-By Todd Wasserman, Brandweek

NEW YORK A tough economy is forcing marketers to defend their marketing, which is leading to less satisfaction with their agencies and even more emphasis on ROI, per two separate studies.

The studies were produced in tandem by the Verse Group and Jupiter Research and based on interviews in November with 101 marketers at companies with more than $250 million in annual sales. They show that the economy has already had a great effect how marketers do their job.

One study, which will be released later this month, reveals that agencies are seen as part of the problem. According to that study, 45 percent of CMOs say they are spending more time managing their agencies than just two years ago. Only 21 percent of respondents say they are getting the best work from their agencies.

While that report shows more friction with agencies, a report Verse and Jupiter released last month shows that 89 percent of CMOs say their marketing is under greater scrutiny because of the economy. Fifty percent of marketers say achieving ROI is their No. 1 priority.

“I would say that the ROI has always been there but it’s been ratcheted up,” said Randall Ringer, chief strategy officer for the Verse Group. “The first things that get cut are training and marketing.”

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-By Kenneth Hein

Direct mail giant Valpak is launching a new national ad campaign today entitled “The original consumer stimulus package since 1968.” Playing off President Obama’s historic signing of the stimulus package in Denver, the coupon provider will run full-page ads in the top 30 U.S. newspapers today and tomorrow.  

The sparse ad, which targets beleaguered business owners, simply says: “It doesn’t take an act of Congress or a trillion bucks to stimulate consumer spending. You can reinvigorate the economy today by putting a money-saving offer in the hands of targeted consumers.” Tagline: “It’s time for Val-Pak.  The ad also includes a call-to-action in the form of a toll-free number and Web address.

This marks a change in marked change in strategy for the company which up until now had traditionally advertised to consumers. Last year it switched to a dual target of consumers and businesses, and this year it is speaking directly to businesses that are looking to drive sales.

“This ad is somewhat unexpected for the Valpak brand, but it shows we are more relevant than ever in this new era,” said  Kim Dominguez, director of marketing at Valpak. 

Dominguez says the push is inline with consumers’ behavioral changes: “Everyone is feeling the pain of our current economy, businesses and consumers alike. This ad speaks to everyone, highlighting the savings consumers find in the envelope at home, and the power of promotional advertising to stimulate sales for businesses.”

Valpak spent $8 million on media (excluding online) for the first 11 months of 2008, per Nielsen Monitor-Plus. 

http://www.brandweek.com/bw/content_display/news-and-features/direct/e3iaf5912c43b2213eeca5dce5f95eca872

-By Robert Klara

Andrew Shaffer had a problem on his hands. The Order of St. Nick, the irreverent-greeting-card company that the former office manager runs out of his Iowa City home, was gearing up for Valentine’s Day — a bread-and-butter occasion in the card business. But few things can kill a romantic evening like a limp GDP. If your beau just lost his job, chances are you’re not getting two dozen long stems and a box of Godivas this year.

So when Shaffer sat down to write his cards, he scoured for a theme that was right for the times-memorable, romantic yet realistic.

He found it all in the Depression.

Yes, that Depression — the “great” one, with breadlines, shantytowns, work-relief programs and all the rest of it. One card shows a Dust Bowl farmer and his wife cooking a pot of slop in an open kettle. Its caption reads: “William took Martha out to eat for Valentine’s Day.” Another shows a bunch of down-and-out guys in fedoras loitering outside of an automat. “Box of chocolates?” exhorts the caption. “She’ll be lucky to get a box of rocks from me this year.”

“If Hallmark came out with this, it would be in poor taste,” Shaffer admits. “But people need to laugh in tough times. As long as it’s approached with humor, even the Great Depression works.”

Yes, it does-and Shaffer’s not the only guy to find that out. From clothing labels to retail chains (and even life insurance), some of the more inventive brands have discovered that, economic times being what they are these days, the Great Depression might just be the best marketing theme you can ask for.

“There’s a financial cry in the country right now — and that’s going to translate into shopping,” says Karen Bard, the resident pop-culture expert for online auction site eBay. Bard’s not talking about how much people are spending so much as what they’re buying. Sales of just about anything related to the Great Depression have been surging since Christmas. In the last three months, eBay’s category “Depression Era” has seen a 15 percent increase in sales traffic, with specific spikes recorded for 1930s music (up 8 percent) and cloche hats (up 65 percent). At Amazon, December 2008 sales of Depression-related titles (including The Great Crash, The Forgotten Man and Ben Bernanke’s Essays on the Great Depression) were up by a whopping 750 percent (the company does not disclose unit sales).

Depression momentum started building just before the holiday shopping rush-which was, not coincidentally, the same time that bad news about the economy began to feel merely like harbingers of far worse. Between September and October, Netflix recorded a 10 percent rise in rentals of The Grapes of Wrath. Evite, the online invitation service, started seeing Depression themes at what had been traditional holiday parties. Then, just before the shopping rush got going in earnest, the Gen-Y clothing chain Forever 21 rolled out several new items that could easily have been plucked from a 1933 Sears catalog, including a wool newsboy’s hat, high-waist skirts and Mary Jane shoes.

But the Depression’s resonance with the buying public seems to run much deeper than the popularity of items that talk about — or take style cues from — the 1930s, and this is where the real marketing shift is occurring. Ira Blumenthal, president of Atlanta-based branding consultancy Co-Opportunities, argues that it’s not so much the Depression look that’s appealing to people, but the values and credos consumers associate with it. “Even in our marketing, advertising and promotions, we seek comfort zones,” Blumenthal says. “Our lifestyles, marketing and branding are being swept into the side of going back to find a simpler place in time.” In other words, the simplicity, frugality and perceived honesty of the Great Depression period have become potent marketing themes now that Americans see themselves as the modern-day counterparts of the Great Depression generation.

Organic, the upscale clothing line by designer John Patrick, recently debuted a Spring/Summer 2009 collection called “American Gothic,” after the famous 1930 Grant Wood painting. The combinations of decidedly rural-styled clothes — rough-and-tumble cottons in earthy colors — are what one might be tempted to call “Dust Bowl Chic.” (One even featured an extra-wide brimmed take on a weather-beaten farmer’s hat.) Metaphor aside, Patrick says that there’s an all-too-contemporary foundation to the Depression-era styling. “Flash and pop has lost its appeal now,” says the designer. “People are flat broke and starting to realize that more and more each day. So it’s appropriate to scale back. We’re starved for real things.”

And he means it. Ultimately, Patrick suggests, an integral lesson of 1930s America reaches beyond the usual themes of despair and deprivation and becomes one of resourcefulness. Americans, he and others point out, ultimately worked their way out of the Depression. Blumenthal adds that while consumers obviously regard the 1930s as a time of poverty, the Great Depression era possesses nostalgia value as a lost period of honestly and simplicity, of “good, old-fashioned morality, integrity, service and durability. What we’re seeing,” he adds, “is a back-to-basics approach.”

For insurance giant Allstate, back to basics has become its literal approach. As recently as July, the insurance company aired a spot called “Grocery Store,” via Leo Burnett, Chicago, that featured actor Dennis Haysbert commenting, “If this isn’t a recession, it sure feels like one.” It was the kind of clever, high-fiving line that worked until Nov. 27, when Fed announced that the recession was official. Suddenly, Allstate needed a new tack — but what kind? With seemingly impregnable institutions like AIG collapsing into speculative heaps, the public was casting wary glances at the insurance industry. It might have seemed the perfect time to avoid any references to the Great Depression, but according to Allstate marketing vp Lisa Cochrane, it was time “to tell the story of what we’re about.”

In Burnett’s “Back to Basics” spot, Haysbert walks among a montage of photos of the Great Depression-including the famous 1936  Dorothea Lange photograph of a migrant mother and her children. “1931 was not exactly a great year to start a business,” Haysbert intones in his sonorous basso. “But that’s when Allstate opened its doors.” The script goes on to remind viewers that there have been 12 recessions since then, and the company has survived all of them. As the music builds into an optimistic crescendo of strings, Haysbert speaks of appreciating the “basics” such as home-cooked meals and time with loved ones.

Sentimental? Perhaps. That was part of the point. As script co-writer Charley Wickman put it, “Bad economic times are intensely personal.” Days after the spot started airing, Allstate began to get phone calls and e-mails thanking the company for the ad. One viewer wrote: “Your new ad…was able to put so many things in perspective and created a truly feel-good moment out of what is a frightening and unsettling time for all of us.” The point of the Depression spot, explains Burnett vp and account director Nina Abnee, was “not to be depressing. We meant it to be optimistic, [to say] together we can do this. We wanted to instill confidence in people.”

By stressing the kind of assets — home, family, quality time — that can’t be drained off by securitization, Allstate tapped into a more resonant and uplifting theme of the Depression era: Things were bad, but everybody was in the same boat. Historian Bruce Weindruch, whose Chantilly, Va.-based consultancy The History Factory uses companies’ founding stories to develop their branding messages, adds that “the Allstate ads are the closest in tone to those best ads of the Great Depression: Now that we’re over the immediate shock, it’s time to begin preparing for the future. This is a much more sophisticated, and, I would argue, effective, approach.”

But it remains to be seen how long the approach can work. While economists agree that the recession will likely deepen before it improves, if life begins looking a little bit too much like the Great Depression, stuff like retro 1930s fashion and bad Dust Bowl jokes are unlikely to get the laughs — or the sales — they’re enjoying now. As Weindruch puts it, “Nothing will undermine a history-based campaign quicker than the present.”

Indeed, the online news-satire site CAP News has already parodied the Great Depression marketing trend by recently running a business story on the debut of Green Giant “Sorry Your Assets Are Frozen Vegetables” and “Credit Crisis Cranberries.”

For now, however, Andrew Shaffer will keep looking for rights-free images of the 1930s to pair with snarky copy for his greeting cards. The way he sees it, if the dark days of the 1930s suddenly have marketing potential, it was only a matter of time. “Every other decade of the 20th century has been plundered,” he says. “The Great Depression is actually something that’s fresh.” 

-By Kenneth Hein

Although marketers are getting more tech savvy, it seems they still have a soft spot for good old fashioned event marketing. 

More than half (53 percent) of 300 senior marketing executives surveyed said event marketing is the discipline that best accelerates and deepens relationships with target audiences.

The EventView 2009 survey, which was completed earlier this month by George P. Johnson, The MPI Foundation and the Event Marketing Institute, included a healthy swath (41 percent) of marketers whose companies pull in revenues in excess of $1 billion.

More than a quarter (26 percent) of those surveyed said event marketing is the discipline that drives the greatest return-on-investment. “The economy is forcing marketers to elevate their game to survive, specifically in regard to deploying direct response marketing such as events to drive top-line performance,” said Bruce MacMillan, president and CEO of MPI. 

Twenty-nine percent of marketers will transition their strategy from event marketing to experience marketing in the next 12 months. The difference being that experience marketing “involves integrated live and online experiences that drive deep brand interaction through highly relevant story telling and brand immersion,” per the study. A third of those polled said they already made the switch. 

The findings underline two trends coming together at the same time, said David Rich, svp of strategic marketing/worldwide at experience marketing agency George P. Johnson. “First, a downward economic spiral that is forcing brands to invest in channels like events that demonstrate measurable ROI; and secondly the maturation of strategic event and experience marketing, which takes the strategic, creative, media and digital capabilities of above-the-line marketing and activates them through the on-the-ground execution of an event portfolio made up of different types of internal and external events.” 

Despite the need to watch spending, marketers are increasingly ponying up to green their events. Sixty-six percent of those polled said they plan on implementing or have already added green initiative-up from 32 percent in 2007.

Of that group, 44 percent are doing so because of a corporate mandate. Green spending makes up 13 percent of their events budget.

Overall, “the real challenge for brands in 2009 will be how to best balance their traditional budget allocations against these trends to drive measurable results,” said Rich. 

http://www.brandweek.com/bw/content_display/news-and-features/direct/e3id86b3c6480b9377ff6ad320bcad4bdcb

-By Kenneth Hein

Brands better keep members of their rewards programs happy. A new study from Colloquy finds that customers who participate in loyalty-building efforts, like MyCokeRewards and the Best Buy Reward Zone, are 70 percent more likely to actively recommend a product, service or brand than the general population. 

The New Champion Customers: Measuring Word-of-Mouth Activity Among Reward Program Members study polled more than 7,000 consumers in the U.S. and Canada. Of those who participated in reward programs, 55 percent described themselves as brand champions. The majority of this group (68 percent) said they would recommend a program sponsor’s brand during the course of the next year. 

Marketers would be wise to better leverage their underutilized loyalty-marketing database, per the study. They “should find brand champions buried within their program memberships, and build relationships that reward them for positive W-O-M activity,” said Colloquy editorial director Rick Ferguson in a statement.

When asked why they actively they engaged in W-O-M activity, respondents said: to tell manufacturers what I think (73 percent), to get smart about products and 
Services (68 percent), to be the first to discover new items (68 percent), to get free product samples (63 percent) and to share my opinion with others (61 percent). 

-By Kenneth Hein

While today’s terrain can be pretty treacherous for any marketer, a new report is encouraging them to look ahead to 2015. The What will the role of marketing be in the year 2015? report was created by the American Marketing Assn. in conjunction with Decision Strategies International. 

The 86-page study was unveiled today at the AMA’s Mplanet event. The findings present four possible scenarios that marketers will likely face in five years. Based on interviews with more than 100 marketing professionals.

The goal of the project was to encourage “scenario planning,” said Samantha Howland of Decision Strategies International. “This will help them prepare and become the leaders they need to be.”

Here are the four CMOs of the future:

1. The strategic guru (Jane): Jane works at a traditional company with a plethora of opportunities and resources with integrated distribution channels. She uses marketing to drive strategic opportunities for the company and owns customer expertise. Jane’s a trend spotter who is savvy about sifting through tons of data.

2. The value chain optimizer (Tim): Tim operates in a stalled economy. His traditional business is short-term and bottom line focused. He takes less risk and demands accountability across all areas. Tim is a process guru who is resourceful in driving out cost and driving up efficiency.

3. The network orchestrator (Diego): Diego’s company is made up of virtual teams and workplaces. It involves a network of collaborating companies with efficient value chains and logistics. He is a master networker with an ability to spot trends ahead of the curve. He is flexible and easily changes course. Diego understands that creativity is as important as the bottom line contribution in measuring success for marketers.

4. The sales facilitator (Xeena): Xeena is working in a time of economic stagnation, geopolitical uncertainty and with few technological breakthroughs. Customers are driving an underground economy based on barter, reciprocity and creating their own review platforms. Xeena has difficulty showing ROI therefore her company has merged marketing and sales. It relies on the customer to be the marketing arm. Xeena works behind the scenes.

The report is “about articulating the importance of planning for the future and using scenario planning as a tool to do that,” said Dennis Dunlap, CEO of the AMA. “This is what they can expect in terms of outcomes to be better prepared for whatever scenarios will unfold in the future.”