As banks are bailed out and speculation over the state of the job market and overall economy is rife, the face of marketing in the UK is changing. Whilst Morrison and Asda grow their market share, discounters such as Aldi and Lidl are becoming more and more popular with a nation forced to tighten their belts. Yet slashing prices is not the solution for all. At a dinner hosted by Cambridge Marketing Colleges earlier in the year, marketing guru Paul Fifield stated that the bigger and better brands would not shift on price and rely on strong brand propositions to see them through. His auguring seems to have come good as Waitrose announced a series of television adverts that will play up the store’s premium credentials, with Managing Director Mark Price highlighting the fact that value is effectively balance between quality and price, and not simply the latter, “in the current climate, cheapness has become confused with value in food retail”.
Yet this ‘business as usual’ approach is not common to all businesses – naturally television and print advertising is expensive and this has led many firms to shelve campaigns - even direct mail has taken a big dive in some cases. Credit card companies have traditionally used direct mail extensively, but some of these have cut their spend by over 80%.
Steve Mann, Managing Director of Brand Recruitment based in Cambridge has noticed a shift in the nature of the market, “We’ve noticed that there are a lot more online roles in the market at the moment, and to a certain extent a lot of direct marketing positions in general. Similarly there seem to be a lot of communications jobs out there – I imagine this is another way of getting messages across without breaking the bank. On the flipside, we have seen a massive downturn in the number of events roles – two years ago we would be carrying five or six jobs across the East Anglia as any one time, at this point in time, we have only one events jobs in Cambridge and one other role in Essex.” He continues to add that the marketing jobs market seems to be holding reasonably steady in terms of volume, but with an increasing percentage of this taken up by interim roles, “A lot of companies seem to be playing it safe, opting for a year’s contract rather than taking someone on a permanent basis – it gives them more flexibility if the economy continues to slide yet means they are still able to keep the show on the road”.
