COVID-19 Crisis: Lessons for Marketers from Past Recessions

The Great Recession, and other major economic downturns in our history, offer valuable lessons as we deal with the current crisis around COVID-19. We can use our history of experiences similar to the situation at hand to plan for the inevitable time when the crisis’ effects recede and we enter a new normal.

When that time comes, we will see that companies that took the right steps during the crisis significantly outperform those that took approaches that were too defensive or were too much on the offensive. Before we dive in, though, know that I recognize the seeming bias that comes from a marketing professional making the recommendation that I do (spoiler alert: don’t cut marketing). The case I present comes not from intuition (though my parents will argue I’m the smartest boy in the world), but from actual research conducted by dispassionate entities.

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