Firms Reducing and Reallocating Marketing Dollars NEWTON, Mass. - PSMJ Resources, Inc., recently announced findings from its new report 2002 A/E benchmarks for the Marketing Professional, which shows that median marketing costs, as a percentage of net revenues for A/E firms, continued their slide from a recent peak of nearly 6 percent in 1997 to 4.1 percent in 2002. "Counter to last year's analysis however, firms report slightly higher marketing costs as a percentage of gross revenues," said Bill Fanning, Director of Research at PSMJ Resources, Inc. "This is due to overall marketing expenditures increasing at a greater rate than gross revenue, resulting in a small increase in these percentages." Median marketing spending for promotional activities dropped with respect to last year to levels in the 6 percent to 11 percent range, while marketing spending for presentations increased into the 8 percent to 18 percent range. This indicates that the design industry decided to allocate more of its available funds to marketing activities that focus on direct client contact rather than to general firm promotion and advertising.