The fastest way to grow your brand during a downturn
In every downturn, there is always opportunity, but for brands, just as in the stock market, time is of the essence.
There are two basic rules of thumb that brands need to follow to grow during the recession.
#1: Don’t choose between strategic positioning and breakout creative. Demand both.
When you are looking at shrinking budgets, you may be thinking that compromise is inevitable. Most companies will start to prioritize based on what they value. They will either bring in consultants and skimp on excellence in execution, or they will panic and jump straight to “doing stuff” without taking some time to survey the landscape and plan.
And the agency landscape is set up to reinforce this thinking. You have boutique design agencies and you have marketing consultancies. Anyone who says they are marrying the best of both are likely not truly experts in either. And no one wants to be paying the price tag of the huge agencies right now.
Collaboration is the answer. You need true experts who can put their egos aside and work together to help you build a strategic brand that can be executed flawlessly.
#2: Don’t start from scratch. Build on what you have.
During times of stress (and a pandemic and a recession certainly qualify!), you need to go back to your strengths. It is not the time to be re-envisioning a brand from scratch. Chances are you have a lot of underperforming assets in your brand… underleveraged customer touchpoints, poorly communicated customer value, waste in your marketing budget.
If you can spend resources optimizing what you have already invested in, not only do you save money, you can move a lot faster.
Of course, this doesn’t mean business as usual. You will also need to be looking for new ways to apply your brand assets so that they are meaningful in the midst of changing customer behavior and market pressures.
So again, we are left with a tightrope to walk… you need outside perspective to help you identify, maximize, and pivot your existing brand assets, but you don’t want someone to come in and force you to throw the baby out with the bathwater (since starting over with a new vision is a lot easier for agencies, even if it isn’t beneficial to the client.)
Prepared to do the impossible
Design powerhouse BRIGADE and strategic positioning experts Six-Point are partnering together to offer recession-proof solutions to growth-oriented brands. Our two teams are ready and able to seamlessly collaborate with clients to make sure that companies don’t have to compromise at a critical inflection point.
If you are interested in learning more about how we’re working together, you can contact Kirsten Modestow (kirsten@wearebrigade.com) or Meghan Lynch (mlynch@sixpointcreative.com) to set up a discovery call.
