Grayling has released its first results from Grayling PULSE, its new global quarterly survey of in-house communications professionals, with Asia-Pacific showing the strongest increase in communications investment with a 17% increase compared with 12 months ago.
PULSE aims to provide valuable data and insights on which companies around the world can act upon; benchmark their own organisations and better plan for their own communications activities. More importantly, PULSE insights are intended to provoke important debate and discussion around the key global challenges and opportunities facing the industry.
Key findings from Grayling’s first global PULSE survey are:
• Globally, over a fifth of those who responded said that investment in PR is increasing this quarter, against a backdrop of ongoing client budget pressures and continued global economic instability
• Visibility of communications activity at board level, and with it the perceived value of communications activity to commercial success, remains strong with increases of 47% and 55%, respectively
• Organisations remain cautious in budget and resource planning in many areas; project PR support sees a 20% increase in spend versus an 11% increase for retained support. In-house teams’ headcount shows growth with 25% reporting an increase this quarter
• The Consumer & Retail sector appears to be trying to invest its way out of recession with the largest proportion of responses reporting an increase in spend this quarter (28%), increase in-house team headcount (32%) and increase of visibility of communications at board level (52%)
• Unsurprisingly, spend on social media & digital is reporting the largest increase in investment with 44%; corporate communications and reputation management was 26%; 17% reported an increase in spend on CSR communications
Geographically, Asia-Pacific sees the largest increase in PR investment this quarter with 17% reporting an increase; Middle East also performs well with 9.2% reporting an increase and only 5% reporting a decrease.