Marketing 2007: rough waters ahead
Today, Blackfriars is putting our Q1 2007 marketing report to bed. I'll save the details for the formal press release next week, but you can the gist of the report from the title: Marketing 2007: First Quarter Budgets Tumble. It's ugly.
The really bad news about this is that marketing spending is a leading indicator of the economy. Think about it for a moment. If your local dry cleaner, pizza parlor, or hospital cuts its marketing budget, what do you think happens to its business as a result of that? After all, companies invest in marketing because it generates sales in the future. So if they don't invest in marketing, it means that the company doesn't get those sales. Oops.
Now to be fair, this view is simplistic, and it is only one factor in business results. But cuts in marketing budgets in general are a bad omen for future business and almost never create growth without special circumstances. So you heard it here first: a slowdown is on the way.
The really bad news about this is that marketing spending is a leading indicator of the economy. Think about it for a moment. If your local dry cleaner, pizza parlor, or hospital cuts its marketing budget, what do you think happens to its business as a result of that? After all, companies invest in marketing because it generates sales in the future. So if they don't invest in marketing, it means that the company doesn't get those sales. Oops.
Now to be fair, this view is simplistic, and it is only one factor in business results. But cuts in marketing budgets in general are a bad omen for future business and almost never create growth without special circumstances. So you heard it here first: a slowdown is on the way.
Technorati Tags: Blackfriars, Economy, Marketing, Marketing 2007, Opinion, Recession
posted by Carl Howe at
8:52 AM
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