Doing something useful.

I hesitated writing this - do we really need yet another piece pontificating on what we should be doing in light of the Covid-19 challenge? However, my other half suggested I was overthinking it, so - here goes.

I've spent much of my career working in marketing, and there's no doubt that in the immediate future marketing is one area in which cash starved businesses will look to make significant cuts. Whilst we can argue the rights and wrongs of this decision, the fact is it's often the biggest area of "discretionary" spending that can be impacted immediately, so regardless it's going to take a hit. Realistically, in the short term there's not much anyone can do to prevent this impact.

That doesn't mean, however, there is nothing we can do now if we work in marketing. I've been lucky enough to work on big campaigns in my career, and have always been amazed at the number of people beavering away on location for a big shoot, most of whom I've never met before the big day. They are the army of supporting staff and crew - from camera and sound people to catering, security, logistics and transport. Then downstream there are all the specialist small agencies doing post production, CGI to whatever to create the finished product. Many of these folks are either freelancers or employed by small agencies who may not have the structure, processes and resources to give them the resilience of a bigger organisation. They are going to have a tough time in the coming months.

It may be unlikely that you will commission the sort of major new campaign in the next couple of months that will keep this army of marketeers busy. But what about the work you've done in the last few months? Large clients and agencies are notoriously poor at paying their small suppliers on time, and it's these folks in "our" line of work who will be hit hardest. So if you work in a big client or a major agency, why not go see your finance director and ask to run through all the accounts payable for marketing? If you're client side, make sure your agencies have been paid on time for the work that they have already done. And if you're in a big agency, make make sure all your small suppliers, freelancers et. al. have had their invoices settled and are up to date. You're going to need them all again, so do what you can now to make sure they remain in business during this inevitable slow down, so we're all ready to capitalise on the recovery that will come.