At present, business, especially in the UK is facing a recession. This topic seemed to form the basis or all our informative talks and discussions at Enterprise week. Alan Rich stated that a well run business will come through a recession very well and marketing campaigns will reduce and concentrate effort on main competitors but will decrease budget. This relates back to marketing communications in the 21st century as segmentation will have a significant effect at this point. If marketing campaigns are to focus effort on only main competitors then how are new brands to break into the business? At this time it seems this is a question which cannot be answered but we are to see a growth in larger brands. In terms of the consumer, we generally stick with brands we know when times are tough and this is therefore the reason why marketing agencies such as JDA will stand by well known brands and popular products during this recession.(http://www.jda.co.uk/)
Alan Rich’s view was opposed by others such as Ivor Peters who claimed “There is no solution because there is no problem.” This is another interesting view and it seems to depend on what business you are in as to how you view this credit crunch.
Although marketing is evolving through digital and online, the older and traditional channels are adapting to new times. Tom Vick thought traditional agencies should respond to the new times by:
- Forget above and below the line as concepts
- Bring back a dictionary definition of advertising
- Restructure business around brands and their communication needs
- Invest in re-training and re-orientating agency colleagues. This would give a more general business experience
- Learn from the youth. I.e. agencies can use younger staff to train older employees.
I took from Enterprise week that in five years time there won’t be agencies who focus solely on one particular aspect of marketing but they will have to incorporate Public relations, advertising and digital marketing to be successful. There are currently 12,500 agencies in the UK and it is most definitely a case where by only the fittest will survive.
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