Marketers Have Thrived in Chaos - They May Need To Again

It comes as a surprise – and perhaps as a relief – in some respects to see the IPA’s first Bellwether Report of the year forecast an increase in marketing spend and confidence levels – even with all that is happening geopolitically.

The report claims that the positive respondents were aware of the Iran crisis, though few could have anticipated how directly it might hit the UK, something that is yet to be fully determined.

To offer the main thrust – marketing budgets were revised up by over 7 per cent for the first quarter of this year – the highest level of spend for nearly two years. These numbers were not alone in their positivity, with S&P Global’s adspend forecast for the year having been revised up to +2.5 per cent, compared to the previous forecast of 1.5 per cent. Things were on the up and that was reflected with 28.6 per cent of respondents reporting greater optimism about their company’s financial outlook compared to three months ago.

“This upward adjustment reflects not only upbeat forecasts around future market conditions, but also a recognition of the need to invest in growth opportunities and maintain competitive advantage as challenges persist,” says Maryam Baluch, Economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence and author of the Bellwether Report.

But now we are where we are – wherever that may be.

Periods like this tend to push brands back toward short‑term survival metrics, even when the long‑term case for brand investment is strongest while companies figure out navigating a whole new set of challenges facing nervous consumers. We could still be at the start of something, so it’s still too early to tell just how severe the impact may prove.

But that’s been the story of the last decade. A decade of rolling crises has made volatility the UK’s default operating environment.

If it wasn’t the ramifications of Brexit, it was the pandemic leading to the cost-of-living crisis and the war in Ukraine to… well whatever Donald Trump decides before he gets out of bed each morning. It’s been without fail a tumultuous period on the geopolitical front – with no end yet in sight. The marketing and advertising sectors know all too well what that means – but in the long term, it may produce some silver linings.

From the pandemic, businesses experienced-digital transformation – learning new ways of remote working and being able to shift working practices in a major emergency. Businesses still have those policies, technologies, and learnings in place should they be needed to be quickly reapplied.

There’s also talk that the British Government may move to reapply old ties with the EU to cut through business red tape in an attempt to open up trade across Europe again – very welcome news for UK businesses there surely.

Advertising loves to talk about responsibility, right up until it threatens performance. This ruling could force brand owners to make a choice. Keep funding the systems that win long-term or start backing the ones that don’t to drive more immediate revenue.

It will certainly focus matters for clients who will lean on their agency partners heavily to support where they can, but it may mean that brand building takes a back seat once again to the performance-driven strategies from recent years. Meanwhile, procurement, already a major force in decision making, will be expected to place even more scrutiny on the marketing machine’s outcomes to hasten potential revenue. It’s understandable if so.

If the optimism fades, the muscle memory built over the past decade won’t. UK marketers have learned to operate – and often excel – in constant uncertainty.