Marketers Must Be the Ones to Lead the Country Out of Recession

This article from AdAge discusses the case made by the Association of National Advertisers that marketers should be the ones to lead the country out of the current recession, and cites examples of CMOs who have led such turnarounds with their own big brands.

While the recovery of the country will rest largely with the recovery of these brands and companies in terms of prompting hiring and consumer confidence, I'd like to take the idea one step further by pointing out that advertising itself has the intrinsic ability to transform human behavior, and thus the responsibility to do so.

I was working as a marketing manager at a small, residential homebuilder when the housing market crashed. I started there in September 2006, when things were still rocking and rolling and agents were still order takers and buyers were still entering into lotteries to get their hands on investment properties. Over the next year things unraveled fast and heavy and I survived 5 rounds of layoffs to be one of the last 15 or so employees (down from about 500 when I started) to go down just before the ship sank.

Needless to say those were challenging times, but one of our biggest challenges from the very beginning to the bitter end was how to deal with the media. We had a good product at a good price in good locations, but nothing we could do could get potential buyers to ignore the media fire storm that was fanning the flames of the market crash. No matter where you turned in those days, all you heard was a cacophony of Chicken Littles pronouncing that the sky was falling. We began and ended so many meetings, lunches, events and even prayers lamenting that if only the media would just stop talking about how bad things were, or were going to get, we could all get back to work and sell some houses. I still believe that the way the media covered the news in the housing market during that time contributed, at least in some degree, to it ending up as bad as it did.

But, I also believe that the media, or at the very least, the advertisers, have the ability and even responsibility to turn things around as well. We've already seen a number of "optimism" campaigns from the likes of Wal-Mart, Bank of America and Coke to name a few, and this is one band wagon I'd like to see more businesses, advertisers, and media outlets and pundits jump on. There is power in the ability to influence the opinions and behaviors of the general public, and it's time that it be used for the betterment of all.