Navigating out of a perfect storm

Navigating out of a perfect storm

Observatory International

Recovery from the COVID pandemic. Exponential growth of digital. Lack of digital transformation capabilities. Talent drain. Inflation. Lack of agency capacity.

Add in a horrific war in Europe the likes of which we haven’t seen since 1945 and you get the scale of the challenge for marketers and marketing organisations. What we are seeing is a perfect storm and no business will be unaffected.

Anyone of these elements in isolation has to be a major challenge for marketers . In combination they provide the industry with a perfect storm of mammoth proportions.

Marketers have always been under extraordinary degrees of work pressure, but this toxic cocktail of issues can only make their work life balance rock even further out of kilter.

Equally their procurement counterparts are also struggling, wrestling with costs and the need to deliver even more for even less – to the point where agency appetites to continue to engage with them is reaching breaking point .

We have to pause, take stock, and reset.

We must appreciate that the events of the last two years, and particularly of the last few weeks has changed the rules.

If we’re going to succeed in the future, then we really need to look at the way in which we are thinking about marketing, its costs, and how we work with those with the capabilities to move our brands forward.

There is no point in Procurement hiding behind the ‘value’ argument when the reality is that such an approach is a metaphor for simply driving costs down.

There is no excuse for the perennial issue of poor briefing from marketers resulting in wasted time, wasted costs, and frustration on all sides (plus not a small impact sustainability).

And agencies simply need to look more closely at the cost/benefits of working with clients on ridiculously tight margins and perhaps make difficult calls.

Read more about this on our website.