Furry dice are a pretty blunt instrument for fighting a recession

By Mik Barton on Oct 28, 08 04:43 PM in PR

One hot summer when I was a two-packs a day office worker and visited the local M&S every lunchtime for my prawns and BLT rations, I was given a free gift of a branded cool bag to take my sandwiches back to my desk.

This same cool bag it turned out was even better for carrying a single home-made sandwich into work, so it helped me break the lunchtime habit, loose weight and save money.

M&S on the other hand have lost several hundred pounds in lost revenue. It was perhaps not their brightest marketing idea.

Another very useful gift I still use is a branded memory stick, especially after I'd deleted the un-viewed PowerPoint presentation and the extremely high-resolution mega-pic of the organisation's chairman to make more room for my files.

Looking around my desk right now, I can also see a bright orange ballpoint. I've kept because it writes really well and is a nice weight and shape to hold.

It too was a free give-away, picked up with the mints and notepad at a conference day earlier this year. Whenever I see the name on the side of the pen, it reminds me never to do business with the company because they have now messed me about on three occasions.

Building reputation is more important than ever for companies wanting to weather the storm, so that is why the enlightened will be investing in PR rather than making cuts. With nine out of ten journalists Googling a company and visiting the corporate website before they start writing, now is the time to invest in your online newsroom (if you even have one) for example.

This week I've been reading various comments around the web about why marketing and PR spend is/isn't or should/shouldn't be first to face the chop when company finances are under pressure.

Rob Brown at the PR-Media-Blog restates the case by quoting Harvard Business School professor John Quelch: "it is a well documented fact that brands that increase their spend in a recession, when competitors are cutting back, can improve market share and the return on their investment."

I'm with him that right now the media needs substance, not fluff.

For me that means the sharper work of media relations and less, as he puts it, grown men running around dressed as creme eggs.

I may sound a bit Scrooge-like as the first flurry of snow settles outside my window and we head towards Christmas, but I also think corporate gifts should be first to face the chop as we hurtle towards a recession.

All communications need to be sharper right now - and furry dice are a pretty blunt instrument.

Branded gifts are great for making people remember your company name (at least until the ink runs out), but they are as good as useless at building reputation.