What’s On The Mind Of Marketers

Recently, Business Week surveyed the judges of the American Marketing Association’s Effie Awards to ascertain their thoughts on the state of current and future marketing. The Effies are based on how well advertising works in meeting or exceeding objectives. The results of the survey are summed up in a Business Week article and an accompanying slide show.

The survey only consisted of 121 judges, but it included some of the top marketing personnel from many of the largest and most progressive brands in the country. There are some telling numbers, which should be of major concern to mainstream traditional media.

When asked “which medium will represent the largest percentage increase in spending this year for your brand?,” there was one clear winner: online branding. What’s more, that percentage increased as the average marketing budgets grew in size.

When asked “which medium will take the biggest hit in your planning in the next few years?,” it is evident the increase in online spending will come out of offline budgets for television, newspaper, magazines, radio and outdoor.

The above research, combined with the Association of National Advertisers survey we mentioned last week, also shows how much continuing emphasis marketers are putting on accountability. In the Business Week poll, marketers were asked to “rate your confidence in the ROI metric available for “different mediums.” Again, online and direct marketing exhibited the most marketer confidence while traditional media rated lower.

All the evidence would continue to indicate that traditional media channels will face increasing budget scrutiny in the year ahead as marketers spread their budget dollars among a growing list of online options that more closely align with their primary concerns and objectives.