Prediction: The small-to midsize ad agencies that make social media central to their business model will find success and thrive in spite of the recession.
Social media marketing is projected to grow at an annual rate of 34%, faster than any other form of online marketing (Forrester Research: US Interactive Marketing Spend 2009 to 2014 Report issued Summer 2009). The Fortune 500 companies not using social media has dropped dramatically – from 43% now to only 9% (eMarketer).
“The Vitrue 100 helps provide the industry with overall trends. We issue the list to highlight the most social brands and help demonstrate the value of social media marketing.”
The Vitrue 100 of 2009
Many ad agencies are still behind the curve when it comes to social media marketing. Barbara Bacci Mirque, executive vice president of the Association of National Advertisers, ANA, recently observed that,
“More and more advertisers are leading their agencies into new media, not the other way around,” and that ”clients are the ones who are personally and professionally experimenting with new media forms and directing their agencies to look into them.”
“When I started out in this business in the mid 80’s as an assistant product manager at The Frito-Lay Company, we expected our advertising agencies to be innovative and inform us about what was hip and cool – now it appears to be the other way around,” she wrote in the ANA blog.
walmart?! really?!