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Chief Marketing Officers Haven't 'Friended' Social Networking Sites
Despite the cultural phenomenon that Facebook and MySpace have become in five years' time, 55 percent of the chief marketing officers at brands surveyed by Epsilon said they're not too interested (22 percent), or not interested at all (23 percent), in incorporating the social networking sites into their marketing strategies.
Epsilon is a marketing services firm providing comprehensive online and offline marketing services to some of the most-recognized brands in the world. Its late-October online survey was completed by top consumer and business-to-business marketing executives at 180 brands whose annual revenues range from $250 million to more than $10 billion. The survey was conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Media, of New York.
Though dialogue marketing is a bona fide trend in the industry, just 10 percent of CMO survey respondents said they are already using these social sites in their marketing plans.
Internet forums, Webcasts and podcasts, e-mail, blogs, and Webinars outscored Facebook and MySpace in terms of being social media elements that marketing executives said they are very interested or somewhat interested in using.
"These sites narrowly appeal to college and high school students, providing a challenge as far as measuring results and yielding a limited amount of actionable data," said Steve Cone, chief marketing officer of Epsilon.
Somewhat quixotically, 27 percent of marketing executives identified social networking and word of mouth as the tool they most want to introduce to their marketing mix to compensate for anticipated budget cuts—ahead of all other elements of traditional or digital marketing.
The CMO survey results strongly indicate the economic crisis will diminish marketing spending in 2009. No less than 93 percent of marketing executives said the current state of the economy will have a moderate or significant impact on their marketing efforts in the next few months. Regarding advertising expenditures specifically, 70 percent said they'll decrease spending.
Source: Excerpt from Epsilon's "Survey Records Shift in Blue Chip Marketing Spend."
