Marketers and CFO’s have should not be slashing budgets in the face of the advancing recession, the Co-President of one of the world’s leading strategic brand consultancies has warned.
Howard Belk from Siegel+Gale, which has offices across the US, in London and Dubai, said that marketers should not cut their spending but me more “smart and prudent.”
The company boss and Chief Creative Officer, whose clients include Dell, Yahoo, 3M, American Express and the NBA, said the recession was unquestionably “slowing things down” in the US market.
“Clients want to do work but CFOs are taking more time to sign projects off. It’s adding an extra 45 to 60 days to a project,” Belk (pictured) told UTalkMarketing in an exclusive interview.
“We’re also in the position where we are winning accounts but having to hold off from working on projects until the budgets have been signed off.”
He added, “There is a lot more strategic management of budgets going on and more investment being made in work plans. But things are still very much up in the air and have still not been played out yet.”
Belk warned that things were likely to get “much worse” before they got better as the credit crunch hit consumers, but that added that under the circumstances marketers should not be cutting back on their ad spend.
“Marketers need to be smart and prudent and identify where to spend their money wisely,” he added, pointing to rise of digital in the face of a downturn of traditional media.
“It’s because the cost basis of digital marketing is lower than other platforms and companies are only beginning to figure this out.”
While brands needed to develop a ‘Brand Voice’ and experience to their communications Belk said they also needed to be aware of how they were being discussed in social media.
“Brands have had a lot of trepidation regarding engaging directly with their consumers and have a great fear about letting someone else talk about their brands,” he said. “But social media provides a useful outlook on what consumers think about a brand.
“We recommend that company sites are enabled with user generated and social networking facilities including forums. If a high quality company employs high quality staff we have found they are unlikely to be derogatory.”
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