Tracking the trends.

A comprehensive report on the growth of the BTL marketing services across industires with reasons for the same and the most effected aspects of the "traditional" media formats. Please download the full report from the Articles and White Papers section of The BTL Life from here.

Here more on the BTL trend.

In a recent meeting in Hong Kong, about 10 days back, my friend and colleague Conrad Chiu, floored me with some of the charts which he shared with us, in his trademark simplistic manner. Conrad has years of experience on the Asian market not only from a BTL prespective, but he runs a hugely successful 360 offering of BatesAsia in Hong Kong. I thought it would a sensible thing to share the information in its original format with all the readers of this blog.

While it reinforced the fact that BTL spends were increasing, the interesting part was to look at the where the growth is coming from. While the source of data here was different (refer to earlier posts), the trend was unmistakable.

While the difference in the rate of growth of ATL vs BTL is a known and understood fact, I think the next two charts which indicate that the ATL growth is way below the average A&P growth rate while BTL growth rates are higher is a new and an interesting finding.

While the trend looks at spends in the US, it highlights the direction in which the marcom managers in Asia will tend to move / or are moving.

RIP ~ ATL (well almost)

We have been discussing & reading about research which indicates drop in the ATL spends while there is corresponding increase in the BTL (including online) spends by one industry vertical after another. However, the recent research article based on the survey conducted by the Chartered Institute of Marketing, UK – the "Marketing Trends Survey," conducted by Ipsos MORI, kind of made me sit up and marvel at the speed at which the change is happening.



As per the survey only 15% of the marketing budget is planned to be invested into adverting, the balance is opportunities in the “btl and digital” domains: deep dive into the article here:

However, going a little back in time, the trend was eminent (the scale and speed are stunning) and inline with a different research undertaken by IDC in the US years back, which was focused on the major IT industry spenders, which very clearly indicated an intention to drop spends on both org. personnel and the $ spends on ATL (as much as 20%) while moving larger allocations to Direct. This was 3 years back.


Also very clear where the areas of focus for most marketing decision makers / spenders. They were obviously gunning for tools which had worked and showed the higher returns on the
marketing dollars as against the traditional media. This was more so in verticals where the marketing spends were predominantly focused on a B2b or B2 “a well defined C” formats. Lead generation and digital were the areas to place bets on! (refer below) In a way what was projected as “possibilities” in 2003 are turning to realities in 2007.


However, I think the trend has never been questioned in the last decade or so (other than by a few die hard ATL fans). It is also very obvious from the investments being made by media holding companies: they are without doubt investing into marketing services and digital. That’s where the growths are.

The fact that BTL (read promo) outweighs ATL, was established in markets like the US as way back as 03. Well documented in the PMA and Promo study. Below is the image from the study presentation which had shaken all of us then, where-in it was 1st established that Promo spends are higher than ATL in the US.





While the facts and figures are beyond doubt, and the trend is moving eastwards, the reasons for the change in scenario is simple – better and defined ROI, period.