Cut b a c k, trim down, redu c e, reduc e, REDUCE! In tough e c o nomi c times, we are bombarded with a barrage of messages about how we should be examining our expenses, cutting back on everything but the essentials and saving money to survive. When companies are trying to trim their budgets, it's the softer issues that get considered first. Marketing is top of the list as an activity that doesn't yield immediate pay-back for expenditure. But cutting back on marketing can spell disaster for companies.

According to David Ogilvy in his book, Ogilvy on Advertising, studies of the last six recessions have demonstrated that companies that do not cut back their advertising budgets achieve greater increases in profits than companies that do cut back.

“Stop a dvertising a brand that is still in the introductory phase, and you will probably kill it forever,” he says. According to Ogilvy, a marketing budget isn't a softer issue. Ad spend should be treated as “ a production cost, not a selling cost”.

The high cost of living

Customers are fickle creatures. I know. I am one myself. When times are tough financially, of course I'm not going to stop buying bread and milk and cheese. It's those other purchases - life's little luxuries - that I'm going to scrutinise in my cost-saving efforts.

But very few people stop forking out for the luxuries altogether. We may all sit a round the dinner table and complain about how much it costs to buy ingredients for dinner for one, never mind the petrol cost of getting to the supermarket in the first place, but we're not entirely slashing our luxuries budget to make up for the expense of food.

We may say, “My goodness! Have you seen how much a packet of rice costs?” but we don't delay the purchase of a new car, sound system or iPod until whenever it is that the financial future of the world looks rosier. Instead, we analyse our needs and desires a little more carefully. And often, a desire can leap across into the “needs” column pretty fast if it looks like it's in any danger of being postponed indefinitely.

Fighting for the scraps

So, we don't be come hermits living on dry bread and water alone, but it's also true that we don't have the disposable income tha t we used to. Instead, we be come discerning purchasers. The money we spend on luxury items is precious, and we a ll know that hollow, punch-to-the gut feeling of purchaser's guilt, so to assuage this sensation when we buy a product, we make sure it's something we know we want, it's from a reliable supplier, and it's good quality.

And guess what? The way that we know these things is through advertising. Sure, we don't believe every slogan tha t's  thrown our way, but for every product that we're going to research on the Internet, every review that we're going to pore over in a magazine and every item that we're going to touch, hold and listen to in a shop, we had to have heard about it somewhere.

If anything, advertising should increase when times are tough. The market is leaner and meaner. Marketers need to become hungry hyen as fighting tooth and claw for the scraps of consumers' budgets. People aren't going to stay loyal to products on the strength of the memory of a strong campaign in rosier times. Their memories a re short, and it's those concepts that are bombarding them now, today, and everyday that will stick in their heads when they're making a purchasing decision.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Solly Mokgehle is a business manager in the Magazine Division of Avusa Media (www.avusa.co.za).