MARKETING IN A DOWNTURN
‘Creative destruction’, a term first coined by Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter in 1942, can be described as the dismantling of long-standing practices, in order to make way for innovation. ‘Covid-19 destruction’ may act in the same way, making way for innovation, opportunity and new ways of thinking.
Economic downturn, recession, depression, global financial crisis (GFC) – no two economic reversals are the same. 2020 is however different; a year where the impositions of government, emanating from the Covid-19 Lockdown and restrictions, as well as bailouts to businesses, are having far-reaching effects that will be with us for a decade or more.
Stories abound of companies closing, and advertising agencies letting swathes of talented employees go, while others are reduced to a four-day working week. Some employers, having raced out of the starting blocks at Alert Level 4, telling everyone their jobs were safe on full pay for three months, have had to retract and let staff know that they would all be taking a permanent 20 percent pay cut, with redundancies likely further down the line.
There are industries that may never return to what they were. Tourism and travel will look back to the years leading up to 2020 as the golden years of their industry. We had already seen pain in the media sector and the closing of Bauer in New Zealand is but the canary in the coalmine for media as a whole.
Looking back at previous downturns is one way of preparing for an uncertain future, but in the current circumstances may deceive.
Lindsay Mouat is chief executive then Association of New Zealand Advertisers (ANZA). His strongest recollection of the 2008 GFC was one of it being the beginning of the
