How much more powerful are figures than words? Forrester Research has recently published a five-year interactive marketing forecast. The way they conduct this type of studies is by interviewing as many marketing departments as possible, identify the global trends and use the data to make projections.

What came out of the study is that while interactive marketing budgets decreased in this recession, they decreased less than traditional advertising.
“Six out of ten marketers (Forrester Research) surveyed agreed with the statement “we will increase budget for interactive by shifting money away from traditional marketing.” Only 7% said “we have no plans to increase our marketing budget.”

Again, says Josh Bernoff, senior vice president, idea development at Forrester Research: “Now it looks more like advertising is inefficient, relative to digital. More than half of the marketers we surveyed said that effectiveness of direct mail, television, magazines, outdoor, newspapers, and radio would stay the same or decrease within three years. In contrast, well over 70% expected the effectiveness of channels like created social media, online video, and mobile marketing to increase.”

Bottom line of the study is that “digital, which will be about 12% of overall advertising spend in 2009, is likely to grow to about 21% in five years. Along the way overall advertising budgets will decline.”

This applies very much to Sport Organisations, whose core values match more than any other industry the core values of online technology: Sharing, Collaboration, Interaction, Engagement, Passion, Involvement, Community.

But this is not enough: they must act and join the “Social Revolution” happening through online technology. The alternative is to disappear, some slowly, some suddenly.

Alessandro De Zanche