Marketing Forecast from Ad-ology

When it comes to promoting their products, pharmaceutical firms are required to be more careful than the typical marketer. A traditional print advertisement is often accompanied by an entire page of compressed text that details possible side effects that might result from taking medications. Pharmaceutical companies are currently in negotiations with the FDA about how they might be able to use social media while still meeting legal requirements.

Ad-ology Research recently updated their Industry Marketing Insights report for Sports Teams and Clubs. The following are the predicted Top 5 Opportunities/Challenges from the report for this industry for the upcoming 12 months:

* Consumers seeking to save money may choose to go to games as opposed to taking expensive vacations.
* Minor leagues are marketing games as a family- and budget-friendly form of entertainment to appeal to consumers seeking to cut back on spending.
* Costs to attend professional sports games have increased.

Despite signs that the economy is turning around, consumers are still acting cautiously. For example, almost two-thirds of U.S. adults (63%) say they have purchased more generic brands in the past six months to save money while an additional 12% say they have considered doing so. According to Harris Interactive, Americans are doing other things to save money such as brown-bagging lunch, cutting back on visits to a stylist, cancelling magazines or newspaper subscriptions, etc. There are also some generational differences in what people are doing to save money. For example, Gen Xers (those aged 34-45) are more likely to brown bag lunch (56%) and cut back on hair styling (43%), while Matures (those aged 65 and older) are more likely to cancel a magazine subscription (45%).

Consumers have multiple ways to access the latest movie from their favorite production houses. These days, they may be as likely go to a theater to watch the movie as they may be to watch the production streaming on the Web. At the same time, movie producers are looking for ways to efficiently use the average $30 million marketing budget that accompanies large releases. Earlier this year, I wrote about strategies that would be taken this year including more promotional partnerships and less use of print, radio and outdoor.

Supper is the restaurant industry’s largest sales generator but has been the weakest performing meal period for the past decade, reports NPD. According to the NPD restaurant market research study, which examines how the supper market weakened and analyzes how each generation uses restaurants, multiple factors have contributed to the decline in supper visits. Among the most important factors is that the aging of the U.S. population has resulted in a fundamental shift in the profile of supper restaurant users. According to Bonnie Riggs, NPD’s restaurant industry analyst and author of the study, restaurant operators can’t control population trends, but “through product and concept innovations, availability, understanding their consumers’ value perceptions, right pricing, and targeted messaging, they can re-attract consumers to restaurants for supper.”

Toy marketers are eyeing 2010 with caution. Who can blame them? Consumer spending was down in 2009 for nonessentials. The consumer electronics industry witnessed a 5% drop indicating that fewer adult toys were purchased. And children’s toys saw nearly a 1% drop in sales. The category went from $21.65 billion in 2008 sales to $21.47 billion in 2009.