In recent posts, perhaps I’ve been a little sour on marketers’ efforts to emerge from the economic doldrums to provide growth for their businesses in 2010 and beyond. One more sour point, and then I promise to make some lemonade. Fifty percent of the share you lose to private label this year, you will never regain. Stick with me, you optimists – our research shows if your brand can use the recession to jump into the top quartile in your industry, you’ll likely retain that premium position for at least three years.

 Here’s the challenge I’m seeing in recent client meetings, from financial services looking to recover to media companies searching for identity. The single biggest asset we have as marketers is also the likeliest thing we de-emphasized as budgets were slashed in the past 18 months: our brands.  Read More »

I sense an eerie (and I think false) sense of security from marketers as they enter 2010 planning, that the worst is behind us, we can forecast 1-2% GDP growth for the next 12 months, and the Fed has the financial crisis under control. 

After meeting with a regional retail bank, a Fortune 500 CPG company, and a host of planning executives last week, I’m almost frightened by the sense of stability I see in 2010 plans.  The picture is not rosy, certainly, but it assumes stability.  We seem to have checked any Black Swan thinking at the door.  How the economy recovers, its precise trajectory, and changes in consumer behavior are far more volatile than the stability many marketers are putting into their plans.  And let’s be honest – too many of us leave those plans on the shelf for 12 months without revision. Read More »

As the economy faltered late last year, a lot of the marketers we work with started rethinking how important their brands were to consumers. With less money to spend, less access to credit, and less confidence in the U.S. economy, consumers were rethinking when and where they spent every dollar. The question marketers asked us in response was simple: “how do I become a brand consumers can’t do without?”

After a year or so of digging, we learned a very simple but compelling thing about consumer loyalty: it’s probably not you they’re loyal to in the end. While most marketers think their brands have loyal consumers, what they really have are habit-driven consumers—and when a shock occurs to a consumer’s economic reality, it probably doesn’t take much to break their “habit” with your brand. Read More »

Driving down the New Jersey Turnpike to visit a Council member, a billboard caught my eye (please, no jokes about the Turnpike and billboards).  It read as follows – “Recession 101: Interesting fact about recessions . . . they end.”  Pithy and humorous, I thought.  When I reached my hotel, I did some searching and the Recession 101 campaign is nationwide, paid for by members of the Outdoor Advertising Association of America and designed by an unnamed private donor.

Seeing the billboard and scrolling through Recession 101’s Twitter feed (sidebar: good social media integration with ‘traditional’ media), it did prompt me to realize that our members are asking one question with increasing frequency – does MLC think that the economy has turned the corner? Read More »

What can Romano’s Macaroni Grill’s re-engineering of its tomato bruschetta dish teach us about innovation in a recession?

Most marketers are relying on price and promotional shifts to re-position their brands for value.  By contrast, savvy marketers are re-assessing their products more holistically, taking into account how raw materials and production costs interact with traditional marketing disciplines like consumer understanding and pricing.

Enter Macaroni Grill, which reported in The Wall Street Journal | Sep 16 is reworking its menu to get away from 1,000 + calorie items—its consumers want to eat more healthily.  The restaurant’s tomato bruschetta appetizer makeover illustrates recession-minded innovation at its best: Read More »