ALMOST half of all marketing departments could be staffed by outsourced contractors by the year 2020 as the marketing sector follows a trail first blazed by nurses and IT professionals.

Marketing recruitment specialist Christine Khor said that the increasingly lean nature of companies was moving them to take on contractors for specific projects.

Ms Khor, a director of Carrera Partners, one of Australia’s largest marketing recruitment agencies, said that while marketing would remain an in-house function at the most senior executive levels, the middle management of marketing would be staffed by transient staff on contracts.

"It was a change we started to see about five or six years ago," Ms Khor said.

"If you think about it, in IT and in nursing, half of all people are contractors."

She said companies had initially baulked at the idea of outsourcing large tracts of their marketing function, fearing that they would be surrendering control over their intellectual property. "They had a feeling that marketing people needed to embed themselves in their culture," she said. "But now there is more of a desire to have this on-demand workforce."

Ms Khor said that there was an increasing trend of contractor marketers jumping in and out of a company to match the cycle of the business’s marketing needs.

"They may go back into and out of a company several times over a given period," she said.

"The reality is … organisations are hiring middle management on a contract basis.

"These are people earning between $80,000 and $120,000 — it’s not junior or senior people."

She was seeing the trend across the marketing spectrum, from makers of fast-moving consumer goods to automotive and manufacturing. Many companies were now shifting to a contract marketer strategy to better align their staffing needs with the natural marketing cycle of a business.

"What they are coming in to do is project work and the launch of new campaigns, and they are doing it quite often at blue chip organisations."

While she said the decision to outsource many marketing roles was driven in part by the need for companies to reduce their ongoing overheads, marketers themselves were pushing for contract work as it allowed them to more rapidly broaden their experience. At the same time, the transient nature of their employment meant they did not get to see projects through.

Ms Khor said that many companies were reluctant to broadcast the fact that they were using out-of-house marketing talent.

One of those to acknowledge the importance of contract marketing staff to its model is Swedish company SCA, marketer of the Sorbent, Libra and Handee brands.

"SCA is like many organisations in that they do not view contractors any differently," Ms Khor said.

"The way the workforce is evolving, many companies need to work in this way."

Mark Crowe, CEO of the Australian Marketing Institute, warned that companies should be careful not to erode their stored marketing knowledge through the use of contractors.

But he said that where companies were becoming more involved in digital marketing the use of contractors was a growing trend.

"Where it is coming into vogue is the move of spending into the digital and online environment," Mr Crowe said.