The marketing mantra

The marketing mantra

Thanks to the financial crisis, advertising money has fallen, and expectations have increased. So how do marketers strike the right deal?

November 11, 2009 3:40 by Aarti Nagraj

The advertising and marketing industries in the region have not fared well during the crisis; according to a recent report released by the Pan Arab Research Centre (Parc), advertising spend in the UAE fell 38.1 percent in the third quarter of this year compared to the same period in 2008.The report also said that in the first nine months of 2009, ad spend declined 30 percent compared to the same period last year.

And along with decreasing revenues, regional advertising bosses claim that the pressure from clients is increasing.

“If they [the clients] keep on squeezing us the way they are squeezing us today, the way they are putting us under pressure, the way they are asking us to do more for less all the time, it’s going to end up with an agency, yes, but an agency without the creativity and the output,” Joseph Ghossoub, the chairman and chief executive of Menacom said during a debate at the Media and Marketing Show in Dubai last week. “If you have mediocre people working at an agency, nobody expects big results,” he said.

But creativity alone is not enough, says Mark Champion, executive director of the Advertising Federation of Australia and chairman of judges at the recently held GEMAS Effie marketing awards in Dubai.

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Tags: advertising, awards, clients, creativity, effectiveness, Financial Crisis, Gemas Effies, marketing, Money