Lessons From the Recession:

The New Marketing Rules

1. Listen Conduct more research and respond faster to your findings. When

the market moves, you are ready to accommodate.

Speak to your customers, show empathy and be ready to adapt by

proving your products or services are supportive. Customers will

still spend – but in different ways.

Retain existing customers by offering long-term value. Increase

your range and reach of value-added products. Test new markets

with trial offers rather than cheap instant discounts.

2. Think deeper. See Further

…That doesn’t mean having endless

marketing meetings drinking latte; it’s

about becoming more adaptable.

Don’t be myopic.

Plan in terms of months and weeks,

not quarters and years. The days of

dusty ‘best practice’ are all but finished.

Use your initiative and encourage

others to use theirs.

Don’t fall into the trap of being another fad brand by copying your

competitors. Customers are trading down, sideways and, believe

it or not, some even up!

Show differentiation by exploring solutions throughout the value

chain. Rip up the old guidelines. Making your own strides to take

several leaps and bounds ahead of the competition.

3. Stop cutting yourself out of the picture

If you stop marketing, people may conclude that you are next

recession victim. Competitors will increase their presence – simply

by you not investing in yours.

Shake up your traditional marketing mix. Test channels in stages.

Embrace your market through Web 2.0 initiatives such as video

blogs and Tweets.

Invest firstly in understanding your message and its meaning and

then only the appropriate media to deliver it.

The ‘us’ and ‘them’ culture is dead.

Be inclusive. Make the most important people in your chain –

customers and clients - feel valued by being part of a bigger brand

experience. Like you, they want to be heard and acknowledged.

Everything is possible – providing it doesn’t compromise your

brand’s integrity.

4. Show that you are not full of hype Too many believe that marketers are simply over-paid, over-hyped

and over caffeinated manipulators.

That is so ‘yester-year’.

This is the age of reasoning and responsibility. Make your

innovative advertising messages more direct and intelligent.

Produce creative work that draws a smile of satisfaction in

people’s mind. Customers have neither the patience nor

inclination to put up with self-indulgent messages full of great puff

and little substance.

If you have a strong product or service – don’t rely on ‘fluff’ to sell

the ‘sizzle’. Don’t treat people as mass herds; make the feel like

shepherds of their own destiny.

5. Do – prove - act

Careers progression relying on

membership of exclusive clubs

went out with the fall of Reginald

Perrin.

‘Deliver and Demonstrate’ rather

than ‘promise and pontificate’.

Think stature - not status.

Stay informed with industry developments but don’t kid yourself

that paper qualifications alone build solid shelters.

If you are an agency, be brave, become a pro-active lion, rather

than a cut and paste ‘monkey’.

Revisit briefs. Do they need more pep… a different direction? Are

you delivering discernable value?

Work with sales teams – not against them. Get more people

involved with your ideas, but assassinate with full vim and vigour

committees that mercilessly kill creativity.

Make your employees brand emissaries who share in your brand’s

experience.

6. Rather than insulate self-interests.

Selflessly reward talent Encourage individulas to become the next masters of their trade.

Use this opportunity of broad global change to do more than just pay

people with money. Mentor your closest people to become worldclass

leaders in their own rights

Learning and development proves you care. When the recession is

finally finished people will remember what you did to them as well as for

them.

In the mid-to longer term you will have a marketing team better placed

to turn creative campaigns into convincing returns.

7. Aspire to being more than a bargain -

basement brand: add value The recession turned too many retailers

into paranoiacs slashing prices with

unrestrained glee.

Whilst products and services still need to

be affordable, now, beyond cutting costs

alone, most businesses want to reduce

risks. Help them.

Whilst last moment sales keep

competitors on their feet, consistent cost cutting affecting your

bottom-line turns perceived premium brand services into

discounted bland servants. Worst still, hasty price cuts today

affect cost sensitivity tomorrow.

Your brand is truly magnificent. People deserve to enjoy it. Give

them greater reasons to want to buy. For example, lower

emissions, improved after-care, better design…

Show that they needn’t scrap for second-rate bargains fought over

by wild savages, rather select your brand as chosen by intelligent

consumers.

8. Pull it out of the hat faster

Get to market quicker and smarter by being keener and nimbler

than your competitors.

Incorporate new technologies such as Tablets, to shorten

purchase cylcle.

Use media such a video to demonstrate

your products and services, supported by

instant online payment systems which

ensure that as soon as demand spurts,

products can be in people’s hands.

“He who distributes fastest wins!”

9. Surround yourself with experienced

sages

People need work and great people want to work with you. You

can now afford to work with them. Don’t compromise by settling

for second best or calling in favours. Don’t lose your best talent

through process-mapping your credibility away. Be kind. Show

support. However, get rid of the rotting dead meat. You honestly

cannot afford to keep on clutching to driftwood in a sea of

uncertainty.

Recruit the very best. Can’t afford long-term commitment? Get

freelancers who have to work for their Marks and Spencer TV

dinner.

Speak to the best creative agencies… best project managers and

so on. Surround yourself with people who have seen economiies

boom and bust. A few grey hairs around a table add tone to the

fresh roots straight out of college.

10. Get back in the driving seat Don’t become pre-occupied in pipe dreams. Get your hands back

on the wheel of your destiny. Be honest. Think about how your

efforts can actually improve people’s lives.

Implement high standards of integrity and ethics in all you do and

say. You are no longer selling just a product or service – you are

pioneering a cause for people to follow and believe in.

Drive hard and with determination. For example, secure media

that aren’t even on the standard ‘menu’. Steer people by inspiring

them with the prospect of personal development gains rather

threatening them with the fear of loss.

According to a McKinsey study of

the 1990/91 recession, the

companies which increased their

spend during a recession were

the only ones whose profits rose

substantially when the economy

recovered. According to a Hillier

analysis of 1,000 companies from PIMS (Profit Impact of Market

Strategy) companies increasing spending in a recession recover

three times faster than prior to a recession.