Resolved to Keep on Marketing, Even in Tight-Fisted Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/20/business/media/20adco.html?em

Asked about immediate plans, 33 percent of respondents said they would maintain the level of their marketing spending, 33 percent said they would reduce spending and 27 percent said they would spend more. (The rest were unsure.)

If marketers cut budgets, that could intensify the recent sharp downturn in consumer spending. Conversely, by maintaining — or increasing — spending levels, they just might shorten the length of whatever recession might be coming (if it is not already here).

“Look, everyone is going to want to cut, but no one wants to be first to say it in public,” said one attendee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because his company has not completed its planning for 2009.

“That’s especially true given that we still have some time before Christmas,” the attendee said, referring to the importance of the holiday shopping season for marketers and retailers. “Anyone who says anything now could go down as the Grinch who stole Christmas.”
The closest any speaker came to tipping his or her hand was Anne Saunders, brand and advertising executive at Bank of America.

“We aren’t done planning ’09 yet,” Ms. Saunders said, so “we’re not concluding at the moment that we would necessarily cut” spending.

If a decision is reached to make cuts, “we don’t expect to see a substantial cut,” she added, because “it would be a mistake to say you don’t need to continue to tend your brand, even in a challenging market like this.”

Other speakers made the same point, in more emphatic and colorful language.
“It’s incredibly important to be risk-takers in the economic climate we’re in,” said Michael Mendenhall, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Hewlett-Packard, when “people have a tendency to pull back.”

“In economic times like these, you don’t hunker down and go in the bunker,” he added.