The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) has decided to research live marketing spend within its quarterly Bellwether survey of marketing budgets, revealing the growing importance of the medium.

Currently, live marketing and events comes under the ‘All other’ category of the report, which represented 23% of overall marketing spend (worth £9.89 billion), according to the Bellwether report for the first quarter (Q1) of 2007. The Events Industry Alliance (EIA) believes this is mainly taken up by investment in live marketing.

The EIA and IPA have been in correspondence on this issue since the beginning of the year resulting in a first meeting between the two parties last week (ending 22 June 2007). At that meeting IPA said that Bellwether Q4 2007 would research the approximate size of all the individual components that make up marketing activity, as an extension of the survey’s annual breakdown question. The EIA has welcomed the IPA’s move to shed greater light on exactly where the £43 billion spent on marketing in the UK each year is being allocated.

“With IPA membership open to anyone primarily concerned with the provision of branding services to clients, we have been looking at how we can evolve the survey to show more of the budget,” said the IPA’s communications director Tessa Gooding. “The initial research we are undertaking as part of the 4Q [fourth quarter] roundup is to see how and if we can break up the ‘all other’ category. The first logical step to achieving this is to research all the individual components to ensure that we are extracting and monitoring the largest components. Once we have updated this data, we’ll be in a position to make a decision on what the survey will track in the future.”

The EIA’s group chief executive, Trevor Foley, was delighted with the decision. “Having worked to develop and promote the events industry over recent years, and seeing the increased popularity of live events marketing among brand owners keen to deliver a total brand experience, this is an important step forward for our sector,” he said. “The move by the IPA will not only give their members a more complete picture of what’s hot and what’s not, but also raise the profile of this powerful and hugely effective medium. It’s great news!”