Industry bosses make the most of their opportunity

Joe Talcott has a nice way with an anecdote.

The News Ltd marketing boss made the best two observations of the morning at Ogilvy’s session on how brands can survive the recession.  

In one insight into downturn consumer psychology, he told the audience how he was behind a woman in a supermarket queue.

Her basket was loaded, but she told the cashier she had just $53.40 in her bank account and the bill had to come in under that. First went in loose tobacco and coffee. The lesson for marketers from that, Talcott said was: ‘If you are selling addictive drugs you are okay.”

Once she went over her budget, she removed the cranberry juice, saying she already had cordial at home, and put grapes in instead.

Talcott  told the audience: ‘That’s the way people are looking at things today. My challenge is to make sure the newspaper goes through before the grapes.”

His other anecdote, covered in our news story about the event, also had people nodding.

In good times the industry, he said, had been like a dog sitting on a nail. It was uncomfortable, but didn’t hurt enough to do anything about it – and now it did.

And that may be one of the best summaries of the downturn experience to date.

I’ve talked to agency bosses (and please note, I’m talking about the bosses rather than the workers) who have so far had quite a good downturn because it’s given them the mandate to make the changes they want.

Some are loving the newly flexible ways that staff fearing for their jobs now have. Funnily enough, Fairfax CEO Brian McCarthy used the term in Monday’s Australian Financial Review, complaining about the “rigidity” when he arrived at Fairfax. But, he added: “Today people are more concerned about their job security and therefore more flexible in their thinking.”

Yes, it’s amazing how people will do what you want when they’re terrified of losing their livelihoods, isn’t it?

But the same has gone at a few agencies. I’ve talked to bosses who have taken the opportunity of moving on what they see as the dead wood, and getting more out of the rest, and for less money at that.

One – from a fairly small agency – told me how he’d been carrying a “passenger”. But they’d been quite popular so he’d let it ride. But in the downturn he had the perfect opportunity to do something about it without alienating the staff, and now they were gone.

And just this week I heard of a large publisher’s Australian operation which had been told by its international head office that although the numbers were okay, it was to take the opportunity to chop out the dead wood. Which is exactly what they have been doing.

I think the industry is going to emerge from the downturn leaner and meaner. Meaner indeed.

Tim Burrowes