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December 01, 2008
The window is open... right now
From the New York Times today:
It’s official: for the last year, the United States economy has been in recession.
The evidence of a downturn has been widespread for months: slower production, stagnant wages and hundreds of thousands of lost jobs. But the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research, charged with making the call for the history books, waited until now to weigh in.
In a statement released Monday, the members of the group’s Business Cycle Dating Committee — made up of seven prominent economists, most from the academic sector — said that the economy entered a recession in December 2007.
Despite what people in charge were telling us, this recession began a year ago. You probably already knew that.
How long will it last? Since World War II, recessions have typically lasted 6-18 months, with an average of 11 months. We're at the average point already, but this one seems it'll last longer than 11 months, doesn't it? There's an opportunity there.
A recession is a hangover from excessive spending. Combine that with the November 2008 elections, which signified that most Americans crave big change, and it's a perfect time for non-traditional marketing people to make their moves. This is the time to:
- Kill outdated and expensive market research programs.
- Adopt the simpler and affordable Net Promoter Score.
- Evangelize the benefits of Twitter-driven customer support.
- Build a customer, supplier, vendor or employee social network on Ning.
- Create cross-functional teams that include marketing, engineering and sales.
- Host internal seminars about design thinking.
- Simplify the company purpose.
- Speak out against testosterone-driven "barbarian" mission statements.
- Focus on building loyalty among existing customers.
- Evangelize the importance of designing word of mouth into the DNA of an organization, not just its marketing.
The days of $3 billion advertising budgets -- GM's 2008 ad budget -- are over, perhaps forever. This is the window for marketing innovation to take root.
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Great post. It follows a certain theme that has begun to populate the blogosphere. Newer, more innovative marketing techniques are a necessity to succeed in this economy. New winners and losers will shuffle out of the current situation, and the holiday season may be the perfect time to try something new and separate yourself from the crowd.
Finally, the bearers of bad news have their day! The US economy has now joined the ranks of other news media hyper-bull. As long as people choose to buy into all this crap, our doom and gloom-fed society will remain in the tank. The truth hidden in all this is that Black Friday spending was "up" vs last year. But we're told and the markets reflect, that it's the end of the world in the realm of retail. Next thing we'll hear: In shining armor, Barak Obama rides into Washington on his trusty steed and slays all those dastardly Republicans that got us into this mess! While the masses suffer, the money wielding power brokers in cahoots with the media, continue to drive the economy downward so they can buy up stocks for pennies on the dollar. Good times will return, and we'll all live happily ever after in this story book world they have created. That is, One World Economy, Currency, and Government! Good night and good riddance America. The world will be such a beautiful place without you!
@Voice-In-The-Wilderness - "The truth hidden in all this is that Black Friday spending was "up" vs last year." The bigger truth is in Ben's statement: "A recession is a hangover from excessive spending." One day's retail sales might be up compared to the year before (whoopty doo), but this recession isn't a media-fed perception problem that happy news will fix.
Banks aren't lending to each other and in turn aren't lending to consumers. Many billions of dollars have disappeared. It's one thing to buy a Black Friday gadget on a credit card with a shrinking available balance. It's another thing to buy a car, a house, or an education.
Belts are being tightened - and that's not because the NYT says so.
I couldn't agree more. NOw is the time to innovate. I did a video post on the AMEX open forum about this last week. I just hope that we can get through to enough businesses about this. So many will cut when they shouldn't.
