Global marketers remain upbeat

Warc, 24 July 2014

LONDON: Confidence among global marketers remained positive in July, according to the latest Warc Global Marketing Index (GMI), which found marketing optimism to be particularly high in the Americas and Europe.

The headline GMI figure, which assesses marketers' expectations in three main areas – trading conditions, marketing budgets and staffing levels – held steady at 56.6 this month, but this was still a 2.3 point increase over the year.

Warc's GMI is a unique monthly indicator of the state of the global marketing industry which tracks conditions among marketers within their organisation and region.

A reading of 50 indicates no change from the previous month, while a reading of 60 indicates rapid growth.

In this month's report, optimism was the highest in the Americas for the fifth consecutive month. The region returned a GMI of 57.7, which indicated improving conditions overall despite representing a 1.6 point decline from June.

Marketers in Europe were also upbeat about conditions – Europe recorded a GMI reading of 57.2, up 1.5 since June – although the headline index for Asia-Pacific remained largely flat on 55.1 (+0.2 points).

Looking at the component parts of the index, strong trading conditions in Europe and the Americas helped both regions to record positive readings of 59.9 and 59.7 respectively while Asia-Pacific was also positive with a score of 57.8.

However, the index for marketing budgets contracted 0.9 points globally to 53.2 in July, even though this still represented the eighteenth consecutive month of budget improvement.

Europe was up 1.3 points to 54.1, the Americas fell 3.7 points to 52.8 while Asia-Pacific also declined by 0.6 points to 52.5.

Interestingly, there was a sharp decline in net budgeted spend for TV in the Americas, where the channel's individual index fell 8.6 points to 42.8 in July. Globally, the index for TV budgets stood at 49.6, the first indication of declining spend since October 2013.

The Americas region was more positive about staffing levels, the GMI's third component. Its GMI for hiring staff was the highest on 60.5, followed by Europe (57.5) and Asia-Pacific (54.9), creating a global average of 57.6 (+1.6 points).

Commenting on the figures, Suzy Young, data and journals director at Warc, said: "The global headline GMI remains consistent with June data on 56.6. Within this, the indexes for all featured regions have stabilised significantly since the end of 2013, with marketers generally upbeat about their business environment."

Data sourced from Warc