Companies In A Recession

Recession by wmliu

Chief Marketing Officers across the country are faced with serious decisions regarding their budgets and what to do with them in 2009.

Basically, there are only three options:

1 - Don't change a thing - Ignore the media, their stock price and the rounds of layoffs and pretend like everything is fine.

2 - Pause - Cut just about everything and pull way back to ride it out.

3 - Plow Ahead - Realize that now is the time to keep going, spend money, capture market share.

Assuming that number one is completely out of the question, except for a couple of rare CMOs that are probably at the end of their 24 month job cycle and don't really care what happens next, that only leaves two choices.

The best way to choose between number 2 and number 3 is pretty easy. Think about it, what do you hope your competition does?

A McGraw-Hill Research study from 1980 to 1985 found that those businesses which chose to maintain or raise their level of advertising expenditures during the 1981 and 1982 recession had significantly higher sales after the economy recovered. Specifically, companies that advertised aggressively during the recession had sales 256% higher than those that did not continue to advertise.

So, what is your plan?