A recent survey of Australian marketing professionals has painted an unflattering picture of how the industry views itself.
Speaking at a recent conference of the Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA), Telstra chief marketing officer Mark Buckman revealed the findings of the survey which showed an incredibly self-critical industry. The results were compiled in partnership with Droga5 chief executive Sudeep Gohil.
Almost 40% of respondents said there were too many marketing people in Australia, while 75% said the local industry was “good, but not great versus the rest of the world”, and 48.8% of people in the survey labelled the Australian marketing industry “small-minded”.
Meanwhile, 27.8% of respondents criticised the Australian marketing industry as being less supportive than its international contemporaries. On top of that, 50.7% of respondents said a risk-averse marketing environment caused a lack of world-class work, while 41.2% cited conservative clients.
Gohil told AdNews: “In many respects, I don’t think it shows an industry that is down on itself, but it shows an industry which is never satisfied, which always thinks it can do better, and this can be a good thing. Australian people get jobs overseas at the drop of a hat because Aussies are never satisfied, and I think these results show that ‘never die’ attitude.
“But there is a flip side. The survey also showed an industry that is not supportive of itself, so even when we do something great, people say it’s no good and are critical. These negative conversations don’t seem to happen as much in the rest of the world.”
The survey spoke to 300 industry professionals evenly split across the marketing and agency landscape.
This article first appeared in the 20 April 2012 edition of
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