Shift from tradition speeds up in downturn

It looks like the shift from traditional marketing is speeding up in the downturn economy. Take a look at these stats from a recent study for Epsilon:

As the overall marketing pool diminishes, the budget for interactive and digital marketing is dramatically increasing, while that for traditional marketing continues to shrink toward interactive, digital marketing:

Interactive/Digital Marketing:

• Decreased... 14%
• Increased... 63%
• Stayed the same... 23%

While Traditional Marketing

• Decreased... 59%
• Increased... 13%
• Stayed the same... 29%

In times of difficulty, it looks like marketers are trying new things. What's also interesting is where, within all the digital tools, marketers are planning on spending their budgets:

CMOs of the biggest brands have been early adopters of new media with social computing and blogs receiving the most interest whereas instant messaging and interactive TV ads were the least popular.

• Social computing (including word of mouth, social networking sites, viral advertising, etc.) was the most popular emerging channel with 42% of marketing executives expressing interest in adding it to their marketing mix.
• Blogs were the second most popular emerging channel: 35% of marketing executives want to pursue blogs and 19% already use blogs
• Almost one-third of CMOs mentioned Podcasting as an area of interest: 31% are interested in adding Podcasting to their marketing mix and 18% already have.
• Mobile devices also elicited interest: 29% are interested in Mobile Devices (Phones/PDAs) and 22% have added them to their marketing mix.

As much as I think this is something most of us have been waiting for, it warrants caution. The models for advertising in all of these areas are very new and frankly unproven. It will require a lot of experimentation. It's also not as simple as placing an ad on a network. It requires creativity beyond the creative ad development. It requires creativity in approach as well as follow up. All of the metrics are different and a change in environment from limited measurement to so much data that it will make your head spin. There will be some failures and expectations that aren't met.

The key to long term success is education. CMOs need to understand, at least at a high level, how these new platforms work. Just passing it off to the team or to the agency will result in mis-communication and disappointment. - Paul Herring

Link to Epsilon study

Comments

[Andee Sellman, One Sherpa]

Great stats Paul. Just goes to show that if you're not online in your thinking you're going to be left in the dust wondering what happened.
It is a real challenge for us baby boomers who are having to run as fast as we can to have any hope of keeping up with the agility and flexibility of thinking in the next generation.

[Gavin Heaton]

Got to agree on the education front. Unfortunately not all CMOs are even prepared to listen, let alone learn!

[Joanna Pena-Bickley]

fantastic stats. I ponder why are so many brands retreating to their roots? In professional focus groups, people are saying they want stability in unstable times. Of course they do. That seems logical. When we are shaken to our core we want the basics to remain the same. I challenge companies to seek out the positive emotional inertia that is needed to connect their brands to behavioral change.

http://joannapenabickley.typepad.com/on/2009/01/on-2009-a-year-of-change.html