Into strange waters - yet another benefit of rethinking marketing.
via: http://www.flickr.com/photos/st0neflickr/
Marketing has always been about demand creation, this is why it’s the first thing to be cut in recessionary times. Regardless of all classic wisdom around “marketing your way out of a recession” or “using recessions to grow share,” the cold, hard truth that most companies recognise is that you can’t make people spend money they don’t have and when folks are worried about their jobs and their homes they aren’t going to be paying as much attention to your messages as you’d like. I think the better answer is: use a recession to put yourself into a better position than your competition so that you can outrun them when business comes back. Rather than fighting hard for scarce dollars now, position yourself at the front of the line to get more than your fair share when things improve.
Like many things in marketing, this makes common sense but isn’t terribly good news for most marketing companies or departments because placing yourself in a great position is largely about reducing expenses not creating demand. Historically reducing expenses has been an operations function, but now as the worlds of operations and marketing are converging we’re discovering that marketing thinking can actually be helpful in trimming the bottom line.
For us the key has been expanding our view of marketing past the creation of brand new campaigns or assets into optimizing existing client assets to perform as marketing vehicles. This goes beyond simply redeploying marketing dollars into more efficient vehicles. In a couple of recent cases we’ve been able to reduce fixed operational costs by rethinking existing programs from a marketing perspective.
Having lived through two previous recessions in the agency world, I can say that this has dramatically changed how we’re able to talk to (and potentially help) our clients. Rather than sitting on the side or proposing cheaper campaigns, we’re able to engage in more strategic conversations and be helpful in ways that don’t simply involve going away. Obviously it’s a much better place to be for us but it’s also better for our clients too. At a time when they most need advice, we’re able to continue to be a good partner.
Tags: cost reduction