Marketing without the mystery.
Marketing Made Clear is a free resource for marketers, students, career-changers and curious people who want to understand not just what marketing is, but why it works.
Articles, podcasts, videos, free tools and career resources - grounded in theory, shaped by real-world experience and explained without pretending simple ideas need twelve acronyms.
Marketing theory gets much more interesting when real people get involved.
I didn't take a particularly conventional route into marketing. I arrived through music, touring, university, charity, B2B, digital, ecommerce, FMCG and commercial leadership.
Along the way, I learned marketing in two quite different ways.
I studied the theory formally through an MA in Marketing Management and later an MBA.
But I also had to apply it in organisations where there were actual customers, competitors, colleagues, budgets, deadlines and commercial consequences.
Marketing Made Clear exists because I think theory becomes far more useful when you can connect it to reality.
Sometimes that means explaining a marketing model.
Sometimes it means looking at a famous brand, campaign or business decision.
Sometimes it means going back into history to understand why people behave the way they do.
And occasionally it means examining a corporate catastrophe and asking how everybody in the meeting apparently agreed that it was a good idea.
Learn it. Hear it. Watch it. Use it.
Marketing Made Clear has grown well beyond a collection of articles. Different subjects - and different people - benefit from different ways of learning.
Understand the theory. Then see what happens when humans get involved.
The Marketing Made Clear content library combines established marketing theory with real brands, consumer behaviour, psychology, history, campaigns and business decisions.
Some articles explain frameworks and strategic concepts.
Others explore why consumers behave the way they do, how industries change, why ideas spread or how organisations get themselves into situations that look considerably less clever in hindsight.
Prefer listening?
The Marketing Made Clear podcast takes the same basic idea and gives it a microphone.
Marketing theory, consumer psychology, strange bits of history, interviews, business stories and the occasional tangent that probably seemed sensible when I started recording.
There are also guest appearances and conversations with people from marketing, business and beyond.
Explore the podcastMarketing, but with moving pictures.
Some subjects work better when you can actually see the advert, campaign, product or questionable decision being discussed.
The video archive includes explainers, marketing history, consumer psychology, interviews, appearances and some older archive work from my career.
The aim is the same as everywhere else on Marketing Made Clear: keep the theory intact, make the subject interesting and explain why it matters.
Watch Marketing Made Clear
Sometimes you don't need another article. You need the number.
The free Marketing Made Clear calculators are designed to make common marketing and commercial calculations quick and understandable.
Calculate metrics including CAC, CLV, ROAS, ROI, MER and break-even without needing to construct a spreadsheet that eventually becomes sentient and refuses to open.
Each tool also explains what the metric means and why marketers should care about it.
Use the free marketing toolsTrying to build a career in marketing?
I didn't enter marketing through a neat graduate programme, so I have a particular interest in helping people understand the many different ways into the industry.
The Careers Hub covers the journey from:
"Could marketing be for me?"
all the way through to:
"I've got the job. What on earth do I do now?"
There are guides covering university, apprenticeships, free learning, CVs, cover letters, interviews, graduate schemes, portfolios, networking and your first 90 days in a marketing role.
Explore the Marketing Careers HubA few principles that shape Marketing Made Clear.
The site covers a lot of different subjects, but there are some ideas that sit underneath almost everything I publish.
Theory matters
Marketing has decades of serious academic and professional thinking behind it. We shouldn't throw all of that away because somebody invented a new social network.
Reality matters too
Models are useful. Customers, competitors, colleagues and budgets have an irritating habit of not behaving exactly like diagrams.
History matters
A surprising number of supposedly unprecedented marketing ideas have happened before in one form or another.
Clarity matters
If an idea can be explained clearly, making it deliberately more complicated does not make it more intelligent.
Curiosity matters
Marketing connects psychology, economics, culture, technology, history, design, sociology and business. That's what makes it interesting.
You're probably in the right place if...
The route here wasn't exactly linear.
Before marketing there was music.
Then a cattle station in remote Western Australia.
Then university, Roadrunner Records, Ministry of Sound, a Master's, charity marketing, eight years in the paper industry, international digital work, festivals, redundancy, pet food, an MBA and quite a few other things that don't fit particularly neatly on LinkedIn.
That slightly chaotic route is part of the reason Marketing Made Clear exists.
I've learned marketing through theory, but also through years of having to make it work in completely different environments.
Read My Journey Into Marketing
2001 - accidentally learning promotion
The Kimberley - changing direction
Arjowiggins - B2B and digital marketing
FMCG, ecommerce and commercial leadership
Marketing Made Clear keeps growing.
What began primarily as written content has gradually expanded as I've found new ways to explain, explore and make marketing useful.
I don't regard Marketing Made Clear as finished.
If there is a better way to explain something, a useful tool that doesn't yet exist or a subject worth disappearing down a research rabbit hole for, there is a fair chance it will eventually end up here.
Want to reach people who actually care about marketing?
Marketing Made Clear works with relevant brands and organisations across website content, podcasts, video and other collaborations.
The important bit is the fit. Sponsorship should add something useful to the audience rather than simply interrupt what they came here for.
What do you want to do?
Pick a direction. There is considerably more marketing waiting on the other side.