"Gutsy Marketers"

As I write this post my ticker shows that the DJIA has fallen 7% today. Obviously there are many companies and individuals worried about survival in this current economic climate. For those more fortunate, "cost containment", "weathering the storm" and "efficient investment" are all terms that are still at the top of the priority list.

Burt Helm writes a solid article in the latest issue of Business Week in conjunction with its Best Global Brands feature that I found inspiring despite today's chaos.

Best Global Brands - Gutsy marketers spend into the teeth of a recession. Several of BusinessWeek's 100 Best Global Brands are doing exactly that

I thought the quote below was particularly interesting because it can apply to our business and the business of our customers.

"In good times, people are less apt to try new things. In bad times, they have to start to do things better." - Martin Puris (Ad exec who coined the phrase "The Ultimate Driving Machine" back in 1974 when consumer spending tanked and gas prices soared much like we are seeing today).

Don't assume that the only message here is to spend more to protect your brand or be a savvy marketer. The answer is much more strategic and involves a top-level directive that mobilizes your entire organization. Start answering the important questions like: how will we define success? What is the role of marketing in our organization? How do we communicate more effectively with our customers to show that we can offer a solution that helps them do things better?

In the B2B world we don't have the multi-million dollar marketing budgets but we are closer to our customers then a multi-national brand like Apple or Coca-Cola. We also are fortunate to be aligned with an industry that maintains extremely strong fundamentals and prospects for long-term growth. Let's not sell ourselves short on the invaluable resource we all can access even when capital is in short supply: creativity.