What comes next?
Firstly, let’s declare where we come from. Most of us voted remain. All of us respect the decision (it has taken some longer than others!). All of us were scratching our heads from a communications perspective throughout the campaign! Now we have moved on.
From a comms point of view it was fascinating and disturbing in equal measure. Huge numbers of voters did not want to listen to either or both sides of the argument. Does anybody really want to listen to an argument between people who don’t matter to them?
The old brand truisms of trust and credibility being the foundation of campaigns have never been truer. It was loud, it was nasty, it was full of lies on both sides. I’m glad it is over.
Creative industries and marketing
The creative industries are worth £84bn a year to the UK economy and growing at around 9% per year. Big business. The biggest voice in our industry, Sir Martin Sorrell of WPP, said: “There will be considerable uncertainty for some time to come, which will slow decision-making and generally deter economic activity. All this in a business world long cursed with an excess of caution, risk-aversion and short-termism. After Brexit vote, we have no choice but to put on our tin hats and make the best of things.”
What’s clear is that challenging times are ahead but they’ve been challenging for 8 years now. Despite the biggest recession in modern times and sustained slow growth our sector has continued to innovate and client investment in marketing budgets has just about exceeded pre 2008 levels. Clearly the explosion of digital and mobile has been the real success story.
The good news for business is that the marketing world will continue to strive for data and deliver the solutions offered by mobile in order to create new ways of winning customers. There is little doubt that forensic approach will continue.
The bad news. What about creativity? Creative budgets have been the real loser since the recession with clients opting for necessity based creativity (“we have to do this because”) rather than seeing it as central to their growth strategy. The fallout from the referendum will do nothing to change that.
So more digital demand and less investment in brands means more of the same – more noise, less audience attention span (now down to 8 seconds and less than a goldfish which could explain why Brexit messages struggled to get through!), more data to try and interpret. More important than ever to cut through with clever creative.
Spare a thought for the next generation
There has been plenty of coverage about generational splits over the past few weeks so I’m not going to go into that in any detail.
However, low or reduced levels of investment coupled with uncertainty over funding for Universities means the next generation of marketers will face a very challenging future. Thankfully the continued rise of digital and mobile will be a beacon of hope for them and no doubt encourage the most entrepreneurial to start up on their own but of course that isn’t without its risks.
At Fuel, having young students with a fresh perspective in our business benefits us and our clients enormously. I’m concerned that the next generation won’t get the opportunities they deserve. I hope I am wrong, we’ll certainly keep investing in them.
