Adweek’s Noreen O’Leary asked a number of agency people how they planned to market their clients’ products in this time of diminished credit and general economic woe.
Here are a couple of the best responses:
“This is not a normal recession. This is a tectonic, structural shift, a global realignment,” says Umair Haque, director of Havas Media Lab. “The post-war industrial era was the era of production. Now we’re seeing the birth of the real 21st-century economy and marketing has to adapt. We’ll see a world where consumption [will] slow — especially in developed countries where there will be a shift from consuming to saving — and production will slow.”
Ben Kline, chief strategy officer at Leo Burnett, says that for consumers it’s not just a matter of cutting back, it’s about their reassessing what’s important.
“We’re seeing a shift from a trade-up culture to a trade-off culture,” he explains. “‘What brands are going to be part of my life, which ones are indispensable or dispensable?’ Value alone is not a differentiator; there will be value or there won’t be a sale. Marketers will do well in understanding how to frame the trade off and reintroduce themselves.”
“There will be value or there won’t be a sale.” Truer words have rarely been spoken.
