Despite the threat of recession, marketers are not powerless to drive growth, as a new video series from the renowned effectiveness expert explains.
Brands today face the combined threats of high inflation, increasing advertising costs and limited business investment – but marketers still have weapons in their armoury to fight back.
In a new series of short videos in partnership with Thinkbox, adam&eveDDB’s group head of effectiveness Les Binet shares five key tips on how to adapt your marketing strategy and optimise returns from your advertising investment.
Each film in the series, featured below, explores one of these five factors, which marketers should all be thinking about today.
1. Growth prospects
The world has been turned upside down in recent years. Pandemic, war, energy crises, labour markets in chaos, rising intertest rates and the biggest rise in inflation for decades. It’s a cocktail of economic instability and uncertainty. In the first film in his series, Binet underlines the importance of understanding the growth prospects for your company and your brand over the next few months and years.
He addresses crucial topics, such as why advertising is an investment, not a cost; the five factors that determine whether short- and long-term investments should be dialled up or down; how market growth affects marketing investment; and how recessions affect consumer spending and revenues.
2. Profit margins
Costs are rising, inflation is high and margins are under pressure. But there are things you can do. Here, Binet explains how to adjust your marketing strategy in order to restore and maintain margins. He discusses how profit margins affect marketing ROI and investment, as well as why brands should rely on brand advertising – particularly in audio-visual media – to bolster their pricing rather than resorting to promotions to drive sales volume.
3. Advertising costs
Marketers need to think about how advertising costs are changing in real terms to fully understand what’s actually happening. In this third video, Binet looks at the trends and explains why advertising in tough times can be the deal of the century.
He examines how the cost per thousand of TV advertising has changed in the past 20 years and what tends to happen in an economic downturn. And he looks at the best ways to get value for money and maximise ROI while competitors are scaling back.
4. Risk
Marketers want to be sure that their advertising and marketing campaigns are paid back, but some of the research techniques that they’re using to inform their investments are giving them wildly misleading answers. Binet outlines how to reduce risk and make better informed decisions, looking at the impact of rising interest rates and business investment, and how good research can fuel good spending decisions.
5. Advertising effectiveness
These are tough times for marketers and it’s important to make sure that every penny spent works as hard as possible. In the final instalment, Binet explains which media work best in today’s environment and reveals the secret sauce that makes everything work harder.
The concluding part of the series explores how to harness creativity to exploit the power of emotion and fame, thus increasing ad effectiveness, and summarises the key steps marketers need to take to optimise ad investment in these challenging times.
Source: marketingweek.com
