Unless you’ve been stuck on the moon for the last year or so you’ll undoubtedly be aware that the UK, and it seems the whole world, is heading into a recession. You don’t have to look too far for predictions of woe with even seemingly recession proof companies & industries looking vulnerable. In many cases, such as the world of Me 2.0 start-ups, it does feel like the recession might simply act as a naturalising force, pushing companies to develop valid revenue models and stop relying on VCs handing out funding like sweets on Halloween.

But all is not doom & gloom, or needn’t be according to the Financial Times. It currently has an ad campaign suggesting that the best way to beat a recession is to continue to invest in advertising & marketing. The campaign is backed up by a nice little micro-site which collects independent research & case studies showing that:

In every recession of the past 90 years…the businesses who increase their advertising spend are the ones who survive the tough times and thrive afterwards.

The site also encourages users to post their own thoughts on the opportunities a recession might offer and whilst there was only one at the time of writing this, it’s quite an interesting one:

Whilst there are very obviously economic challenges we all face in a climate such as this, there are also the same number of opportunities. In an economy when everyone is shouting it\’s very hard to be heard – an economy when no one is shouting is a great time to steal a march

Now it’s obvious why the FT would want people to continue to advertise: whilst they have a very healthy revenue model based on sales, they obviously can’t do without advertising revenues either. That said, we tend to think that they have a point. We’ve always banged on about ROI, even in the more ‘fluffy’ fields of viral & social media marketing. And if you can prove an ROI that boosts balance sheets, why on earth wouldn’t you continue to invest?

And when you consider the opportunities still available in the fields of affiliate and paid search marketing, where cost effectiveness is the main selling point, it seems like you’d have to be mad not to keep spending on marketing. But then it often feels like the world must have gone mad for us to even be having to talk about this sort of thing.

Header image by aturkus on flickr

Comments