Creative skills least in demand among marketers in APAC
Marketers across Asia-Pacific expect creativity to become the least in-demand industry skill this year as technical and strategic abilities take greater precedence.
According to a study by LinkedIn, 61 per cent of marketing professionals expect employers to hire people with creative backgrounds, while more than 80 per cent believe strategic and critical thinking, plus problem solving, will be in greater demand.
Released exclusively to Mumbrella, The Marketing Team of Tomorrow study surveyed more than 700 professionals across India, Australia, plus Singapore and Hong Kong. In all four markets, creativity was the lowest in-demand, though was significantly higher in India with 74 per cent believing demand would grow.
Across the board, more than three-quarters said they expected a rise in technically skilled employees, while demand for good account managers hit above 80 per cent in all markets but Hong Kong.
In the first of its kind by the social network, the study also looked at how marketers were hoping to use new technology within their organisations.
According to LinkedIn, marketers’ primary focus is to “bring new efficiencies” in order to free up their time and “shift focus to strategies and delivering more personalised customer experience”.
Tools that can streamline and automate repetitive tasks, such as data analytics (54 per cent), marketing automation (44 per cent) and programmatic ad buying (39 per cent) are currently the most widely-used technology tools among the marketers surveyed.
In terms of business impact, technologies to aid business acquisition and retention were seen as the most valuable – specifically in helping source and organise leads, maintain customer loyalty and reduce churn.
Elsewhere in the study, 53 per cent of respondents said more ‘personalised’ marketing would drive digital trends in 2018.
not surprising. reality check is this. there are barely any decent creatives in the singapore market. most talent is flown in. they do a decent job, then get sick of the quality around them, and leave. or they demand a fat salary and stay happy. creatives here – barely any are good enough for the amount that clients end up paying.
singapore creatives have a knack for moaning and whining about not getting enough freedom, and once they get it all they do is shovel garbage out thats mocked by everyone.
easier to ship it out to india or indonesia – where theres no drama.
marketing is changing and creative agencies as always are playing catchup. in fact, theyve added such little value in the last few years that media agencies are taking away their contracts. shows the value of creative really. bigger problems for marketing to solve.
ReplyTo you and all haters of Singaporean Creativity, if u don’t like it so much, go. Go to the holyland of Advertising of Madison avenue which is crumbling right now. Why waste time complaining about us when you already given up hope? Or you all are just closet racist who is taking the chance to talk down to people of my nation. If you are sincere abt the low quality, help. If not, don’t whine about us either.
ReplyThere’s one in every article these days. A racist whining about the standard of creativity in Asia/Singapore while ignoring the long tradition of homegrown top creatives in Asia/Singapore.
ReplyThis is fantastic news for all creatives, creative agencies and clients who understand the power of a great idea. Let everyone else go blow their budgets on ever more technology platforms and ever more people with ever narrower specialisations to run them. Meanwhile, we’ll outwit and outflank you with ideas that entertain and engage our prospects and our customers.
And there’s another point: anyone who resonates with a great ad or a great idea has just had a personal experience. No need to customise it to them, one-on-one. One great piece of creative can be a highly personal experience for millions of people. I suspect there’s more value in that for an advertiser than a million pieces of mediocre content delivered individually.
ReplyDear Eleanor,
ReplyIt seems the question LinkedIn have asked in their study was about skills demand *dynamics* (“Skills expected to grow in demand in 2018”), and not the absolute level of demand. Needless to say, the two metrics carry quite different interpretation.
One of the biggest challenges to digital transformation is HR. While I don’t entirely agree with the research as creativity is more inspirational and memorable than “buy now” ad, CFOs are for sure demanding ROI from marketers and therefore performance marketers are more in demand than traditional marketers. But the HR teams are just not familiar with what is happening on the tech side and continue to hire “safe”. They also can’t train staff. So yes, while there is need for Technical skills, HR teams do not yet have any understanding of strategy, automation, ROI and therefore the biggest impediment to any change.
LinkedIn is the starting point of majority of job applications. This article should be published in all HR publications and shared via LinkedIn’s own channels for all recruiters and HR to know.
ReplyHave you even seen who works in HR at a typical singapore agency.
A bunch of ah lian women who previously worked in staffing companies that hire promo executives, salesgirls, receptionists, forklift drivers and every other occupation except creative.
They know NOTHING about what it is that creatives are even meant to do. These are the sort of lians who look for buzzwords in resumes.
Driven, passionate, idealistic, teamplayer, collaborator…shit like that.
They wouldn’t know how to judge a portfolio either…all they can probably go by is the scam bible…CB Asia’s Top 100 creatives list.
They are hopeless…and so are the specialised recruiters they outsource senior hires to.
ReplyCertainly an incendiary headline, Mumbrella, when all the article was really pointing out was, this year, analytics and strategic skills are increasing in demand, followed by accounts management, then creatives — still the hallmarks of good advertising, btw. Just that the digital evolution of the marketing/advertising landscape is pushing the demand to the more technical skills. Just don’t create the impression that creativity is on the downswing because it surely doesn’t look like. Otherwise, who would interpret the hard data and strategies into appealing words and visuals, right?
ReplyI don’t get it. If there was no creative, marketers would have nothing to go to market with but a few PowerPoint slides and some Word docs. Good luck.
ReplyWe sure do like to put the world into buckets in our world. Creativity and strategy are overlapping skills in the most talented marketers.
The best strategists are creative, blue ocean thinkers and the best creatives have a sound fix on strategy or (in either case) work well with those who have that.
We need both
ReplyHave your say