Should Your Organization Stop Marketing During the COVID-19 Pandemic?

The very short answer to this very big question is a resounding “no!”

While the first thing many companies do in trying economic times is to immediately cut back on non-essential spending (as they should), marketing often - and quite unfortunately - gets lumped into that category.

All we need to do is to look back in history to understand why cutting marketing and advertising dollars during economic downturns is a mistake – even though it might feel like the right thing to do. Here are a few examples:

• Results of a 2009 McKinsey study found that high-tech companies that made common and obvious moves (such as cutting costs) as well as counterintuitive ones, like increasing sales and marketing expenditures, quickly improved their positions when the economic recovery began. In fact, the best-performing companies increased their marketing and advertising spend relative to their competitors but also compared to their own spending when times were better.

• A recent Forbes article cited examples of brands that invested in advertising during adverse economic times, only to gain a significant market advantage when the economy recovered. Here’s just one example Forbes cited:

• In the 1920s, Post was the category leader in the ready-to-eat cereal category. During the Great Depression, Post cut back significantly its advertising budget and rival Kellogg’s doubled its advertising spend, investing heavily in radio and introducing a new cereal called Rice Krispies, featuring “Snap,” “Crackle” and “Pop.” Kellogg’s profits grew by 30% and the company became the category leader, a position it has maintained for decades.

• And looking at a B2B example, a study of 600 B2B companies during the 1981-82 recession by McGraw-Hill Research found that B2Bs that either maintained or increased their advertising spend averaged higher sales growth during the recession and in the three years that followed. By 1985, aggressive advertisers’ sales had increased 256 percent compared to the companies that had cut ad spending.