Unless you’ve been vacationing on Mars, or living under a rock for the last six months, you’ll be all too familiar with our current economic woes. ‘The Great Recession’, the most dramatic term coined yet for our current economic demise, is global in its reach leaving very few industries untouched by falling revenues and job cuts. To further explore the challenges presented by this financial crisis, we will be hosting another BiteBash event on May 12 in San Francisco allowing communications leaders to discuss the marketing strategies they are putting in place to survive the storm and ensure their organization emerges out of the other end unscathed. I talk about the upcoming event in more detail in the video below:
If you’re interested, please register here.
With budgets being cut, communications functions are increasingly expected to do more with less. The Aberdeen Group estimated that 82% of companies have reallocated their planned marketing spend for 2009 on account of the recession. However it’s well documented that communications and marketing are critical to surviving and emerging from from a financial crisis. Harvard Business Review recently reported that companies who slash marketing spending often find that they later have to invest much more than they saved in order to recover from their prolonged absence from the media landscape. A separate article from Harvard Associate Dean John A. Quelch suggests organizations should even be spending more during a downturn to exploit the gaps left by their competitors.
In marketing budgets ravaged by cuts, social media and online communications are one particular bright spot. A recent CMO Study by Epsilon revealed that budgets for digital and interactive marketing were dramatically increasing while funding for other marketing functions dropped. According to their findings, 42% of marketing executives expressed interest in adding social computing to their marketing mix. All the indicators point to fact that businesses recognize the huge potential of social media as a cost effective channel to reach a diverse audience.
We’ll be inviting thought leaders from a range of sectors to take part in a panel discussion on these topics outlining the challenges they currently face, and how they plan to evolve their marketing programs to address them. Representatives from Technology (Sun Microsystems), Financial (Charles Schwab), automotive (Tesla Motors), travel (TripIt) and eco (BrightSource) organizations will be discussing the best strategies for marketing in a downturn.
In times of economic uncertainty, how can PR and marketing – both digital and conventional – prove their value and position organizations for success? What should brand managers be doing today to maximize their budgets and position themselves for tomorrow? And do these priorities differ depending what industry you’re in and what audience you’re trying to reach?
Please join us for this discussion event at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco on Tuesday May 12 at 5.30 p.m. More details on the event can be found here while if you are interested in attending, please register here.
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