Marketing Intelligence by Iain Johnston

When times are tough, most businesses scrutinise every item of expenditure. When times get really hard, this scrutiny becomes intense, with every line of the profit and loss account forced to justify itself in terms of payback, return on investment, and direct support for revenues.

We see this in our clients’ businesses, with pressures on budgets now continuous. In many cases our clients themselves don’t know from one month to the next whether their plans for the year will get clobbered from on high in the next round of budget scrutiny. Given our philosophy at Loewy has always been to look at the impact of our work in client’s markets, and to focus on the business results they are trying to achieve, we have suffered less than most in the current climate. Indeed in a number of cases we have been able to support our clients in their own internal debates around value for money and priorities.

But, when times stay really tough for months on end, successive rounds of cost savings mean that even the largest companies have to look at all expenditure, regardless of priority. You hear the words “return on investment” nearly every day. Hold that thought.

A couple of nights ago I was fortunate enough to be invited onto a discussion panel in the City, hosted by Bird & Bird, AMR International, and Trillium. The evening was entitled “How will marketing budgets be spent in the future?”, a subject dear to my heart. There were about 40 of the great and the good from the “media” industry, ie people who owned or ran agencies, publishers, radio station owners and so on. Encouraged by the rather conducive surroundings, and an entertaining initial exchange of views, I settled into the event quite well. After all, as those who know me will confirm, I always like a good audience, and this was a good audience. Interested, energetic, engaged, rewarding as a speaker. Great.

Denzil Rankin of AMR International played questionmaster really well, inspite of the ability of some of the panel <coughs nervously> to talk a lot, about anything, especially with an audience. We discussed the delights of when an upturn in marketing spend might be expected (not in the next twelve months), whether this recession would leave lasting changes on the marketing landscape (lots, far reaching, irreversible), and which channels were the most resilient (interactive, digital, direct, point of sale) and whether there were any more of those delightful chicken goujons left in Bird & Bird’s lovely catering stocks (alas, not).

We talked a lot about Return on Investment. Maybe it was the audience. Maybe it was the speakers. Maybe it was just coincidence. But every question seemed to come back to ROI as one of the key issues in media decision making and planning the right channels for communicating. All perfectly understandable, especially given the mood of the market, and this endless scrutiny I mentioned earlier.

Then came the open questions at the end, and….

BLAM!

A question that hit me right between the eyes. A question so simple, and perceptive, that it stopped the ROI bandwagon in its tracks. Gentleman on the front row raises his hand, and says, quite simply “We’ve talked a lot about ROI, but what about the importance of Brand in all this?”

I felt such a chump. I spend my life talking to people about the importance of their brand, the power of a strong brand, and indeed how a brand properly rooted in the essence of the product or service underlying it can deliver much greater resilience, market impact and share.

Yet we’d spent the whole evening discussing marketing in a recession and not mentioned brand.

Ok so I made up for it in the networking afterwards, with due apology to those recipients of my “strong brands provide the best ROI” and “brands are a pre-requisite for survival” rants over wine and nibbles.

Let this be a lesson, to me at any rate.

Whatever the pressures, whatever the perceived topic of the day. Whatever the need to save money. Keep focused on what you know is right. Deep down there, in your marketing gut, you know your brand is everything.

And order more chicken goujons for your next event.