m-cause

How much money is spent Globally on marketing promotion?

eMarketer recently reported (via PWC) that worldwide roughly 420 Billion was spent on advertising in 2009…by 2013, this # is expected to rise to $470 Billion.  This number does not include trade spending and other forms of marketing spend, however.

Interestingly, Forrester reports that today 70% of all marketing spending is locked into trade funds and other non-traditional areas.  If you factor in this estimate and consider that the PWC study only looked at 48 countries in their ad spend survey, then annual marketing spend on driving/influencing consumer behavior across all touchpoints could easily be in the neighborhood of 1Trillion USD.

Let’s just put 1 Trillion USD into perspective:

• 1 Trillion USD would fund the military might of all NATO countries combined or all US military activity since 9/11
• 1 Trillion USD is greater than the entire GDP of Australia
• 1 Trillion USD would cover everyone’s rent in the US for 3 years
• 1 Trillion USD would buy you every stock on the Toronto stock exchange

See this video from Mint.com for details on 1 Trillion USD.

All this spending happens annually in order to stimulate Global consumer demand, influence purchase intent and grow brand equities. Consumers are footing the bill in a big way today for marketing today…

Additionally, the annual 1 Trillion $ marketing spend is bound to embed brands deeper & deeper into the culture.  J. Twitchell notes that 10% of a 2 year old’s nouns are brand names. More people recognize the Golden Arches vs the Red Cross.

Many young marketers enter the business fray and are excited about the prospect of leading projects and working on big brands with loads of marketing budget. For the most part, I don’t think many even really consider how their promotional programs intersect with culture. I know from my own experience that the fast paced nature of today’s global marketplace combined with intense business pressure does not allow for much reflection. Every so often, however, between the business reports, meetings and discussions, moments arise where marketers almost do a double take–like when you stumble upon people making parity videos of your ads on youtube, etc.

Some would argue that we live in a post-marketing age.  I would argue that we clearly live in the golden age of marketing and brands. In this marketing age, much of our shared experiences come through brands and the advertising/storytelling that brand teams & agencies create.

Like it or not, the marketing orientation is here to stay & will even increase as even the slow to adopt commodity sectors join the marketing revolution.  Even Google, long a poster child for a brand that has been built without much consumer marketing spend, started advertising in the Super Bowl…

There is a lot of power in $1.0 Trillion. There is a lot of responsibility tied up in the $$ as well.  Where will this all go in the future? How ubiquitous and embedded does marketing promo become & how will that impact our culture going forward?

Thoughts?