The global economy suffered a bumpy year with inflation raising the prices of company’s costs and people around the world struggling to pay their bills and buy the goods they needed – for marketers, this meant a whole new paradigm.
In the UK, this came to be known as the cost-of-living crisis, which WARC Senior Editor for Brands, Anna Hamill wrote about here, breaking down the 4 Ps of marketing in light of the economic situation.
Lowering marketing spend in tough economic times often does more harm than good to a company by ceding ground to more vocal competitors. However, it’s also not wise to carry on as usual. In October, Les Binet, the godfather of marketing effectiveness, argued that marketers need to deploy econometrics rather than attribution to optimise effectiveness in inflationary times.
At the media level, inflation has meant that the cost of reach has also increased, as WARC Media head of content Alex Brownsell explained when introducing a Global Ad Trends report on the topic. Key to these observations was that digital media costs are increasing faster than traditional media, based on multiple factors, and meaning that some of the tried and tested channels like TV, OOH, and radio are currently under-used.
In September, we published a report collecting the latest thinking and research on marketing in tough economic times, which you can find here. On the podcast, you can hear some of the key ideas in just 15 minutes.
