I think about that old shtick: "If you were given a million dollars, what would you do?" Would you quit your job and move to Greece? Give it to charity? Stash it in your mattress? Buy a tennis bracelet? Change nothing? Well, if we do treat this recession banter as a hypothesis rather than an outright chronicle of fact, we have an opportunity to check in with what we did when things were battened down and what we might do as the market picks up. How does our mode of marketing bridge the times?

There are media industry friends of mine who have seriously put a moratorium on any conversation that smacks of "How to Market in the Recession." They dismiss this narrative as cliché and hyperbole, patently refusing to go there. While that's not my stance, I am quite certain that if we're doing our strategic best, our approaches can ride both the good and bad times.

The Timeless Act of Modifying Mix

As an industry as a whole, we obsess about spend allocations within the marketing and media mix. Stats are constantly at our fingertips.

In fact, there is big business in the tracking and reporting of the trends that feed this obsession. How many of our dollars are going to print, broadcast, online, experiential -- or, more specifically, search, social, video, email or mobile? However, in practice, I always find it bothersome when we spend too much airtime splitting these hairs. And during tighter market times, this fretting can reach a fever pitch.

While it's natural to shift allocations to boost your return and efficiencies -- and perhaps the stakes seem a tad higher during tense economic times -- unless you are in the business of selling technologies and wares within these sub-sectors, who cares?

Still, tuning your mix will always be a savvy move for a marketer with a long-term plan. And my guess is that over the past year, you tended your mix even more than before, because you felt like you had to, on any number of levels. Great, so keep up that habit.  

Efficiency as Pilot or Co-Pilot

The priority we put on efficiency does adjust. While the spend for branding vs. direct response or performance media may shift during more austere periods, what's most important is the planning and execution of these objectives. If you are effectively accomplishing your goals to whatever tune you've deemed essential, you are inherently mindful of degrees of spend efficiency.

And, while you may have spent less on pure visibility and share of voice, no brand can afford a vanishing of, or slippage from, mindshare. So, as the spend is redialed and marketers focus on making sure branding dollars are fairly efficient, they've undoubtedly found that staying present with the consumer is an efficient way to stick around when tangible returns are to be had. Sure, maybe you spent less on homepage takeovers and prime time, but there's a lot to be gained by spending your time wisely when hanging out with the consumer and making your impression.

Conversations & Storytelling

It was interesting to have this last period coincide with the growth of social media adoption, and with more widespread attention to cross-channel content distribution and marketing. As you listened to brands talk about keeping on the consumer's pulse, the channels at their fingertips were maturing. So, the timing was good for utilizing these platforms to advance customer service, test messaging or even try out new stories, if you were looking to steer your brand in new directions, For instance, financial brands have been reinventing in order to provide service in a changed market.

People refer to the recession being "technically over." While as an economic point of discussion, that nuance may be interesting, it doesn't necessarily change how you conduct your marketing overnight. You run your business through the high and the low, navigating very different periods year over year. But the minute recession-speak becomes a crutch of any kind, you've sort of lost the imperative. In good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, shouldn't you always be focused and dexterous? Committed to effectiveness and efficiency? Tracking where your consumer is? Yes, yes and yes. Be the guy who gets the cool million dollars and keeps on keeping on.