With each quarterly survey, we change up to 40% of questions. Why? Two main reasons:

• Trends: it ensures we keep a ‘core’ question set which we’re able to track over time and build trend pictures with.

• Relevance: it gives us the flexibility to explore contemporary issues as they arise, and to build on what the data tells us each quarter.

For wave three (April 2013), there are several new issues we’re exploring which build on what we’ve learned from waves one and two:

• Personal development: we’ve learned over waves one and two that despite high levels of perceived support from their employers, marketers are struggling with access to skills development – this time round we’re exploring attitudes to personal development (of both businesses and individuals) and how this might affect investment in skills.

• Growth and innovation: wave two results reveal a short-termism plaguing businesses – whilst marketers believe in innovation, they’re not prioritising it in the near-term and resource is a considerable barrier. This time round we’re exploring barriers to innovation, the culture of organisations with respect to new ideas and risk, and budgets for growth.

• The credibility of marketing: discussions with our Steering Committee have led to an interesting hypothesis – that the credibility and influence of the marketing function in an organisation has a direct impact on the confidence and sentiment of marketers. This is an area we’re exploring to determine whether this is indeed accurate, and to understand how marketing is perceived within organisations.

• The UK budget: with the announcement of the UK budget in late March, we’re probing marketers’ expectations for how the measures announced will impact business investment and consumer confidence.

Take part today!

Don’t miss your chance to take part – the survey is open between 2-26 April 2013 and only takes five minutes to complete. It’s 100% confidential and participants receive the full in-depth report first, and free. And if that’s not enough, there’s a prize draw to win an iPad Mini for every completed entry!

Thomas Brown

Head of Insights, CIM

@ThinkStuff

With every research and insight project we undertake, I believe it’s really important to ensure that our work is grounded and that we focus on the practical realities facing marketers. One of the most effective ways of doing this, is to bring industry representatives into the heart of the project – and that’s what we’ve just done with the Marketing Confidence Monitor.

We’ve just confirmed eight senior executives to join our Steering Committee for 2013 – here’s the brief they’ve been given:

• Advise: provide guidance on research design and the key issues facing marketing today and tomorrow
• Challenge: help analyse and debate research data and form robust findings
• Contribute: provide input into the published outputs of the project, through articles and interviews
• Share: help socialise this initiative internally and externally

The group we’ve appointed comprise seven senior marketing executives, and one senior finance director. The industries they collectively represent, as well as their experience and view across a multitude of markets, will help bring diverse perspectives to this project.

The brands depicted here give you the first glimpse as to who these folks are – find out more and read their individual bios in our Steering Committee section. I’m sure we’ll get some great contributions and perspectives from this group, and look forward to sharing the first examples of their inputs in early March.

Thomas Brown

Head of Insights, CIM

@ThinkStuff

If you’ve not already seen your copy or taken a look online, make sure you find the time to do so today.

Find out more on the Marketing Week website

On Thursday 22 November, marketers all over the UK received their copy of Marketing Week, featuring the cover story feature (‘The great budget squeeze’) – you can read the feature in full here, with commentary from CIM alongside industry perspectives from Jones Lang LaSalle, Psion and Guardian News and Media.

This was accompanied by a Q&A exploring the results with Stewart Pedler, Director of Operations, Global Creative Services and Thomson Reuters.

Finally, the Marketing Week team compared the results of the Marketing Confidence Monitor, based on over 1,200 UK marketers’ perspectives, with the results from the latest IPA Bellwether Report, based on 300 UK advertisers – read the article.

New technologies and digital channels enable marketing professionals to develop a clearer understanding of their customers than ever before, whilst also providing a myriad of opportunities to creatively communicate and serve them.

Through sophisticated analytics solutions, utilising an ever growing supply of customer and external data, it is possible to model customer preferences and behaviours with increasing immediacy and accuracy like never before.

Social media platforms are becoming increasingly valuable research, communication and service tools. The platform is now progressing from experimentation and infancy to being professionalised. Those who are prepared to innovate in this climate stand to gain the most in terms of customer engagement and monetisation.

Marketing automation technologies are now enabling organisations to act upon these new insights in an integrated manner to improve speed to market and increase ROI of marketing activities.

Whilst on the surface the commercial outlook may appear gloomy to many professions, from the perspective of the marketer we believe the situation could be quite different. Rather than a time for retreat, is it not the time to innovate?

Through the CIM Marketing Confidence Monitor we look forward to gaining further insight into the minds of those tasked with driving growth and an understanding of their views on innovation and other key perspectives for the year ahead.

Take part, share with colleagues – and let us know your thoughts below.

Nick
—————————————————–
Nick Turner is a Partner at Deloitte, and the UK Marketing & Insight Practice lead
www.deloitte.co.uk/marketing