Mktg - Marketing in Difficult Times

Crude oil prices have crossed the $143 mark even as I pen this piece. Latest inflation numbers indicate an 11.05% figure, nudging very close to the 13% point of recurrence for the next few months. The price of everything in the market, from onions to tomatoes to tea, is up.The consumer is just about feeling the pinch. The price of everything in life is higher than it was. What does a marketer do in such a time? Marketers in normal times are very intelligent beings. In tough times, they get rattled - by the consumer, by the intermediary trade at large, by the sales team in the marketplace, and more often than not, by the demands of the bottomline of marketing profitability and the intent. Many marketers seem to take the route of least resistance - the one that is more obvious than obvious. And the clarion-call in every marketing board room: Cut the advertising! In the bargain, brands suffer. Sales volumes may not take an immediate impact with such quick knee-jerk moves, but brand image and everything a brand is and meant to represent in the medium to long term gets shaken a bit more than necessary. Every commercial consumer society is a roller-coaster economy. Sometimes the going is good, sometimes is bad, if not terrible. Months and years when rising levels of inflation catch up on the halcyon days of prosperity. These are days when high costs and rising interest rates discourage buys. These are also times when consumers postpone purchases, spurring on recession. The marketer is, typically, sitting on a hot tin roof and needs to ensure that sales are not affected. What is the way out? Discount his product to the trade to ensure higher stocking and, therefore, better displays? Offer discounts to spur sales? Offer more of the product on offer to ensure that home-stocking goes up? Cut costs at the production end? Cut advertising and promotion costs at an expenditure level? Or cut out advertising altogether? The menu of options is complex and, I believe, marketers need to think long-term when faced by pressures such as these. My mantra is clear. Do not discount your product at all. Take the temporary hit in volume, but avoid for sure the long-term hit on your brand image. Your brand image has been cobbled together over years of hard work. Don’t fritter it way at the door-step of temporary recession. Recession is, essentially, a postponement of purchase, waiting for better times to dawn. Better times will dawn for sure as your live in a roller-coaster economy. Avoid taking the soft-option of discounting. The softest bullet to bite. Offer, instead, a bit more of your product to the consumer. Offer that 200gm more of tea on his 500gm buy. Give that bundled DVD offer with that television set. Make it look like a combo-offer. Avoid looking like an overt discount. Consumers like added value. Combo offers live longer in the consumer home than the memory of your short-term Rs 5 discount on that pack of tea you sold in a hurry. And advertise all this in a big manner of impact. Should a marketer cut on her advertising spends at all? Maybe a 20% cut? Don’t! Difficult times come and go. Difficult times are the ones in which your product needs to be seen on the television set for sure. Remember, there is pressure on your brand at the level of the trade-channels that handle you. You need to support the channel for sure. The crutch of advertising needs to remain. But leverage it differently. Your consumer needs positive strokes in an economy that is tanking. Your advertising creatives must be shaped sensitively to give out those positive strokes on your brand and its consumption. I do believe you need to have special sets of creatives that talk a different tone and tenor when the consumer’s chips are down in the market. Emotive advertising can help here a lot. Try it. Print is a great medium to use, just as is the television. Use it strategically. Remember, one of the important roles of advertising is its ability to act as a balm on the brand you tout. A balm that actually helps the consumer go through his period of possible dissonance in participating in the buying mode of life. One final thing to do. Reach out to the consumer 1:1. Give him more service. Give him more product. Give him emotive advertising that is time-relevant, rather than time-insensitive. When there is affected consumer demand, remember, there is an affected consumer psyche behind it. Take care of that affected consumer psyche with sensitivity, and you will ride out this trough as well. Advertising is a great ally to use. Use it intelligently.