On Tuesday evening Bite hosted its third BiteBash event in San Francisco – a panel discussion (sponsored by the American Marketing Association) exploring how businesses should be navigating their brands through the great recession. The event featured panelists from the travel, automotive, energy and financial sectors and attracted in excess of 100 attendees from across a range of organizations and disciplines with one common goal – engaging communications professionals in a discussion of what we should be doing to survive this economic storm.
A video of attendees and panelists discussing the challenges they are currently facing can be viewed below.
As the voxpops evidence, attendees and panelists were in agreement on three main facts:
- Priorities have shifted from long-term brand building campaigns to shorter-term projects that support lead generation
- Measurement and demonstrating a return on investment is increasingly important in the current environment
- The shift to online is going to be critical
With a deflated stock market, stalled consumer spending, surging bankruptcies and an unemployment rate that has almost doubled in the last twelve months, the panelists were asked – how has the recession impacted your brand and what is your communications strategy to address these challenges?
With marketing budgets crumbling, social media has emerged as a core part of that communications strategy – organizations recognize it yields a high return and reaches a diverse audience. Third party data bears this out – a recent CMO Study by Epsilon stated that ‘as the overall marketing pool diminishes, the budget for interactive and digital marketing is dramatically increasing’ while a separate survey by Rackspace estimated that 61 percent of chief marketing officers are planning to spend the majority of their budget on online channels.
While all panelists recognized the importance of social media, approaches varied.
In a highly regulated industry, Charles Schwab has to be careful in its engagement of social media, investing in it but doing so smartly and cautiously. David Weiskopf, Vice President, Corporate Communications stated that if not used properly, “social media will be causing challenges for ourselves [instead of providing solutions]” citing the importance of ownership residing with multiple parties. “Everyone owns it and helps define it, not just PR. Stakeholders from all groups, including legal and compliance, need to be involved.”
Social media can impact all organizational disciplines within a business touching a vast array of audiences. Human Resources for recruitment, PR and marketing (obviously) for brand building and customer service.
For BrightSource Energy however, social media is not a customer-focused resource – it’s about community building. Keely Wachs, Senior Director, Corporate Communications commented that a major lesson learned in the last nine months is to not think about a singular audience – social media enables you to target a multidimensional audience when you communicate in a way that wasn’t possible with traditional media just a few years ago.
Tesla Motors addresses audiences in a different way. Rachel Konrad, Senior Communications Manager stated “I don’t distinguish between a blogger and the New York Times but I also don’t distinguish between the media and our customers because so many of them post in different forums. It’s important in the world of social media to be very consistent in messaging.”
Equally, the media shift is something that’s not lost on Will Aldrich, Vice President, Product, TripIt who was ecstatic at being covered by Walt Mossberg and the New York Times but says “melted down when Daily Candy wrote about us” concluding that unintended or unexpected channels that have emerged can have a huge impact.
The event spurred discussions that could have gone long into the night about the value of communications in the current downturn and the role of marketing in preserving the value of the brand in these challenging times.
A second blog and video with highlights of the panel discussions will be posted within the next few days.