With the overall business landscape improving, top brands are expecting to pump in more moolah into their marketing campaigns in the coming year, with more focus on innovative and unique experiential campaigns. 



Marketing campaign has always been considered an extravagant affair and that is why it has never been the top business priority of brands in tough economic scenario. However, as the market is anticipating a promising business landscape, the marketers are hopeful for getting an increased budget allocation from management for business growth. Surveying over 1,000 marketing professionals from U.K., The CIM and Bloomberg’s Marketing Confidence Monitor survey brings forth the good news of rising consumer confidence in the coming times and ‘risk aversion’ taking a backseat. Consequently, 50 per cent of the marketers assert that business growth is the top management agenda, while 42 per cent say that they have seen an increase in management buy-in and investment for innovation.



Even the latest Bellwether report, a quarterly survey of 300 marketing professionals from U.K.,   reveals that U.K.’s biggest brands are increasing their marketing budgets by largest margins in 13 years. “The increased appetite to spend on advertising and marketing is being fuelled by a surge in business optimism, with firms seeing their financial prospects to be the brightest for at least eight years,” says Chris Williamson, Chief Economist, Markit, and author of the Bellwether report.



Albeit, both the reports highlight the agenda of balancing ambitious marketing plans with budgets. Interestingly, CIM survey underlines that more than a quarter of marketers (27 per cent) evaluate their campaigns only when time and capacity allows and almost half (45 per cent) of marketing plans are driven primarily by budgets, while 37 per cent of marketers say insight and analysis is the primary driver to that stage in their campaigns. As CIM Associate Director of Research and Insights, Thomas Brown insists, marketing plans must align with core business.



Marketers can even try focusing more on particular areas that might bring better return on investments, as mentioned in the Bellwether survey.



Among many big-spenders, Samsung is leading with a total global marketing budget of $14 billion for promotion of its products in 2013. Further, with ever increasing business prospects in Asia’s third-largest economy, brands are also keeping a close eye on business of marketing in India. Eyeing on a target of sales of 70 billion dollars in India by 2020, L’oreal is also expected to spend more on experiential marketing in the coming year. 2013 saw a host of interesting experiential campaigns in India be it the NH7 weekender music festivals by Bacardi, or Jaago Re!, a social campaign by Tata tea. It will be even more interesting to see how marketers put their best foot forward in 2014.