From the opinionated to the, well, opinionated. Here are Marketing‘s 10 most popular opinion articles of 2016, written by some of the most established marketing experts and thinkers in the industry and selected by you, the reader.

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1. Ritson on brand: Marketers are being fed bullshit about social media

26 April: Mark Ritson‘s debut column for Marketing in The Social Issue delivered pondering and provocation in spades. Read more »

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2. The 2016 definitive guide to social media crisis management

13 April: Robin Leonard provided a detailed rundown of how large companies should prepare for, recognise and manage social media crises. Read more »

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3. ‘Dear First Name’ is not good enough

6 April: Veronika Birnkammer wrote that the path to meaningful personalisation is littered with unopened emails, writes . Read more »

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4. Five things that will shape social media in 2016

13 January: Amaury Treguer ran through his top five predictions for the social media space in 2016. Read more »

(And Treguer has pulled out the crystal ball again in ‘Five things that will shape social media in 2017‘.)

 

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5. I’m not lovin’ it

8 July: In The Love Issue, Mark Ritson had enough of brands trying to be loveable. Read more »

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6. Leading with price

6 April: Steve Sammartino explained why price can be your strongest branding tool, writes. Read more »

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7. How Kmart ate Target: a story of brand cannibalisation

1 June: Gary Mortimer wrote that ‘Kmart versus Target’ will become a great case study on the risk of a brand cannibalisation strategy. Read more »

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8. Is Bunnings sharp enough for the UK market?

2 March: Greg Cullen looked at lessons Bunnings should learn from Masters’ failure in Australia as it prepares to enter the highly competitive UK home improvement market. Read more »

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9. Five NZ tech brands to keep an eye on

20 May: Julia Rosenthal attended a marketing tech conference hosted by NZTE in Melbourne, which showcased five New Zealand tech brands making waves in 2016. Here’s her rundown of the innovations on show. Read more »

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10. How human-centric design thinking can power creative problem-solving

Image: magurok / 123RF

7 March: Theo Forbath and Kipp Lynch outlined the importance of design thinking when implementing products and services in relation to customer experience and success. Read more »