A recent survey of the “Top Marketing Trends for 2009” among 634 members of MENG (Marketing Executives Marketing Group), a not-for-profit organization of senior marketing professionals across a wide variety of industries and marketing disciplines, revealed that the economy will be the overwhelming challenge for 2009. Yes, not surprising but there were pockets of optimism too. In a world dominated by the internet and new web 2.0 media, marketing executives predict that business will return to the basics with a renewed emphasis on innovation and new insights as the key for long term growth. Sourcing this focus on innovation, two-thirds anticipate that spending on market research will stay the same or even increase. In light of the severity of this recession, another encouraging prediction was that only half of these marketing executives plan to decrease their marketing budgets, and 56% believed their staffing would remain the same or even increase. Some other noteworthy predictions (click in one of the paragraphs below to read this full MENG article)

• 72% said that insights and innovation efforts would be the best weapon to combat business cycles in the future, supported by continued market research.

• Executives reinforced the need for a “Back to Core Principles” approach, with the biggest emphasis on top strategic concepts of customer satisfaction (79%) and customer retention (76%), followed by ROI (65%) and brand loyalty (61%). Among the 62 marketing concepts voted on, the least important were faith-based marketing, six sigma, game theory, anti-Americanism and immigration.

• While there was basic agreement on the growing importance of web 2.0 for the future, marketing executives generally felt the “jury was still out” on how to really leverage these advancements and also sick of hearing so much about the virtues of digital terminology and buzzwords compared to last year – on “social networking”, “social media”, “blogs” and “viral marketing”. A definite sign of “buzzword fatigue.

The question of how to utilize your marketing weapons in this serious recession is addressed in more complete article recently written by Latin Pulse.  This new Pulsadas edition will appear shortly on this website.  As an international Marketing  Research company, we are committed to finding relevant solutions for our clients.  We hope our blogs and articles offer new insights and pertinent recommendations that will help our clients and friends around the world survive and even flourish during these troubled times.