Consumer new year’s resolutions

A new Marist poll reports that 12% of consumers who are making resolutions say that “spending less money” their New Year’s resolution.  That is not good news for the economy since consumer spending makes up about 70% of GDP.  

If consumer demand is falling, that will make the recovery more difficult.  Generating consumer demand therefore will play an important role in the economic recovery.  And one of the critical factors is brand marketing, since that helps to create demand.  

There is no national brand marketing department charged with increasing demand for consumer products.  That job falls to individual corporations. 

So we can see how important brand marketing is for both individual companies and for the economy as a whole.  

At the same time we are seeing that corporations are cutting their spending on marketing.  Some of the cuts are in media spending.  And some of the cuts are in the marketing departments themselves.

That creates an interesting conundrum.   Demand is falling.  At the same time, marketing, which stimulates demand, is being cut.  

One solution to this conundrum is to find more effective and efficient methods of brand marketing.   If we continue to do brand marketing as usual, with the standard techniques, we can expect the same kind of results that got us into this economic mess.