Will financial marketing spend suffer in 2012?

2012 has already been earmarked by most financial commentators as a year of pain and suffering for anyone not owning a private yacht/jet (delete as approrpriate). Financial institutions are supposedly scrambling to shore up their balance sheets and boost capital levels. So does that mean that supposedly non-essential functions like marketing will suffer?

2008/2009 were tough years for the financial industry as a whole and many agencies felt the direct result of slashed advertising spend and tighter sponsorship/collateral budgets. But specific areas of the corporate and institutional markets did very well, thank you. FX was a boom market through 2009/2010 and has done well in 2011 and ATL/BTL campaigns carried on piling on the pounds across the usual media. Fixed Income also did pretty well as product innovation created new teams (all requiring marketing material) and previously disregarded regions suddenly looked a lot more attractive than Europe and North America (again requiring new material). 

Can we expect more of the same during 2012 and beyond? Several clients that SWA work with see the future as being very much focused on product innovation and emerging markets rather than investing promotional spend on familiar products and regions. This could require quite specific, granular marketing activity (as opposed to broader brush campaigns). This could be a boon to smaller, more specialist agencies. There could therefore be a shift towards more freelancer use, greater in-house creative and certainly greater use of cost-effective digital channels. The retail end of the industry may also seem some changes.

The entrance of new high street players like Virgin could bring some fresh perspectives to rather stagnant/samey ATL activity. Insurance ads were the big splash in 2009/2010 but now seem repetitive and old-hat. Who will be the next to innovate on the same scale, and will they spend as much? Perhaps consumer credit ads will become more mainstream and move into primteime slots as personal debt levels rise. Will Facebook begin to dominate ad spend ahead of TV? What's certainly true is that financial services will be in the news rather a lot over the next 12 months. Another year and all to play for.