Advertising in a Recession
Bernard Ryan Jr
THE BEST DEFENCE IS A GOOD OFFENCE
The idea of conducting a study to prove that a company should maintain advertising during a recession goes back to the 1920s when an advertising executive named Roland S. Vaile tracked some 200 companies through the recession of 1923. In the April 1927 issue of the Harvard Business Review, he reported that the biggest sales increases throughout the period were rung up by the companies that advertised the most. But Vaile did not take into account such elements as profits or market share. His news fell...