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Many companies react to a recession by slashing marketing budgets and marketing staff, leaving them without the skills for the development and implementation work required to take advantage of market growth when it eventually returns.

In one case study we heard that the planning and development stages of a product launch took as long as 12 months before the product was taken to market.

Companies need to be investing in marketing now in order to be best placed for the gradual upturn that we all hope will occur in 2010.

With this in mind The Chartered Institute of Marketing (The CIM) has launched an online survey to explore marketing capability for growth and value as we move into the era of 2010-2020.

Companies need to be investing in marketing now in order to be best placed for the gradual upturn that we all hope will occur in 2010

Over the last few months, the CIM have interviewed some 30 business leaders and marketing leaders as part of a qualitative research phase. A White paper published by the CIM carries a very powerful and compelling quote from one of the respondents:

鈥� 鈥� a lot of other businesses have really had to re-evaluate their customer base, the segments they鈥檙e operating in and their whole business model. That鈥檚 really the role of the marketing profession within the organisation to do that.鈥� Nick Buckles, CEO, G4S plc.

The paper goes onto to set out a strategy for change which is now the subject of a further online research phases of this critical global benchmarking study and are looking for marketers from all industries to spend 15 minutes completing the online survey. Both the white paper and the survey can be found at

Another finding from the CIM research is that there is an inferiority complex among the marketing profession. This isn鈥檛 construction specific but the CIM discovered that senior marketing professionals value themselves and their function much less within the business than the senior finance guys.

Another finding from the CIM research is that there is an inferiority complex among the marketing profession

The CIM asked 100 chief marketing officers (CMO鈥檚) and 100 senior financial officers (SFO鈥檚) the same set of questions about the contribution of marketing to a businesses performance and how the marketing function is perceived. The marketing guys scored themselves quite badly but the finance guys showed a lot more respect for the marketing function than they give themselves credit.

Although this sounds very encouraging for marketers one of the other findings was that the marketing profession is considered to be equally important to a business as finance, production etc but that the marketing profession is expensive. Marketers are accused of not able to adequately demonstrate the financial return of their actions.

One of the conclusions from the survey would then be that the marketers need to be much more finance savvy and learn the language of the finance department. Do this and the marketing department is more likely to get a lot more support to do the things that they feel need to be done for a business.