Bravery in the Budget: Why Marketing Matters More When Others Scale Back

When the market wobbles, the first instinct in many boardrooms is to reach for the red pen — slash the marketing budgets, reduce the ad spend, thin the creative input. Hell; there must be some kid on Fiverr that can do it for peanuts right? Well, actually, wrong.

Of course, it is in part, understandable. It feels prudent. Cut the ads, trim the campaigns, shelve the brand work “for now.” Save a bit here, a bit there. Batten down the hatches. Who knows how long the mad man will continue to play with the lives of the little people? Better we stop spending on making our brand relevant, seen and heard? Hmmmm.

But here’s the problem: while you’re saving pennies, you’re handing your competitors pounds worth of market share on a silver platter.

History (and more than a few Harvard Business Review case studies) shows that the brands that keep investing smartly during downturns and periods of economic uncertainty don’t just survive — in fact they come out stronger, leaner, and several laps ahead of the pack. When everyone else is whispering, if you have the guts and gusto to keep on investing, your voice actually carries further.

Good marketing isn’t a “nice to have” when times are tough. It’s a survival strategy. It’s how you stay visible when the world feels uncertain. It’s how you maintain trust, reinforce loyalty, and remind your customers you’re still here — and still worth it. If your voice slips away when times are tough, why should you be worthy of attention when the world is back to its noisy full hum?

Yes, budgets might need to be smarter, sharper, and more targeted. The days of “spray and pray” are long gone. But retreating into silence? That is in fact the real risk.

Remember: it’s cheaper to stay in hearts and minds than it is to win them back later. When the sun comes out again — and it will — those who kept the faith will be the ones customers remember.

Being brave doesn’t mean being reckless. It means recognising that marketing isn’t an expense. It’s an investment in resilience.
And when the market shifts back into gear, the brave will have won.

#MarketingStrategy #BrandBuilding #Leadership #BusinessGrowth #MarketingDuringRecession #MarketingBravery

Put Down the Robot: Why Real Writing Still Matters

Let’s be honest. AI-generated content is having a moment. Everyone from interns to CEOs has at some point typed, “Write me a blog about synergy in the logistics sector,” and watched in awe as a passable (if slightly soulless) essay appears in seconds. Handy? Absolutely. Harmless? Not quite.

The danger isn’t that AI writes badly. The danger is that it writes just well enough for people to stop noticing the difference.

But here’s the thing: readers do notice. They may not point at your brand’s latest article and cry, “This was clearly written by a silicon brain with no emotional intelligence,” but they’ll feel the flatness. The lack of nuance. The suspicious absence of joy, wit, or cultural relevance. AI can produce competent copy. What it can’t do—yet—is connect.

Brands thrive on tone, personality, and empathy. On knowing when to use a wink instead of a nudge. To pull on those heartstrings but avoid the saccarine rush and inevitable crash that follows. On understanding why something is funny, or poignant, or quietly powerful in a way that resonates with actual human beings. Machines don’t live in the real world. They don’t get irony. They don’t get cringe. They don’t understand why Coca Cola hits different at Christmas.

There’s also the small matter of accuracy. Generative AI can hallucinate faster than a rock star at Glastonbury. If you're not checking every line, you’re just publishing guesswork dressed as authority. That’s not brand-safe—it’s brand-sabotage.

Of course I’m not saying we all need to go full quill-and-ink. AI has its place. It’s great for ideation, outlines, and helping that blank page feel less, well, blank. But final content—the stuff that represents your brand—should still pass through human hands, and ideally the sort that know how to wield a metaphor without injuring anyone.

Real writing isn’t dead. It’s just been drowned out by the clickety-clack of the algorithm. But good writing? It still matters. Because real people are still reading.