Where sales promotion creates activity to attract shoppers via rational advantages, such as BOGOFs, brand promotion is promotional activity that works at the other end of the scale, attracting shoppers to the emotional values of your brand. If you get them right, brand promotions drive sales as hard as any direct sales promotion. But their real target is to increase the long-term equity of your brand.

One of the most famous recent examples of what we consider to be a great brand promotion is Walker’s ‘Do Us a Flavour’ campaign. The campaign worked as a traditional on-pack with a negligible rational advantage for participants. The whole point was the fun of it – it got people talking, and it got people eating crisps, all in good humour.

Some brands have more of a natural onus to consider and deliver brand promotional activity. In running 5,000 outlets nationwide, Mitchells & Butlers are devoted to the emotionality of eating, drinking and socialising, and we’ve been given the opportunity to develop extensive work across their promotional calendar. But we have now started focusing increasingly on brand promotion for their estates. We feel that this is the start of a journey that will run and run.

Promotional marketing has made some fantastic leaps forward in recent years. This quiet revolution is characterised by developing possibilities in four key areas: sales promotions, technology, retail environments, and brand promotions. The challenge is to be decisive and progressive: to make good use of all four areas, and above all to get the balance right.