I’m sure each and everyone of us is sick of the term “Credit Crunch”, or the phrase “economic downturn”, but it seems that that is all we hear nowadays in the news along with tales of redundancies and cutbacks.
Last month (Feb 09) the papers were full of the news about Honda cutting car production and jobs being threatened. Little was made of the news from Ford who are investing £70million into their Bridgend plant where unemployment has just reached over the 2,000 mark!
Anyway enough blathering and moaning about the mind set of the UK press – the point of this article is to stress why the last thing you should do in an “economic downturn” is to cut your marketing budget. But don’t take it from me – take if from the words of an expert, Simon Thompson. Group Managing Director and Chief Marketing Officer, Lastminute.com
It’s proven that those brands who communicate with their customers in a downturn accelerate much faster than those companies that did not invest, when the upturn comes. The short term return on investment might not look great – but it will return when the market recovers. Secondly, consumers still want to buy in a downturn, and those consumers are attracted if you put the right promise out there. Its easy to cut the marketing budget, but that cuts your opportunities to get the consumer to choose your brand. So in the long term you miss the opportunity of getting a greater share of awareness in the market
Simon Thompson. Lastminute.com
Business Scene Winter 2009
Of course if you work with Square One you can be sure of getting good value from the budget that you do have – even if it has been slashed!