The Chartered Institute of Marketing's (CIM) latest Marketing Trends Survey says insecurity is reflected in a slow-down in the forecast growth for marketing spending.
While spending in all other areas of marketing is still expected to increase, this is not the case for sponsorship budgets.
The survey, which questioned senior marketing professionals on their business and its prospects for the future, found that UK firms are planning to increase their marketing spend by just 2.9 per cent, a significant decrease on the 4.9 per cent increase predicted in the previous survey last quarter.
Expenditure on sponsorship is predicted to fall by 0.2 per cent over the next 12 months – when the last survey was conducted three months ago, budgets were expected to increase by 1.2 per cent.
Sponsorship now accounts for 7.4 per cent of marketing budgets in the UK - more than internal marketing (6.4 per cent), or telemarketing (5.6 per cent), but less than advertising (12.9 per cent), direct mail (11.2 per cent) or public relations (10.1 per cent).
