Trade bodies must be on their mettle
It is reassuring to see trade bodies come out fighting when their members’ backs are against the wall and the DMA did itself proud this week, following the doom and gloom of the IPA Bellwether report.
The quarterly Bellwether report made for depressing reading and the line that marketing budgets were being cut at their fastest rate since the terrorist outrages of September 11 was seized upon by financial reporters across the media.
Direct marketing came into the cross hairs as the medium has experienced the longest period of budget cutting of any marketing channel.
However, the DMA speedily riposted with findings from its Economic Impact of the Direct marketing Industry 2008 study. This shows DM advertising spend increased by 9.8 per cent to £18 billion in 2007.
The report was compiled by the Future Foundation and challenges the Bellwether’s notion that DM budgets have been slashed over successive quarters. The methodologies deployed by each study are different and with two such opposing sets of results it is hard to draw any conclusion – except that the DM sector definitely needed and welcomed the morale boost.
In fact, the DMA could have swooped sooner and put out its findings ahead or alongside the Bellwether Report, as the date of issue of the latter is easy to find. As it was, the national and trade press had 24 hours to scrutinise the report and put out confidence-knocking headlines.
But the point remains, trade bodies are waking up to the need for a quick response when marketing and advertising comes under attack; witness ISBA’s comment on the Which? report criticising online marketing tactics by food manufacturers as “seriously misleading” yesterday (16 July).
The swift rebuttal unit at ISBA must be working overtime as various lobby groups take pot shots at advertising as the cause of a myriad of social ills. Of course, forceful words alone from a trade body are not enough and so it was heartening to see the Advertising Association recently present commissioned research on binge drinking that suggested it was more a peer-led vice than one caused by marketing.
Unfortunately it takes time to carry out research and collate results. By the time the counter-arguments are marshalled media attention has often moved on to another set of attention-grabbing headlines.
However, the lobby groups and those influenced by them remain and so does the need for possession of a bank of robust data that can be used to directly engage critics and dispel all misconceptions likely to appear. Investment in such is not cheap but for the industry’s future is essential.
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