Marketers face enough challenges without unhelpful Government silliness

Remember when Government ad campaigns were an industry benchmark for employing intelligence and creativity to drive behaviour change??

No longer. HM Government, Britain’s biggest advertiser as recently as 2020 according to media measurement firm Nielsen, will this month launch an ad campaign encouraging businesses to save money. By cutting advertising.?

Yep. I know. No need to read it again, you got it the first time.?

The campaign will advise brands to pull their advertising spend and use the budget to fund price cuts instead - designed to appeal to a financially squeezed consumer.

If this government is on some weird, taxpayer-funded mission to prove total incompetence in everything it touches, it’s clearly marketing’s turn to ‘benefit’ from the unique wisdom of those that lead us in 2022.

Ignoring the irony of the government running an advertising campaign to encourage businesses to spend less on advertising, such an action would potentially be devastating for SMEs and just plain ill-advised for large corporations with much-loved brands.

While advertising only speaks to the promotions ‘P’ of marketing - every ￡1 spent on advertising and communications results in ￡6 worth of GDP according to the Advertising Association.

The Government is responsible in any ‘weather’ for pulling the necessary levers to sustain the most stable and favourable economy in which we can all trade and thrive. Instead, the Tories will advise us to forsake growth and - adding more pain - slash their prices and with it, their margins.

It sounds like a bad answer to a sixth-form economics exam question.?

And also - dudes, know your audience. Marketers don’t need government help understanding the elasticity of their own pricing models.?

Eve Sleep CEO (and former CMO) Cheryl Calverley is quoted in Marketing Week magazine saying as much in response to the imminent campaign: “[Marketers] understand in minute detail the promotional and price dynamics that affect demand and supply, and how these have shifted markedly and unprecedentedly over the past three months,” she said.

“To suggest swinging investment naively away from a significant sector of the UK economy, the creative and marketing industries,” Calverley is reported to have added, “is at best downright idiotic, and at worst, deeply damaging.”

Nobody will shrink, cut or retrench their way to success (or even survival) in what looks like a deep global recession ahead.?

Some businesses will lower prices, but it will be a strategic decision. The UK’s second biggest supermarket Sainsbury’s pledged today to invest ￡500m in keeping prices low. The move is designed to help consumers struggling with the cost of energy, petrol and food as well as the rise in inflation. But you can be sure the grocer will also spend considerable money advertising those low costs to its customers and those of its rivals.

As usual, doing well throughout the recession will mean the brave decision to invest in your brand and find additional ways to acquire high-value, loyal new customers, even as you temporarily lose others in the economic melee.??

One way or another, I’ve spent 15 years working to serve consumer brand marketers and the broader discipline of marketing. From a three year stint as editor of Marketing Week, through various roles with comms agencies and martech platforms; my job is always easier if the sales pitch is built on championing the marketing function.

So it’s frustrating to see such a shoddy understanding of the mechanics or value of marketing in Government. If this campaign doesn’t collapse before it even launches, it stands to face a backlash that I predict will see its rapid disappearance.

If I’m right, it’ll be disowned, denied and conveniently forgotten by business and treasury spokespeople before the end of the summer.?

No marketer needs to hear it but this is one government directive to be well and truly disregarded. Do not cut your advertising spend to fuel price cuts.?

Sure, we marketers have a responsibility to keep a close eye on how we spend those budgets and monitor how effectively our chosen channel mix is serving the growth of our businesses.?

But we also have a responsibility not to permanently knacker our valuable and long-established brands in the name of defensive, short-term measures.?

Especially not those mandated by the stupid.