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The Coming Recession
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It’s on everybody’s lips these days (so it seems) but my outlook is very similar to the other responses here. While we are looking to diversify and otherwise shield ourselves from a recession, I just don’t think it will hit our industry as hard as others. In the fallout of the dot-com days, the companies that reeled in all of their marketing and basically took the ostrich approach withered away. I think a lot of people learned from that period that in a recession you need to get out there and compete your butt off or lose it, pure and simple. Also, I agree with other statements here about the breadth of markets and potential revenue streams our industry currently enjoys vs. times past.
We WILL see a shakeout, no doubt about it, but I think there are three things that will lead to demise in this – poor reels, high debt and excessive employees.
< rant > These days when you hear talk of “hard times” and recessions, they are usually talking about major corporations and lenders taking a bath in the markets because they made poor investments. Sure there’s a trickle down effect, but the real agenda seems obvious – they want all of us to get nervous about our own wallets so that we will eagerly approve the bailouts Uncle Same will inevitably offer them. Free market my ass. < /rant >
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
[Brendan Coots] “the companies that reeled in all of their marketing and basically took the ostrich approach withered away.”
A recession is anything from a lack of growth to a double digit decline in business activity. The problem comes when business people forget this, panic and start the wholesale cancelation of marketing activities. Brilliant. What a great time to make sure that fewer people know about you and what you offer.
This frequently happens in companies where the top execs came up through positions other than sales, for example engineering, manufacturing or (shudder) accounting. I’ve worked with companies “led” by people with these backgrounds and seen more than one large company destroyed from within by them.
[Steve Wargo] “We then decided to call all of our clients and ask what we could do to help promote their businesses and increase their sales.” Dead on, Steve! Bruce’s cross selling ideas are also very much on target and not just during recessionary times.
Another of our best defenses against the ‘slash all marketing costs’ mentality is to remind clients that during past recessions smart companies have used downturns as a time to go against the grain, promote more and, in doing so, increase market share. In other words, a recession is a good time to do MORE advertising and marketing activities rather than less.
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[Nick Griffin] “…is a good time to do MORE advertising and marketing activities rather than less.”
VERY true… but sadly, some people will never learn.
We have one automotive client that we do some reasonably slick spots for, and they sell high-end stuff (they have Porsche, Jag, Land Rover, and BMW dealerships)… but they just can’t seem to catch on…
We do buttloads of spots for them, about every other month. They will advertise heavily, have a great month, and say “We’re selling like crazy, we don’t need to advertise.” So they’ll stop. Sales tank, then they say “Maybe we need to get back on TV,” and the cycle starts over again. This has been going on for years (have been a client for almost a decade)… but they can’t see the cause and effect, no matter how much we try to point it out.
We finally stopped wasting our breath… just smile and take their money every alternate month.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Todd-
And that is one of the reasons that when I moved over into industrial, technical and B2B I never looked back. I’ve worked with too many car dealers who thought planning and business strategy meant what you would do today and tomorrow. I even had one dealership tell me to pull the spots and think of something new because they’ve already run one day and nothing has happened.
In B2B we almost always work from annual plans, annual goals and annual budgets.
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I hear ya, Nick…
Fortunately we do very few car dealers, and the problems are generally few and far between (thankfully most of them realize the advertising benefits moreso than that one example)…
We do plenty of B2B and corporate stuff as well… but it just ain’t my thang and I can’t seem to make myself like it. I’m glad that a few of our big corp clients are marketing-savvy enough to let us be pretty creative and sometimes do some wacky fun stuff (unblieveably we had a military gig once where they actually let us do it like a 50’s era Army training film… a bad one)… but many of them are so stiff and buttoned-down that they just can’t seem to hold my creative attention much (and I pawn them off on my other guys here… sometimes it’s good to be the boss…hehe).
I much prefer living in my short-form world and make my little :30 movies, and quickly move on to the next one.
I will say the benefit is that you get paid faster too if you’re doing a commercial gig with a day or two of shooting and a day or two of post…as opposed to the corporate jobs that tend to drag on. The corporate money is much much better… but honestly I’d rather do 10 $10K commercials than one $100K corp gig. But yep, I know plenty of people that feel exactly the opposite. Different strokes…
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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I for one will be growing all my own food this year, powering my house with a proprietary perpetual motion machine I bought from a Chinese company, and despite my condo association’s strict rules, I am raising cattle in my garage. Oh, and compact flourescent bulbs!
Seriously, we have weathered the 2001 recession and ones before that. Cross your fingers and keep working hard to generate business and keep clients happy.
Mike
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[Mike Cohen] “Seriously, we have weathered the 2001 recession”
I must have missed that one..
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[Randall Raymond] “I must have missed that one..”
Come on Randall, how could you have missed that one? Remember 911 and the so called “War On Terror.”
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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[David Roth Weiss] “Come on Randall, how could you have missed that one? Remember 911 and the so called “War On Terror.””
Oh, that one!
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