Originally published: NZ Herald, 15 April 2020
Business blogs and LinkedIn posts are quickly filling up with insights on how to market your business during a time of crisis.
The advertising industry has quickly dusted off its recession manuals, filled with great examples of why it pays in the long-run to keep marketing through a recession.
Listen to some of these voices, and you could be inclined to follow the stoic cliche and simply “keep calm and carry on” with what you were doing before.
This advice would only be half right.
Faced with this unprecedented drop in economic activity and massive uncertainty about what the future might hold, (Rupert) Price (the chief strategy officer at ad agency DDB) and his team commissioned research agency Pureprofile to conduct a study on what New Zealanders thought of companies advertising during this period.
The results delivered a few surprises.