How to grow your business in the recession being a contrarian.

by John Howlett

A very small percentage of business people see the recession as the perfect opportunity to increase their business with aggressive advertising and marketing. According to John Howlett, CEO of the AvizaGroup advertising and marketing consultancy ,“Advertising is generally one of the first areas to be attacked by the razor sharp axe of the C level suite”.

One of the smartest advertising minds and greatest copywriters of all times Ed McCabe, a tough ex-marine said it rather directly and bluntly in regard to recessions and advertising. “All great enterprises move forward in a recession, and the weaklings move backwards. The dumbbells cut back on advertising. The smart people don’t”

This of course is a contrarian viewpoint. The overwhelming majority of business people deal with recessions in a similar fashion. They cut, cut, and cut some more. Heads, budgets, just about everything that appears to be an unnecessary expense, especially advertising. These actions are taken in the face of the demonstrated fact that companies that increased their ad programs during recessionary times, benefitted substantially in market share with greater sales, overall brand preference and increased awareness while weathering the business storm.

To substantiate this contrarian viewpoint, Google “advertising during the recession” and you will find articles, studies and white papers from past recessions that document this behavior. “Although clearly documented in studies, most businesses still adopt the herd mentality of massive cutbacks on advertising. This is a tremendous mistake and short sighted thinking considering that most recessions last 18 months. “Recessions are a great time to take advantage of your competitors’ weakness of poor market visibility”, stated John Howlett CEO of the AvizaGroup advertising and marketing consultancy.

Consider an aggressive advertising and marketing campaign and these seven tips will help you navigate the perfect storm of this recession.
• Do not reduce your budget.
• Re-negotiate your media buy.
• Focus more on public relations initiatives.
• Ask your agency for a little relief on fees.
• Use existing creative work to save production cost.
• Only promote the leaders with the greatest profit.
• Hold joint events with non-competitive business partners.