The highly respected Chartered Institute of Marketing has published a white paper entitled: “Marketing’s decline: a wild exaggeration?”

The Paper, which includes 100 chief financial officers within its survey, found that while 74% of CFOs agree marketing has its place in an organisation the marketing department’s primary responsibility is marketing decisions and nothing else.
Both CFOs and CMOs believe that marketers rarely show how customer needs can be taken into account in strategy (79%). Worst still, marketers “are failing to engage both the analytical and creative side of their brain” while many feel their marketing lacks “novelty” and promotional strategies are routine.
Clearly, with the recession digging its nails deeper into the otherwise resilient skin of business, something has to be done to change both the traditional rules of how marketing operates and is perceived- and indeed encouraged to contribute to the bottom-line profits and growth.

New Marketing Rules (In more ways than one)

1. Invest more time and effort into listening.
That means conducting more research and responding 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 more.
That doesn’t mean have endless marketing meetings; 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 (providing their ideas are not irresponsible). 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 and start making your own strides to take you several leaps and bounds ahead of the competition.

3. Don’t cut marketing – re-engineer how you market.
If you stop marketing people may conclude that you are next in line to become a recession victim. Competitors will increase their presence – simply by you not investing in yours. Shake up your traditional marketing mix by becoming savvy to new ways of reaching niche markets – even extending to radical approaches such as guerrilla marketing. Spend your money wisely and allocate your budget shrewdly. Stop separating PR, marketing, sales promotions, the web and so on. Test new media in stages. Include your end-market through Web 2.0 initiatives such as blogs and marketing through social networking sites. Stop pushing people away. 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 sense of integrity.

4. Prove that you are not full of hype
Too many believe that marketers are simply over-paid, over-hyped and over caffeinated cappuccino drinking sales people and 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 – show – act
There are many sincere marketers who are concerned with ‘do’, ’show’, ‘act’ … rather than ‘promise’. If you are an agency dealing with a client, be brave, become pro-active rather than reduced to being passive artwork producers or cut and paste ‘monkeys’.

If you are a brand, 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 ambassadors. Talk to them as people – not a workforce.

Start acting and they (both external and internal customers) will appreciate that you – unlike your competitors are ‘doers’ – not ‘hype-merchants’.

6. Get people involved by rewarding their talents
Use this opportunity to train your best people to become even better. It’s more cost effective than a pay rise. Training shows you care about career development, and in the mid-to longer term you will have a marketing team which is better placed to turn creative campaigns into convincing returns.

7. Don’t fantasise about slashing prices
More than cutting costs alone, most businesses want to reduce risks – you can help. For example, the recession has turned too many retailers into obsessive paranoiacs craving the chance to slash prices with unrestrained glee. Barely a week passes without yet another Sale. We are turning into ‘20% off UK’. Whilst last moment Sales keep competitors on their feet, consistent Sales affecting your bottom line margin will in fact bring you to your knees and turn perceived premium brand services into discounted bland servants. Worst still, hasty price cuts today affect cost sensitivity tomorrow.

Your products and service are truly magnificent. People will pay for that standard if they believe that they deserve it. Give them greater reasons to want to buy. For example, lower emissions, easier payments, better design, greater after-care… Show that they deserve the best and needn’t regret settling for cheap second-rate bargain buckets fought over by wild savages rather than intelligent consumers.

8. Improve distribution
Get to market quicker and smarter. For example, publishers need to ensure that books are on front shelves not back-order. Incorporate new technologies to ensure that as soon as demand spurts, products can be in people’s hands. “He who distributes fastest wins!”

9. Surround yourself with wise people
This is a recession. 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. 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 people in the business – 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… the best project managers and so on. Surround yourself with people who have seen recessions come and go. A few grey hairs around a table will add tone to the fresh roots straight out of college.

10. Get back in the driving seat.
Don’t mope around in despair. Get your hands back on the wheel of your company’s destiny. Be honest with yourself, sincere with your teams. Care about your market and 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, get the media to offer deals that aren’t even on the standard ‘menu’. Demand that they deliver those deals on time and below budget. Steer people by inspiring them with the prospect of personal development gains rather threatening them with the fear of loss. Think of this time as the start of an entirely different kind of marketing with a completely distinct kind of highly ‘savvy’ customer.

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 the Chartered Institute of Marketing, a Hillier analysis of 1,000 companies from PIMS (Profit Impact of Market Strategy) database after the 1990-91 recession showed that companies increasing spending in a recession recover three times faster.

Be a Recession Pioneer by becoming the change you would want to see in others. When we eventually all come out of this slump on the other side (and we will) take pride in the knowledge that the steps you take today will give you the advantage you and your brilliant brand justly deserves tomorrow.

Jonathan Gabay
www.soultraderstruth.com
www.brandforensics.co.uk

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