Article in Journal of Trading Partner Practices

I had an article in the Spring issue of JTPP (published by TPMA and their partner groups), which is now online. The article, "The Importance of Recession Marketing Remans Constant Through Time", is (as the title implies) on advertising/promoting during a recession, and examines numerous academic and business studies on the subject, covering economic downturns from 1921 through 2001. I don't want to give away the ending, but it comes down to saying that you ought to keep on promoting, and that trade promotion optimization might help you do so.

Given that some level of cuts may be inevitable, no matter how persuasively we argue otherwise, how can a marketer make the most of a bad situation?

Technology may now give us the means to make a smaller budget look bigger. The use of predictive modeling and trade promotion optimization tools give marketers an opportunity that didn’t exist even as recently as the last recession – they can now work with their partners to produce promotions that stretch budgets by producing as much or more consumer impact with less money.

My article is, of course, absolutely brilliant (well, okay, it's pretty good), but there's also a bunch of other good stuff: A couple of my Oracle colleagues, Ajay Koul and Colin Mccomb, wrote a good piece on forecast accuracy. Armen Najarian of DemandTec has "Lather, Rinse, Repeat: Why Yesterday's Promotions Won't Wash", and Wayne Spencer of Store Eyes discussed Shopper Marketing metrics and measurement.

Give it a read.