Overburdened marketers at top European firms are becoming increasingly reliant on agencies and suppliers to ease their workload, with the double whammy of slashed budgets and job cuts wreaking havoc in their departments.
That is the key finding of a new study by marketing production firm Charterhouse, which quizzed marketers across Europe’s top 500 companies.
Over two fifths (42%) of have seen a reduction in the number of personnel in their marketing department in the past five years, while a third (30%) also reported budget cutbacks as the economic downturn has continued to impact businesses, according to the report.
The Back to Creativity report examines how marketing departments are under pressure to do more with less. The findings also suggest marketing professionals feel overwhelmed by the speed of change in their industry coupled with the pressure to deliver results.
While resources have depleted, workloads have skyrocketed. Nearly three quarters of marketers (68 per cent) say they are now expected to do more with less.
Some 64% of British marketers agree that “it is often hard to see the wood for the trees with the speed of change today”.
According to the research, the unprecedented boom in new marketing channels in the last five years has had a huge effect on marketers.
Over half (59%) also said they now produce more marketing content than ever before, despite the fact that staff numbers have dwindled.
Charterhouse new business director Anthony Hawkins said: “Consumers’ channel agnostic behaviour – moving indiscriminately through print, social media, mobile, TV and more – has meant marketers need to execute their campaigns across a multitude of channels. But firms need to avoid shooting themselves in the foot by duplicating efforts and spend.”
In an attempt to alleviate this mounting pressure, over half of marketers (52%) report hiring more agencies to cope with the demand to produce an increasingly amount of content. However, 50% of UK marketers admit their department has become highly dependent on thier agencies.
Hawkins added: “Overburdened marketers are turning to third parties to offload the tasks that they simply don’t have time for. But in an unexpected twist, this has meant that many have found their role has become one of coordination and administration.
“This rather unwelcome evolution is risking low morale and poor job satisfaction in the marketing department. Clearly, this dependence on agencies and the impact it is having on marketers needs to be addressed by business leaders.”
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