Publication Type
Magazine Article
Version
acceptedVersion
Publication Date
8-2020
Abstract
Most companies reduce spending in recessions, especially on marketing items that may be easier to cut (certainly relative to payroll). Right now, advertising agencies are struggling to stay afloat, and Google and Facebook are reporting substantially lower ad revenues as marketing spending dives with the business cycle (cyclical marketing). But that is today’s equivalent of bleeding – an old-fashioned but once widespread treatment that actually reduces the patient’s ability to fight disease. Companies that have bounced back most strongly from previous recessions usually did not cut their marketing spend, and in many cases actually increased it. But they did change what they were spending their marketing budget on and when to reflect the new context in which they operated.
Keywords
Marketing, advertising, recessions, Covid, coronavirus, Singapore Airlines, Coca-Cola
Discipline
Marketing | Sales and Merchandising
Research Areas
Marketing
Publication
Harvard Business Review
ISSN
0017-8012
Publisher
Harvard Business Review
Citation
KUMAR, Nirmalya and PAUWELS, Koen.
Don’t cut your marketing budget in a recession. (2020). Harvard Business Review.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/6592
Copyright Owner and License
Authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://hbr.org/2020/08/dont-cut-your-marketing-budget-in-a-recession