Optimism Rife among World's Marketers

Optimism among marketing execs remains high, according to the May wave of the Warc Global Marketing Index (GMI), with respondents generally upping their forecasts for marketing budgets and positive about trading conditions.

Warc's survey takes scores for marketers' expectations in three key areas - marketing budgets, staffing levels and trading conditions - and aggregates them into a headline GMI figure, with a reading of 50.0 indicating no change from the previous month. This month, it fell back 0.3 points on April, to 58.0, but the year-on-year improvement is a healthy 1.5 points. Marketers in the Americas are most confident (headline GMI of 59.3), with Europe and Asia Pacific significantly if not massively behind.

The global score for marketing budgets remained steady on 55.7, with Europe and the Americas rising slightly and Asia Pacific down this month by 2.6 points, to 53.0. The index for trading conditions edged up 0.3 points to 61.4 thanks to a jump of 3.4 points to 62.3 in Europe cancelling out a fall in the Americas. The score for the final component, staffing levels, fell globally by 1.2 points to 56.8, led by a sharp fall in Europe (down 5.7 points to 52.7).

Warc's Data and Journals Director Suzy Young said the figures showed an outlook 'broadly in line with recent months, with confidence high in all regions' - and noted that greater consistency month by month was also a positive sign.

Web site: www.warc.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.