Annual Report 2023

The landscape of marketing is evolving, providing a fertile ground for innovation and creativity. We have more power than ever to redefine how businesses connect with their target audience and achieve unprecedented success. In such a dynamic environment, the potential for marketers to shape the fortunes of their businesses is more promising than ever before. We know that 2024 will surprise us and present new and unforeseen challenges, but we must always remember that marketers are not just witnesses to change but active architects, able to steer their organizations toward new horizons of achievement and growth. My prediction is that three areas will be critical on this journey...

After the pandemic, we thought we’d seen it all–but we clearly hadn’t. Run-away inflation, geopolitical tensions, wars in Europe and the Middle East. The world in 2023 seemed to be jumping from one crisis to the next. The shock waves are reverberating across society. Not surprisingly, people’s attitudes are polarizing, and countries are increasingly tempted to decouple from a global trade system that has been a key driver of economic growth and poverty reduction in the last few decades. Yet, if anything, the challenges we’re facing require more, not less, collaboration. Whether it’s fighting climate change, promoting diversity and inclusion or, to be more industry specific, creating a framework for a responsible use of GenAI in marketing and building a future-proofcross-media measurement system.

Marketing effectiveness is the key priority for most, if not all, of WFA’s various peer groups, yet few clients score themselves above 6 out of 10 for effectiveness, according to WFA research. In 2023 WFA focused on exchanging knowledge among members via a mixture of research and dedicated events.The year saw the development of WFA’s latest peer-to-peer meeting concept, Forum Connect. Members from WFA’s marketing, media, sourcing and insights communities met to exchange knowledge and improve collaboration between teams with the single goal of boosting marketing effectiveness. To date, these meetings have been held in Amsterdam, Singapore and New York, bringing together a community of 500 global industry experts.

In 2023, WFA saw the publication of the latest update to its Global Media Charter. Building on progress made in areas of brand safety and measurement made possible by the previous version, the goal is to communicate the common concerns felt by global advertisers with one voice and to drive change in priority areas. The Global Media Charter 3.0 takes a wider lens on the industry than its predecessor, giving media leaders the strategic platform to ensure that their corporate responsibility agenda is represented in the media decisions made, platforms invested in and partners selected. It encourages media leaders to reflect on their role, business decisions and their upstream and downstream impacts.

When considering environmental sustainability and the marketing function, there is still a gap between intent and action. At WFA Global Marketer Week 2022, 74% of delegates agreed that marketing today is not compatible with a sustainable future. In 2023, WFA partnered up with Kantar to better understand the progress of the marketing function on the sustainability journey, with a focus on the opportunities and challenges of sustainable transformation. The results of the research, based on both responses from more than 1,000 marketers and in-depth interviews with leading brand owners – showed that the largest share of marketers are still only taking their first steps in their sustainability journey.

In 2023 WFA saw the second iteration of the Global DEI Census, an investigation into the state of diversity, equity and belonging in the global marketing and advertising industry. The results, based on nearly 13,000 responses from 91 countries, provided an updated insight into people’s lived experiences from across our industry globally. The Census asked marketing professionals about their sense of belonging at their jobs, their experience of negative behaviours and discrimination to take a health check on the state of the industry and track changes since Wave 1 in 2021. The results showed that there has not been much improvement in the past two years, despite a majority of people recognising industry efforts to improve the lived experiences of key groups.