I originally wrote the following column for the American Marketing Association in 1984. At the conclusion of the first Bush administration, I dusted if off and republished it in light of the retreats being made by so many in the face of what would become the George Herbert Walker Bush legacy. I had no idea at the time that another Bush legacy would require its reprise, but here I am resubmitting the text, virtually unaltered, 24 years after it first appeared.
I'll give you a column you can clip and submit to management in the hopes of saving your marketing and advertising budget, if you'll give me one I can send to clients whose backs are against a wall of short-sightedness and American marketing myopia.
The fact is, despite the lessons of the '70s and early '80s, ad dollars are still among the first to be cut in the face of what I have come to call "media recessions."
First, we need to counter the gloom-and-doom scenarios by questioning the seriousness of a recession at all. It's as though Dan Rather (substitute your favorite Fox commentator, newspaper pundit or television anchor) and his peers keep "tickle" files to remind them every few years that it's time for negative pronouncements on the economy.
Growth isn't growth during these times, it's "sluggish growth." Declines aren't merely downturns, they're "drastic reversals," "sharp reductions," and "staggering losses."
When an index is up, it's always footnoted with language that makes it seem like a singular exception: "Durable goods would have been off had it not been for a back-log in airframe manufacture."
The fact is our country is so vast and its economy so complex that you can find an opportunity for every crisis, an up-turn for every correction. Yet we allow the media naysayers to blitz us into believing that the entire economic engine (as though it were one huge locomotive and not a million different mechanisms all pulling and pushing at different rates) is shutting down.
We lower our inventories, cut our workforce, offer our customers less, charge them more, and deliver more slowly - and then wonder what caused the "recession."
Since this column is written about two months prior to publication, it's safe to presume that, by the time it appears, the breadline bandwagon the media has been sowing all fall will have sprouted into a lockstep parade by now. We most likely can't talk our way out of it as easily as we talked our way in.
Think about the textbook examples provided by the recessions of the '70s and '80s. The firms that advertised during those downturns not only retained or grew market share and brand awareness during the recessionary period, but also lurched forward in those critical areas during recovery.
As marketing professionals, you most likely have a bookshelf full of defenses, starting with Ebbinghaus Curve (when a message is introduced, the average person remembers only one half after the first day) and professing through the landmark American Business Press studies of 1974 and 1975.
What you may not lack in data, however, you may lack in strategies. How do you handle a million-dollar cut in budget and still accomplish your mission, whether that be market-share growth, brand awareness, sales leads, or a mixture of all?
While there is no room for an in-depth discussion of approaches, there is space to list a few of the strategic directions which have been useful for our clients when faced with recessionary cuts in budget.
•Redefine your niche. You already know you can't sell everyone. Narrow your targets even more, and concentrate your fewer dollars there. To your most important segments, you won't look as if you've retreated from the marketplace.
•Rethink your tools. Recessions are hardly good times for "image" advertising. Offer benefits and rewards for choosing your company. Just keeping the name out there won't be as effective as providing alternatives in tight times.
•Appeal to the recessionary climate. Develop your message around solving problems a tighter economy has caused your customer. This will take a flexible and risk-taking management that's willing to rethink pricing and delivery, distribution and terms.
•Emphasize sales and underscore training. With travel budgets off and support tools fewer, more and more of your success depends on the men and women selling your product. They'll have fewer shots at success during a downturn. Make them privy to the company's strategy for getting more business and improving profitability. If they're still calling on old friends who can't or won't buy, they need some retraining and focused motivation.
Those are a few of the first thoughts that come to mind in making due with less. The first and best approach, of course, is to remind management that the best investment during dour times is in advertising and marketing efforts.
With more money and leaner thinking, you might just find these the most rewarding times of all.
Ron Jackson is the CEO and president of The Idea Farm, an international advertising, marketing and public relations group based in Danville. You can reach him at ron@theideafarm.net.