Fascinating pictures

You already may have seen these pictures but they still be amazing and thrilling:

- Nissan has announced plans to cut its Sunderland workforce by 1,200. Thousands of unsold cars are stored around the factory's test track:- Imported cars stored at Sheerness open storage area awaiting delivery to dealers:- The build-up of imported cars at the port of Newark, New Jersey:

Slovakia produces most cars per capita in the world. VW, Kia, Peugeot are produced here which makes automotive industry the biggest by contributing with 30+% into country´s GDP. With that we are strongly affected by the current economic situation. The situation is the same here at local car dealerships. Parking lots and also the grass lawn around are usually full of cars.

So what to do?
The local government decided to support new cars sales by financial contribution if someone decide to scrap his 10+ years old car. I don´t want to be too protectionist but this helped mostly to foreing producers as approx only 5% of all production ends on local market. Thanks God that "scrap funding" is introduced in more than 15 EU countries.

Consumer priorities in a tough economy

Association of National Advertisers Brand Management Committee discussed the consumer view of purchasing in this economy and which categories are still seeing growth.

What are consumers thinking today?

• "Why do I have to pay more?"
• "I have choices, especially with private label products."
• "I'm delaying my purchase until I have a better sense of economic stability."
• "I'm looking for ways to save money and will consider brands with the most value for my money."
• "I'm making fewer shopping trips, so my trip has to count."
• "I'm carefully considering each of my purchases and doing more research prior to buying."
• "I still want convenience and to save time."
• "I look for special offers and coupons and will sacrifice my preferred brand if necessary."
• "I want my brand/company to know me (e.g. special attention from sales/customer service)."
• "I appreciate being rewarded (e.g. automatic discounts, frequent buyer cards)."
• "I want to be kept up to date on new trends."
• "I want to trust that you will be around and be confident in the product you are selling me (e.g. especially financial services and automotive)."
  

What are consumers buying more of?

• Beer.
• Lottery tickets.
• Comfort food.
• Cosmetics ("a little bag of happy").
• Short-term liquidity (e.g., money markets).
• Household safes.

Does this list sound familiar to you?

Let´s make fun of economical downturn!

This was obviously idea behind the new selfpromo of Slovak radio called Funradio.

Their management was fed of all those excuses made of their perspective clients.

What they felt in past few weeks?They are sorry for everyone who feels impact of the crisis on business, but they are not sorry for those, they just want to blame the crisis for their problems, based on personal incapability. The aim of their campaign is to show even in tough times it is good not to forget humour and there is always a solution. Solution that is more helpful than an excuse.

What is their response?

• launch a dedicated microsite
• collect all funny excuses, e.g. "sorry for being late for the meeting we were driving slowly all way long in order to save fuel", etc.
• show satisfied advertiser of Funradio supported by 4 facts from surveys, e.g. reach the young generation addicted on brands, etc.
  

I think this campaign is good at least from two perspectives:

• it showes that Fun Radio is able to handle three topics in one: drive for advertising revenue, tough times and humour
• they are not afraid to come up with proactive communications in time of tough advertising budget cuts. But this is good time for radio, online and printed media to win those customers, they cutted the most expensive media, the TV ad.

Biggest crisis ever?

I don´t dare to compare. There were brig economic downturns in the past too.

What changed is the fact, how it affected almost the whole world. And how quick it came.
But this is one of the hopes for the future. Because what makes us different from the past is that we have today means to deal more quicky and professionaly with informations. We can find out the roots of the crisis and start correction initiatives. All the informations are at our fingertips. CRM, BI, media, internet and all other information and reporting tools bring all necessary information in no time.

Let´s only hope, that right managers will handle them. Because right information makes only half of thes success. The remaining half makes the right decisions upon them.

Jobs I don´t want to do

I wanted to work as a marketer for premium car maker or premium airline company. Their business is often about fullfiling people´s dream. They work with emotions and might charge higher fees for top service.

But today no company in car or aviation industry is safe in these turbulent times. Customers are reprioritizing their needs and cutting budgets. Cars and planes are also depending on oil price and this brought and even will bring hard times for them.

Toyota predicts loss for 2008 for the first time in history and gives 4200 discount per new vehicle in the US today (according to BusinessWeek). Czech carmaker Skoda is down by 37% y-o-y in UK market.There is said in 3 years only 2 major carmakers will remain in Europe. There is also said that only 3 - 5 low cost airline will survive this winter in Europe. There are 58 of them today.

In spite of all this facts I think this is a challenging time for marketers in these industries. They are facing some of problems for the first time, but this is exactly the situation, when they can prove our impact on business. And in close cooperations with production and sales try to find the easiest way back to the growth.