There’s a disturbing side-effect that’s coming from the increased use of internet marketing – it can be done cheaper in China and India.
While advertising continues to bring us greater efficiencies and cheaper costs, it’s also driving our need for faster turnaround and rapid deployment. When you can test 100 ads online within a week, you need a solution that can keep up with that pace, without breaking the bank.
I’ve seen two stories recently that suggests that marketing could follow technical support and end-up outsourced to a country with cheaper labor costs.
First, the NYT reports on Publicis’ efforts to build a global digital advertising network that uses offshore labor.
?There?s a chance to invest right now in China, India, Russia and Brazil, which will pay off big over the next five years,? Mr. Kenny said. ?These economies are going to boom, and ads there are going to go directly to mobile and directly to the Internet.?
Beyond the growth potential, Publicis executives see these economies as important sources of low-cost labor for a Digitas subsidiary called Prodigious, a digital production unit that works with all agencies in the Publicis Groupe. Prodigious already uses workers in Costa Rica and Ukraine to produce copious footage for companies like G.M.
The other story relates to Lenovo’s decision to move all of its worldwide marketing to Bangalore, India.
The new center offers these services to all of Lenovo’s operations outside China, said Rahul Agarwal, vice president for marketing at Lenovo India…Lenovo decided to establish this operation in India because of the availability of high quality marketing talent in India, Agarwal said. Expertise in consumer marketing is going to be particularly important as Lenovo gets into the consumer market, he added.
Of course, many companies have found that the costs associated with offshoring are often not worth the headaches that come from language barriers and lower quality work. That said, if you’re involved in marketing, you’d better not take for granted that cushy gig you have. Just like those in the technical support and web development world, you could soon learn that your work can be done for a fraction of the price by someone else.
