Bypass the Bandwagon

It seems every economist is jumping on the band wagon to hail the recession of 2008. Okay. Perhaps they're right. Having lived through a few of these economic downturns while in the field of advertising, I have a different perspective than I used to.

The media coverage of an economic downturn tends to validate the economic downturn. People hear there is a recession, and, believe it or not, they begin acting like there's a recession. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If my memory of my econ classes serves me, a recession is defined by at least three consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. Well, we still have a ways to go to see if we're really in a recession or not. But in the meantime, people are beginning to think we are — including your competitors. And therein lies the opportunity.

Today, starting right now, you have the opportunity to do something which requires much less effort to do in an economic downturn than it does when the economy is booming. You can take market share away from your competitors.

I know. It's scary to think about spending marketing dollars in a recession. But there's that old adage of "Zig when everyone else Zags" that you need to think about here. If your competitors follow conventional wisdom (and history shows they will), they're going to scale back their marketing efforts. They'll trim their sales staff, cut back on customer service people, end discretionary promotional programs, scale back R & D, find less expensive inputs which can affect product quality — exactly what they shouldn't do.

This is the time to think about how you can out-think your competitors. You don't have to spend more than you did in the previous year — just out-think them. If you spend the same amount this year as last, and they cut their spending 20%, you automatically out-spend them. Get serious about planning. Get focused on putting the right resource allocation in place and do fewer things, better.

If this is the beginning of a recession, then in about nine months the economy will improve. You have two choices, 1) wait it out, like your competitors will, and find yourself in the same boat with them at the end of the recession or 2) figure out how to take away their customers while they're waiting for the economy to get better.

Perhaps you think it risky to go against the conventional wisdom. To that I can only quote Seth Godin from his book, Purple Cow, "Safe is Risky."