Ad Pays 2: How advertising can unlock UK growth potential

Andy Duncan, CEO of Camelot UK Lotteries Limited and Advertising Association President:

“When Deloitte’s Advertising Pays report launched in January 2013, for most, the economic game remained one of survival. What a difference twelve months makes. Confidence is returning. Growth is back on the agenda. So this sequel – Advertising Pays 2: How advertising can unlock UK growth potential – could not be better timed. It asks not how advertising underpins GDP, but where the opportunities to create growth lie and, critically, how to grab them.”

It finds that UK SMEs – the engine room of our economy – are significantly underweight in their use of advertising and marketing, and explains why that is stopping a sector full of talent and innovation from maximising its potential to create revenues, jobs and growth. What is the size of the prize? Consider this. If smaller businesses could raise their export performance to just the EU average, it would be worth over £40 billion to the UK economy. Great advertising and strong brands will make that sort of export success more likely. That is why I hope this report will inspire not only those running SMEs, but policy-makers and everyone in agencies, brands and media to reconsider their role in allowing advertising’s power to unlock growth in UK businesses.

The Advertising Association wants to see an environment in which businesses can maximise their returns on UK advertising investment. This report teaches us to apply that principle to every business, no matter what its size. If we do, the economic game really can change.

Advertising Pays 2: How advertising can unlock UK growth potential, argues that sustained economic recovery will depend on the health of our SMEs – in particular those medium-sized businesses most poised for growth.