is like a blind man on the right road." Socrates

More of PPA:

PPA 

Pedro Porto Alegre is a seasoned marketing professional with in-depth experience building brand and communications strategies for top-tier B2C and B2B organizations across Canada. His repertoire extends from crafting and executing integrated multi-media brand marketing campaigns to the commercialization of performance-driven innovations for multimillion-dollar and nascent brands alike.