An Overview of the Creative Industry

The economic growth of any country comes from the government and the private sector. I do not need to tell you about the state the British Government has been left in after thirteen years of Labour Governing. But let’s take a look about the state of UK creative industries:

I speak on behalf of those working in creative industries throughout the UK that many of us have seen a drastic cut back in Private Sector spending – huge cutbacks in client budgets since 2008 particularly in the advertising, public relations and graphic design industries. This being attributed to the massive government spending which has had a negative impact in private sector consumption and investment. When business directors and shareholders do not understand the true importance of marketing these divisions of the business are usually the first to see a slash in budget.

Lucky for those of us in the digital industry we have not suffered so much at the hands of the public sector over spend. In fact we have seen an increase in online marketing spend with more organisations and companies starting to embrace and understand the value of marketing their business and products online. In fact, 66% of companies are planning to increase their digital marketing budgets during 2010 (Marketing Budgets Report, econsultancy 2010).

Creative SME’s have competed for public sector contracts

In attempts to further conserve profits many SME’s have turned to the public sector to sustain their business. This has proved a good strategy in some cases but has generally not been the case for creative SME’s due to the rigid procurement processes which prevent smaller private sector providers from competing for public sector contracts. Sam Allen, search expert at Zeta wrote an excellent post about public sector organisations using private design agencies.

Labour ‘spin’ has resulted in a negative reputation for Marketing and PR

PR is often said to be about reputation management yet through poor and ineffective attempts to manage themselves the UK government has damaged the meaning of PR. more…