A look through my Linkedin feed sees the sad story of many great marketing professionals now finding themselves out of work. With few traditional full time senior level marketing roles being advertised, are we soon to see many one-man-band marketing consultancies launching and short-term in-house contract roles advertised?
When I began plans to start the marketing arm for Brandon Consulting Services at the start of 2020, I had no idea of what lay ahead of me. As I put all the framework in place my workbook started to fill right to the end of 2020 and my clients expected their budgets coming into the new financial year to have plenty of room for spending on both new hires and consultancy support.
How that picture has changed!
Not only have budgets shrunk drastically for many, some of these senior marketing contacts have now found themselves (or members of their teams) out of work.
However, as the world begins to return to a new version of normal, many of my clients are ramping up their activity and their consultancy spending.
With the combination of some great marketing professionals out of work and those companies in a good financial position looking to ramp up their copywriting and PR spend, could we see the rise of individual contractors looking to fill some of those gaps?
Some of the brands we are working with at Brandon Consulting are large international insurance, investment and pensions household names. In the past many of these companies tended to rely on the large agencies when they were looking for support rather than turning to smaller more specialist operations such as ourselves.
I personally think this trend towards the use of smaller more specialist consultancies is here to stay, at least for the medium term.
Many companies have realised that such specialist consultancies can often do a better job due to their in depth knowledge of the market they operate in, and often for less money too due to lower overhead costs.
I will be watching with interest to see if that filters down to more individuals on short term contracts for in-house marketing roles during the next few years of economic uncertainty.
Brandon Consulting Services Ltd 