When Times Are Tough, Start Marketing

I read a great article the other day about how Hyundai is becoming a major player in the auto industry. They are rapidly gaining market share and outselling their Asian rivals and U.S. competitors by a wide margin.

The catalyst for their progress is coming from the strong leadership by Chairman Mong-Koo Chung. He altered the direction of the company from making affordable, low-style cars to luxurious, high-quality vehicles. One big change is that he implemented one of the longest warranties in the business—10 years/100K miles—to further convince buyers that “cheap” and “Hyundai” were no longer synonymous.

Admittedly, I’d never given the company one second of consideration when car shopping. To me, they were lumped in with the Kias and Scions of the world—cutesy rides that you get for your kid when  he turns 16. Nothing more.

But even I couldn’t help notice their bold marketing strategies during the recent recession.

What we’re they doing, you ask? For the most part, Hyundai was essentially doing just one thing: they weren’t sitting around doing nothing.

While it’s easy to see why companies would rather save marketing dollars and sit the recession out, it’s also great to see Hyundai go the other direction.

As a marketer, it’s hard enough to stand out in an increasingly crowded playing field like automobiles. But what better opportunity could you possibly get than when everyone else is sitting on the sidelines? Hyundai not only increased their spending (and probably got a lot better placements and media rates), they also showed that it was possible to make car buying a viable option even in tight financial times.

Personally, I thought that their recent campaign where buyers could return their cars—no questions asked—if they lost their jobs was brilliant. It showed they had a heart. It proved they could make a hard financial decision easy. And better yet, it got tons of free PR from news services. That’s a win-win-win in my book.

Of course, they’re not the only company that has profited during hard economic times.

Our client, Sybase, also took advantage of the marketing slowdown to make a bold move right where you’d least expect it: Wall Street. Talk about the perfect storm. The financial capital was in the midst of a complete industry meltdown. Losses were in the trillions. Firms were going bankrupt. Thousands of people were losing their jobs. IT budgets, especially in this sector, all but disappeared.

But to Sybase, it was the perfect time to sell. Their risk analytics solutions delivered exactly what most of these financial and capital market firms needed: a way to get better data, faster, so they could make smarter decisions regarding trades, risk, compliance and more.

So they focused on generating awareness in provocative ways. With a multitude of highly-targeted placements like subway posters and bus panels around the Wall Street area, Sybase was able to catch their audience’s attention outside of the office. By using all copy layouts, the posters were designed to highlight some of the limitations they faced while doing business on a daily basis. One reads, “Your risk exposure changes by the second. But your data is hours old. Analyze that.”

The campaign was a resounding success. The ads made their audiences stop and think. It made traders ask their IT people if they were using Sybase. And for Sybase itself, it made cash registers ring—to the financial tune of seven consecutive record quarters.

Of course, if they had just reacted like everyone else and made the “smart” decision to pull back on their marketing investment, none of this would’ve happened.