How brands can manage through inflation

J. Walker Smith

Examines the impact of the current inflationary cycle on consumers, and how brands can manage through it.

Putting context around inflation in the US

Prior to the 1970s, inflation in the US was strictly a wartime phenomenon. Then came the Great Inflation, from 1965 to 1983, which arose from a confluence of factors that led to a decade-long period of high inflation and high unemployment, dubbed “stagflation”. Upon his appointment as chair of the Federal Reserve (the US central banking system) in 1979, Paul Volcker took aggressive steps to wring out inflationary expectations. Inflation dropped from an April 1980 high of 14.6% to 2.4% in July 1983. Subsequently, the Fed made inflation, rather than unemployment, its central...

WARC subscribers can sign in to keep reading

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands