Inside Marketing Week's Career & Salary Survey 2027

0:10Molly Innes: Hello and welcome back to the Marketing Week podcast. I'm Molly Innes, Working Careers Editor and Podcast Lead, and today we're highlighting something that directly shapes your working life, what you earn, how you are valued and where your industry is heading. Right now, Marketing Week's 2027 Career and Salary Survey is open to respondents. For 29 years, this benchmark has held a premier to the industry. We show you what you're being paid in comparison to peers, but it goes much deeper than that. Pay gaps, the impact of burnout, imposter syndrome, mental well-being, team restructures, hiring intention, working parents.

0:45Molly Innes: The list goes on and we use it all year round to underpin our agenda setting journalism. So today I'm joined by the brains behind the operation, Deputy Editor Charlotte Rogers, to dissect the key takeaways from the 2026 survey of more than 2 ,000 marketers ahead of next year's edition. Thank you for joining us, Charlotte. You were too kind, Molly. Lovely to be here. I think the best place to start, Charlotte, would be with the work around burnout and mental health. We had some really alarming stats from the 2026 survey. So the headline stat was around wellbeing, which said nearly two thirds of marketers felt overwhelmed and over half are emotionally exhausted and also 42.5 % feel unable to speak openly with their managers.

1:27Molly Innes: What does this show us, I guess, about psychological safety in the workplace today or lack of really?

1:33Charlotte Rogers: I think it tells us a lot that people are essentially walking a tightrope between trying to preserve their mental health on one hand and trying to protect their careers. and I think in the free text from the survey from this year we found respondents talking about a fear that speaking up could risk their job security, could jeopardise their position but they said they were concerned they might look like they can't cope or they're weak or they're not in control some marketers are scared of discussing their experience because they think it could hinder their progression and one respondent actually disclosed that they've been pulled up by their manager for not being on their A game days after their father's funeral and others pointed out that there's always someone waiting to take over and actually that you should feel grateful for having a job at all.

2:12Charlotte Rogers: And actually some respondents also feel silenced by this constant need to demonstrate marketing's worth. So one marketer actually reported feeling like they can't complain because they're under pressure to maintain a good perception of marketing within the business and prove its value.

2:27Molly Innes: And I think the point you make there around proving marketing's worth, I know it's a topic we come back to time and time again, but these sort of headline stats, I'm sure they're applicable to all industries, all sort of functions but this does feel like there's that extra layer within marketing which

2:43Charlotte Rogers: is sort of amplifying it for people absolutely and i think um if we think about how ineffective and devalued people feel i think it's that sense of the perma crisis that they're going through so the battle of like it's more with less it's the economic shocks it's the low consumer confidence but actually it's that psychological pressure of always feeling like your team or your budget is next to be cut and actually this idea of justifying marketing's insistence i think it's playing into some other stats that we had around the really really high level of imposter syndrome so 85 % of marketers um who responded to last year's survey said that they experienced imposter syndrome and for half these feelings have intensified over the past 12 months so i think businesses talk a good game about value and marketing but as soon as time's tough this goes out the window and i think

3:30Molly Innes: times have been really tough yeah it paints a pretty damning picture of the industry today really doesn't it and I also wanted to talk about um career progression which is a big part of the career and salary survey so this year we found seven out of ten marketers experienced no career progression and movement and over half feel entirely stuck where they currently work and this this just isn't good news for the marketers in those positions but also the brands they're working for in terms of how they can get you know business growth absolutely not I think it feeds

4:04Charlotte Rogers: into this sense that marketers feel of being undervalued and exhausted you know you're working really hard and you're getting absolutely nowhere and I think it also shows that within many organizations career progression is just not a priority um just like succession planning is not a priority and that is a major risk and so this year and thank you Molly because this is your suggestion we're actually digging further into what we actually mean by progression like how marketers defining that and whether thinking about it differently could actually ease some

4:30Molly Innes: of the unhappiness definitely I think it's really important and like you say like everyone's got such a different perception of what actually career progression is and it makes it so difficult for businesses to have that framework for people as well there's just so much that goes and it's just never a priority is it really like you know what people are going to move on to next if they feel like they're going to leave the business are they going to bother to put the time in and sort of leading from that sort of part of the issue but sort of a sort of separate body of work that you've done a lot of work on in the last few years especially so thought of the impact on working parents the stat we have in the career and salary survey was um highlighting the gap between working mothers and fathers so 44.6 percent of working marketing mothers say parenthood harmed their career progression which is compared to just 7.6 % of fathers did that disparity surprise you like what do you think that highlights about the flexibility people getting at work and like the overall picture like that I think that's crazy it did not surprise me um because I think

5:35Charlotte Rogers: it proved to me something I already felt and I'd already heard people saying is that inequality is baked into the system like from the start even before mothers go on maternity leave and actually while things are changing and campaigns are there to extend statutory potentially to hopefully six weeks we know the career impact of parenthood is felt more severely by women it's just part of the whole structure of the working world and I think there's a specific risk for marketing because obviously our data suggests that the industry is majority female and if you have women leaving the profession because they're hitting roadblocks in their progression and they feel like being a parent is incompatible with ambition this is a real problem and then you have younger marketers who are looking, you know, 10 years in the future and saying, I don't really like what I'm seeing here.

6:18Charlotte Rogers: I'm seeing what's happening to my senior colleagues. And then they're considering, is this a career for me? And then not having senior female leaders impacts, you know, who are the decision makers at the top and actually plays into that widening gender pay gap. So this is a real issue.

6:32Molly Innes: Yeah, definitely. And it'll be really interesting to see, you know, as we're tracking that year and year and whether that is improving or not. I'd pass on that. It probably doesn't, to be honest. um and I guess leading directly from that as you've mentioned there around the sort of you know how overwhelmingly female marketing is 72 percent of our sample last year were women but you know we've been tracking the gender pay gap for years now and it's widened to 21.7 percent like that's again I feel like I'm sat here being like that is crazy it's not surprising but it's like how how can it possibly be widening today like this is quite a naive question from me but

7:16Charlotte Rogers: no not at all I think it kind of is shocking actually when you see those numbers and you think this is at a five-year high and I'm like well why and I think that truly tackling the gender pay gap has slipped off the corporate agenda for like so many firms because it doesn't feel immediately business critical although it absolutely is I think it's playing into this sort of flexibility ceiling that I see working mums hit um you know you get to a certain level and then you're basically told that at that level of seniority you can't have the flexibility you need so you exit and then you layer on top of that um menopause and the impact that has on you know the working lives of women you know for many people it's barely more than a line in a policy within their organization if even that and so from the conversations I'm having it feels like marketing has no problem attracting women but has a real issue retaining them and that's playing out

8:07Molly Innes: in the pay gap yeah definitely and you hear don't you of like you know women just like you say exiting the industry or maybe even when you know senior women leave full-time roles and they go fractional or they go freelance and you know the reasons that actually sit behind that choice like for some people obviously that's the best thing for them it's what they want to do they want that extra flexibility but the fact that they need to want the extra flexibility that they're not getting in their jobs already should be really worrying to companies absolutely and the amount

8:39Charlotte Rogers: of people i've spoken to have said i didn't actually necessarily want to go freelance or fractional i just kind of circumstances forced me to and so you know it might be great for some people and they might actually find it's exactly what they wanted but in many cases people are you know there is an impact there on earnings and also on um on things like the pension um equality gaps so yeah there's a lot a lot in there that's happening and it's yeah it's quite shocking

9:02Molly Innes: so sticking with the theme of pay gaps we're also seeing an ethnicity pay gap of 13.7 percent and a working class pay gap of 18.6 percent given how you know white and middle class basically the industry is and the way it skews why is it so important that we continue to to push on this topic because I feel like a lot in the the mainstream agenda that you do see less talk about pay gaps now than we did maybe in like 2020 or around that time yeah 100 % I think I've heard

9:34Charlotte Rogers: anecdotal there's been this pushback on the so-called DE &I agenda which is this like seen as being part of but it is a real crucial point because and I will be fascinated to see if we see any improvement going into 2027 but like as you say you know the marketing industry skews heavily white middle class young and degree educated and not only does this mean profession isn't as inclusive or progressive as it claims but actually marketing teams do not reflect the wider population which is obviously a major issue in terms of like trying to create products and messages that actually resonate with people so i think that you know that's a commercial issue that brands should

10:06Molly Innes: be thinking about i mean i've mentioned this on the podcast before but you know we're both from west yorkshire which is a bit random but um i think we're from fairly similar backgrounds as well and like you know you go in a supermarket and it's just like oh we'll have the really broad Yorkshire boys telling you there's a price to promotion on because because they love cheap stuff and it's like really I mean yes it's right but like right yes they do yeah no totally it's

10:36Charlotte Rogers: it's such a it's such an interesting and I always think well how many people from those backgrounds are in that that room making those decisions and skin and saying hang on a minute how many times have we used that accent for that messaging or like how often have we are we actually thinking about how these people really live their lives as opposed to like a caricature so yeah it's it's a massive commercial risk for businesses and I think um it's a blind spot at the moment yeah definitely and obviously it goes like the same with in that like you know correlate in the way that people

11:06Molly Innes: think they are but you can tell when they think it does with with this kind of with this kind of work as well and it's an agency problem as well it's the ad agencies putting the work out not just the brands but I think across the board it needs to improve obviously shall we look ahead so 2027 career salary survey as I mentioned 29th outing um which is a long time like it's a really long time we've been doing this and we're sort of you know setting the agenda again going through you know we've been working out the focuses for the upcoming year and how you know important it is to to have this body of work and which underpins so much of what we do throughout the rest of the year what are you looking to focus on in 2027 i know we've touched a little bit here but what are the sort of main areas we're drilling in on so definitely digging deep again on the mental

11:58Charlotte Rogers: health agenda with more questions there around like the impact of say imposter syndrome and how that makes you feel also looking

12:11Charlotte Rogers: in terms of recruitment and whether that's holding back progression and we're also exploring the impact of AI on skills and relationships with colleagues the pace of restructures as usual and also again the state of pay gaps in 2027 yeah I mean there's so much like there's just so much

12:27Molly Innes: going on there's so many things and like you know it is a long survey as surveys go but there is something for everyone in it it's this sort of feeling I always have and I don't know it's quite powerful to be able to take part in that and know you know it does really directly feed and like sort of the impact it then has on in terms of what we're reporting and how people are interacting with it and sort of you know trying to change really without sounding really grandiose about it.

12:56Charlotte Rogers: Normally I agree I think it's the most meaningful thing we do all year and I think it's because we genuinely care as well we really want to know what's going on in all these things and often we're the only people asking this question so um we have to keep doing it it's uh

13:09Molly Innes: it's a moral imperative yeah actually we're just really noisy and again i know we touched on this when we spoke about pay gaps just before but do you think we will see any improvements on any of

13:19Charlotte Rogers: these areas this year i'd really love to say so but i think with a lot of these issues they're systemic and it will take time and energy to improve and I think it's a long journey particularly when you think about organizations following marketing to begin with and then choosing to really focus on the pay gaps and eliminating ages and these are huge issues and it's whether organizations have the will to do it and you know really prioritize it I think it is a conscious choice so I would hope so but I'm I'm not sure yeah and I wanted to end on without sounding like

13:53Molly Innes: i'm trying to do an ad because i'm very much not a marketer despite writing about marketing but um in terms of i guess again hopefully we've got this across here but the imperative for someone doing the survey can you tell us a bit more and again i know we've touched on this but where that data goes um and how how we'll use it throughout the year yeah absolutely so the data is used to

14:15Charlotte Rogers: inform news analysis features podcasts webinar content reports it will roll out throughout next year I think what's really important to get across is we really care about getting this content right and shining a light on issues that matter to marketers and we're not afraid to call for change we we do that all the time and I think it's also a showing our own wavering support for marketing industry so for us this is a real state of the nation kind of look at what's going on with marketing and that's why it's so important and that people trust us and they feel like they can they can give us share their experiences so it's probably the most important thing we do all year

14:50Molly Innes: well it's all linked in the show notes um so you can find it there or you can visit marketingme.com to complete the 2027 career and salary survey is there a voucher situation as

15:01Charlotte Rogers: well i should have checked this before there is there is there is so taking part you can tick to be entered for 250 pound amazon vouchers so don't say we're not generous thanks absolutely

15:13Molly Innes: amazing amazing well thank you so much charlotte for coming on to the podcast and talking about and promise I'll reserve eight.

15:19Charlotte Rogers: Thanks, Molly. Appreciate it.