Marketing spend grows, but in the wrong direction

IDC has announced its latest marketing budget figures* for 2008. Rich Vancil’s program has been running for several years now, and it’s based on a consistent sampling of traditionally big spenders in marketing. It’s an excellent gauge of marketing’s current and intended spend amongst large IT vendors.

This year’s figures show an increase of 3.5% over 2007. Lower than the past three years, but at least it’s growth, right? Wrong. The percentage growth doesn’t account for inflation, or for the overall IT market growth, both of which are higher. So, in real terms, marketing spend is declining.

Does this indicate, or pre-empt, a decline in the overall market conditions for IT? Could be. Certainly, the prospects are gloomy (read here* and here).

But it’s always struck me that marketing, if it does what it’s supposed to, should be one of the last things to shrink in times of adversity. If marketing works, which means (to me) that it enables sales, then you’d think firms desperate for sales would do more marketing, not less, during a recession.

Which then leads me to conclude that either firms are just daft for not recognising this, or they know that marketing doesn’t really work that well yet were still spending money on it. Which is itself daft. Or that they don’t know whether marketing works or not, but it’s something that everyone else does.

Which is even dafter.



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