Ten Best Practices For Long-Term Growth In a Recession & Beyond
By Bill Duggan
ANA’s recent “Brand Building in Tough Times & Beyond” conference promised that all speakers would leave behind actionable ideas for immediate and longer-term brand growth. Below are highlights of those key takeways. Your ideas for driving either immediate and/or longer-term brand growth are welcome too!
1. There is a reasonable chance the recession is over. Therefore, if you are one of those marketers who plans to increase marketing activity three months before this recession ends, now is the time to act.
• Liz Ann Sonders, Senior Vice President, Chief Investment Strategist – Charles Schwab
2. Optimism sells. People need to laugh, or at least smile, to feel good about parting with their money in this economy.
• Cynthia Ashworth, Vice President, Customer Engagement – Dunkin’ Donuts
3. Focus on the 95% of growth that comes from big, established brands. Most new products generate only a small amount of sales yet receive an inordinate amount of attention.
• Patrick Edson, Vice President, Marketing Innovation – MillerCoors
4. Spending in a recession can generate sales and share.
• Steve Bratspies, Senior Vice President, Marketing – Wal-Mart Stores
5. Understand the difference between your customer and a shopper. Consumers are making purchase decisions well before they enter the store. Shoppers, on the other hand, are bombarded with in-store messages and are often distracted.
• Jason McDonnell, Vice President, Marketing – Frito Lay
6. Redeploy your assets. Focus on lifting the areas of most immediate impact. Evaluate the contributions of all your current business partners.
• Richard McDonald, SVP, Global Marketing – Fender Musical Instruments
7. Value is important but it’s not just about price. People want to be smart, but not feel cheap.
• Cynthia Ashworth, Vice President, Customer Engagement – Dunkin’ Donuts
8. Optimize the experience of your product when it’s in the hands of the consumer. That’s a key moment of truth.
• Patrick Edson, Vice President, Marketing Innovation – MillerCoors
9. Be true to who you are. Your brand “is what it is,” so don’t change in the short term. Look for partners and other alliances for growth.
• Steve Bratspies, Senior Vice President, Marketing – Wal-Mart Stores
10. Frugality will be with us for some time. It will be a longer-term generational mindset and advertising will need to reflect that.
• Liz Ann Sonders, Senior Vice President, Chief Investment Strategist – Charles Schwab
Remember -- your ideas for driving either immediate and/or longer-term brand growth are welcome too!
A few weeks ago I was coming out of the subway station at Grand Central and noticed that the turnstiles looked different than usual. On second glance, I saw that the turnstile bars were wrapped with ads for an unnamed airline. As far as I could tell, there weren’t other ads for this airline in the subway station. Granted, I didn’t go running around the subway station looking for more ads (who has time for that during her morning commute?), but it appeared that the advertising was limited to the turnstile bars. I may not even have remembered the campaign, except that later in the week as I walked through a different part of Grand Central, I saw ads for the same airline on the walls. Were these two campaigns related? Maybe, but I’m not sure.