Not so long ago, marketing consumer products felt like a genteel game of lawn tennis: Established competitors invested in creative with long lead times, using proven models of TV and big-box retail, alongside trusted agency partners. Today, it’s more like a sprawling contest of mixed martial arts, with new competitors playing by different rules; an unprecedented complexity of channels, content and partners; and a step change in speed and ways of working that has punches flying at incumbent consumer products companies.
Fueling the blur of combat is a radical shift in brand growth models. Within the span of most executives’ careers, advances in technology have reshaped how consumers engage with brands. In the US and UK, more than 60% of consumers now discover products online, and 85% of millennials trust reviews from a faceless stranger more than traditional advertising. The same technology advances have dramatically altered the competitive landscape. CMOs can no longer forecast forward their current profit pools only by looking to fill in geographies and nearby product market segments. That process risks ignoring the industry’s disruptive trends, as profit pools shift quickly from products to services to experiences and communities, and as mass products evolve into new segments with accelerating personalization. Growth strategy today requires consumer products companies to look “present forward” and “future back”—to create a faster horse while envisioning the car—in order to define new growth platforms beyond their current products, business model and capabilities.
In this unit, we will focus on the four primary sentence structures: assertive (declarative), exclamatory, interrogative, and imperative sentences. Each type of sentence serves a unique purpose in communication, such as stating facts or opinions, expressing strong emotions, asking questions, or issuing commands. Understanding these sentence types will enrich your ability to express ideas clearly and effectively in different contexts.
Sentence
A sentence is a group of meaningful words that do not require additional information to make sense. In most cases, a simple sentence is formed from a subject, a verb, and an object. A sentence begins with a capital letter and ends with a full stop, a question mark, or an exclamation mark (depending on which type of sentence it is).
Types of Sentences
There are four kinds of sentences, each with a specific form and purpose:
- assertive sentences (statements)
- exclamatory sentences (sudden expressions)
- interrogative sentences (questions)
- imperative sentences (commands or requests)
Assertive Sentences
Assertive sentences (also called declarative sentences) are direct statements that give information. These sentences usually start with a noun, a pronoun, or a noun phrase and usually end with a full stop. Assertive sentences express facts, opinions, beliefs, and sometimes feelings.
Example sentences:
London is the capital city of England.
I went to the beach.