We’re in a recession. What are you going to do? Keep talking, that’s what.

It would be easy for brand managers to persuade themselves that they need to cut investment in marketing and communications. But a better idea is to make it pay.

Here’s why.

1. Why waste your investment so far? Communications campaigns are months in the making, and can take just as long to get inside the heads of consumers. To abandon it now would undo all that good work.
2. Communications are not a risk factor. They’re the glue between brand and consumer. If ever there was a time to step up your dialogue, this is it.
3. It’s measurable. It’s easy to measure the effectiveness of some communications – especially direct or online – and cut the stuff that doesn’t deliver.

In economic times like these, brands have got to be more clever in their communications, and their spend. Time and resources spent in brand reinforcement now will pay dividends later.

So get thinking. Hard. Copywriters aren’t about just words – first come ideas. And ideas are the lifeblood of marketing.

At Stratton Craig, we can help you devise your communications strategy, and tweak your long-term messaging (and the media you use) to make it more measurable – and to make it pay.

Stratton Craig has been making new inroads to business in Europe recently, with a bit of help from the ever-levelling exchange rate.

We’ve recently won a pitch to write the annual report for a large Russian foods producer. This exciting project for a new client will require one of our lucky writers to spend a week liaising with and interviewing the company in Moscow.

We’re also about to complete our first Trendwatch global newsletter for Accor, one of Europe’s leading hotel chains. Accor has its headquarters in Paris, and we were able to assign one of our Paris-based writers to turn Accor’s market research into concise and engaging newsletter content.

Stratton Craig is also working on the annual report for an industrial giant with headquarters in Germany. The challenge involved transforming a lot of highly technical information into something that every reader could understand, while maintaining a consistent tone of voice and a strong brand language.