Business health in 2023, brand inertia, prioritising tasks: 5 interesting stats to start your week

Marketers think this year is worse for business health than the pandemic

Almost three in five (58%) British marketers believe 2023 could be worse for the long-term health of their business than the Covid-19 pandemic.

Around one in three (33%) are nervous about the survival of the business they work for beyond this year, while 71% fear for the security of their own job, finds a survey of over 2,000 marketers across the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands.

In a pressurised economic environment, marketers are seeing budgets get tighter. Over two in five (44%) say their department’s team and budget have been cut in the last 12 months. While almost three in 10 (29%) report that up to a quarter of staff have been let go over the last year.

The majority of marketers report that, despite decreasing budgets and team sizes, they are expected to do the same amount of (or even more) work than before. Around four in 10 (43%) say their department is expected to do the same amount of work with fewer resources, while a quarter report they are expected to do more work.

Alongside the macroeconomic situation, for some marketers, the growth of the use of AI is viewed as a threat to their job security. Over a quarter (29%) believe that AI poses a direct threat to their jobs and could make their roles redundant.

Source: SurveyMonkey

Most consumers can’t name one brand they feel connected with

Over half (56%) of consumers cannot name a single brand they feel connected with or who they believe understands them, finds a survey of 2,000 British adults.

Three quarters of consumers feel all brands in a sector are the same. Over three in five (63%) say they will opt for a familiar brand or “go-to” brand for convenience rather than researching their options.

Authors of the research Grayling term this indifference “brand inertia” and say nearly all (97%) of consumers show at least one sign of this. Around two-thirds of those with high levels of inertia say the branded content they see is usually irrelevant.

Indeed, over half (52%) of consumers regularly delete brand emails and messages they have signed up for.

Source: Grayling

Budget management is one of marketers’ least favourite tasks

There is a gap between the marketing tasks preferred generally by marketers and those considered to be the most important by CMOs.

Research by Phrasee listed 49 common marketing activities and surveyed over 1,500 marketers to find which tasks they preferred. It then ranked these activities on a scale from 0 to 100, with 100 being the most popular.

Chief marketing officers list ‘managing budgets’ as their most important activity (100), while for marketers in general, it is one of their most disliked tasks (36). On the flipside, marketers rank ‘creating visual assets’ (73) highly in their list of preferences, whereas for CMOs, this is towards the bottom of the priority list (<30).

Top marketers also consider tasks like ‘monitoring and managing online reputation’ and ‘maintaining consistent branding across channels’ to be high on their priority list. But, for marketers in general, these activities fall low down their list of preferred activities.

Overall, marketers least favourite activities are ‘ensuring compliance with data privacy regulations’ (24), ‘regularly reviewing and updating social media policies’ (20), and ‘monitoring legal and ethical guidelines in advertising’ (16).

The authors of the research advise marketers to ‘master the mundane’ to stand out from the crowd, and in order to close the gap between CMOs’ most important activities and the ones they prefer.

Source: Phrasee

B2C marketing decision makers lack confidence in teams’ technology skills

Less than half (41%) of business to consumer (B2C) marketing decision makers say their teams currently have a technology skillset.

A similarly low (37%) proportion say their marketing teams have agile ways of working, suggesting a lack of confidence in teams from those making decisions in organisations.

B2C marketers are also finding it harder to achieve their goals. Of those marketing decision makers who are prioritising the ROI of their investment, 44% say this will be difficult to achieve over the next year. Similarly, 42% of those who are prioritising the demonstration of marketing’s value to their business’ management feel this goal will be hard to reach over the next 12 months.

Artificial intelligence and data management are priorities for many marketing decision makers in the next 12 months. Almost half say they are prioritising updating their data strategy to adapt to data deprecation. Of those prioritising the introduction or enhancement of AI capabilities over the next year, 47% anticipate this being difficult to achieve.

Source: Forrester

Women’s World Cup drives 254% increase in addressable advertising audience for the game

The Women’s World Cup has seen a new level of interest among audiences for women’s football, with the tournament driving a 254% increase in addressable advertising audience in the past month, according to ad tech company Quantcast.

The tournament culminated in the final yesterday (20 August) between England and Spain, however, before this had even taken place 17.4 million addressable devices had engaged with the Women’s World Cup in the past two weeks.

Before the final had taken place, Quantcast found the audience had peaked at 7.3 million for England versus Australia in the semi-final. It was later revealed that 12 million of us tuned into the final.

Interest in eventual champions Spain spiked by 50%, according to the data, while interest in content focused on England’s joint top goal-scorer Lauren Hemp increased by 200%.

Source: Quantcast