Brands Last. Recessions Don’t

By Shelly Roberts, FireBrand

Being successful in good times is easy. Being successful in crisis is opportunity!

If you are an Investor, CEO, CMO, GM, Managing or Marketing Director you’re probably sick of hearing agencies scream “Spend! Now!" figuring they are like every down-revenue crew desperately trying to boost their own income. I’m not dumb enough to say that isn’t true. But it isn’t the only truth.

Your agencies are begging you to “Spend!” “Now!” because they are absolutely right. “Crisis central” is your best opportunity to make a company’s success spectacular!

Let’s start with some hard numbers. Not mine. McGraw Hill research’s.

U.S. companies that maintained or increased advertising budgets during the 1981-82 recession averaged Significantly Higher Sales growth, both during the recession and for the following three years, than those that eliminated or decreased advertising.

Impressive. It gets better.

By 1985, sales of companies that were Aggressive Recession Advertisers and Branders climbed 256% over those that didn't keep up.

Need more? Meldrum & Fewsmith research showed conclusively that “Advertising Aggressively during Recessions not only boosted sales, but also increased profits and overall market share.”

This is a foreign concept in a country that grew its retail success by just having a product and a shelf to put it on. In times like these, the bad news is that that isn’t enough any more.

But if you, unlike your competitors, pump up the volume and quality of your messages instead of hiding the money under the company mattress till times get good, you can set the foundation for being the category standard in recovery.

In hard times, people want to know who they can trust. Your branding tells them that it’s your company. Of course they want bargains, but they’ve learned quality, and they want to stay as close to it as they can afford to.

They want reassurance that they aren’t getting cheated or cheapened. That’s your branding’s job. If you stop reassuring them, they’ll forget you, or learn to trust someone who is using their branding to tell the right story.

Where’s the money going to come from? Where it always does. Do these three steps first to bankroll your branding:

1. Find the waste in your factory and cut it. Be brutal. You’ll be much more efficient later anyway. It’s a good excuse to refine your process.

2. Lose your loser product lines Let line expansions go. Go back to basics.

3. Concentrate on your core business which is where most of the profit is anyway.

And then

4. Let your market know that you’re committed to delivering quality. through your branding.

There is a famous US candy bar maker that chose a unique way to survive a downturn. Rather than cheapen ingredients and cut prices, they made the same quality bar smaller. They used their advertising to reinforce their brand value by telling customers what they were doing. They told people who loved their quality they wouldn’t offer an inferior product at a cheaper price. They were brilliantly honest with their market. They showed that the company wasn’t going to compromise. They stayed true to their brand, communicated the brand position loudly and often. They survived that recession, and Hershey is still the best loved chocolate bar in the US.

In coming columns I’ll help you end the Price vs Brand war, put a brand message into every communication, suggest things to ask for from media, suggest places you never thought to use to brand, tell you what you’ve been doing wrong, and generally discuss savvy ways to climb out of the crisis.

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Shelly Roberts is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of FireBrand, branding consultancy helping companies refine their marketing processes for maximum effect. She is a former Executive Creative Director for D’Arcy Advertising, Romania and ECD for Saatchi &Saatchi US.