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By Kristina Monllos • April 28, 2025 •
Ivy Liu
It’s difficult to know how marketers should manage this current moment. It’s not just a matter of a potential economic downturn that could hurt consumer sentiment and ultimately consumer spending. It’s not just tariffs and the topsy-turvy nature of the Trump administration. It’s a lot for marketers to manage. Even though they expect chaos, they need guidance.
To get a sense of how some marketers, agency execs and industry analysts are figuring out this moment, we asked them for their dos and don’ts. Here’s what they’re thinking from industry players who’ve managed the chaos before:
Kerri Kauffman, CMO of Willow Innovations
Do: Continue to be flexible. Don’t be afraid to move dollars around and try as hard as you can to preserve your total budget. Being open to trying new things, testing, continuing to test, pivoting and thinking about optimization [are important.]
Don’t: Sign long-term deals. The bigger upfront cash, long-term agreements, those are the things we’re waiting on. It feels like there’s so many other tools to take advantage of right now. The big ticket items, like a celebrity endorsement for instance, might be something I’d pause on until there’s more clarity.
Don’t: Have a knee jerk reaction. It’s not a good idea right now. It’s probably not ever a good idea. But there’s also change every single day. Some of it is just wait and see what happens in a week. The news out of the White House is changing very frequently and significantly.
Kevin Simonson, CEO of adMixt
Don’t: Brands are increasing prices and I don’t think they should be public about it. It causes more headache than reward. I’m sure there’s an instance where that won’t be true but in general I stand in that camp. … Do you really want to open that can of worms?
Jay Pattisall, vp and principal analyst Forrester
Do: Maintain market share. Investing some dollars in brand to maintain market share is one of those recession playbook items that I think does apply in this situation. Especially for advertisers that have those circumstances where they’re established brands and they have a strong foothold in a marketplace. But there’s one element to [where they may need to] throttle the marketing expenditures, based upon audiences, regionality and the availability of products like all the dimensions.
Don’t: Wait and see forever. For a while we had there was a bit of a kind of a wait and see approach where all businesses, business leaders and marketers included were trying to stay kind of frozen in the moment and see what was going to happen. They were trying to avoid any decision one way or the other. [We’ve moved] beyond that time period where we could hold out for a better set of circumstances. I just don’t know that we are necessarily in an environment that’s gonna produce a set of circumstances that it’s worth waiting for per se. There are reports of multiple trade deals underway, but underlying and underpinning this is a 10% universal era, so with that information, the wait and see approach is, for lack of a better term, kind of run its course. So, some actions are necessary. Hence, investing in brand and throttling marketing dollars based upon circumstances.
Do: Rethink your audience strategy. Rethink your priority audiences. Maybe it’s gonna be too difficult to try to break through on people who are way early in the journey or in the funnel. Or way up in the funnel. Can we break through if we concentrate our dollars on those who we know are either in the market or are buying our products regularly? Should you be focused more on retention than growth? I’m not saying it’s a rule. I think that this might need to be a temporary way to get more out of your marketing dollars, right? Stay afloat, see less erosion, if you consolidate your dollars against your best audiences.
Don’t: Overcommit to one strategy. You might not just be able to cut back and move budgets, you might have to rethink what you’re putting out there, what message [you want to say now].
I think Nissan was the story I saw most recently that went directly at the tariff messaging and, and basically said, “Hey, these are tariff-free vehicles that are made in the US, right?” So they’re pivoting messaging, not just, oh, we’re going to go do more performance marketing. Or, we’re gonna go more brand marketing.
Don’t: The bigger picture, don’t is don’t look at marketing or advertising in general as the first budget to cut. You’re going to need some level of presence to stay afloat. Or maybe in certain cases, make your retailers give you priorities by doing commitments to your retail media buys.
Chris Plating, chief strategy officer, EP + Co.
Do: Attention is essentially on clearance during crises. Because so many brands are going to react by pulling back and saving the quick spend of removing marketing dollars, if you’re in an organization that can push to steal share [you should]. Understand that your business reality is one that you should use different levers but if gaining market share has been a goal of your organization for the past several years, you should be thrilled from a marketing standpoint at the availability of buying new eyeballs and consideration as consumers open up the aperture of what they’re willing to take. They’re going to be more flexible [on brands they buy] and media will be more affordable.
Don’t: Fight on price. Fighting on price is a losing game. Building belief can turn chaos into connection. Consumers aren’t going to be able to afford as much. [Marketers need to think about] what true needs arise out of that? Because the tariffs are going to be unpredictable. It’s very clear that this administration, no matter what side you’re on, uses a certain amount of misdirection as part of its strategy or as part of its existence. So instead of looking to try to guess or base something off of where the numbers are, if you look towards what that uncertainty does to consumers from an emotional standpoint, that’s your bedrock.
Hyundai Assurance was a great example. [Editor’s note: Read an Oral History of the Hyundai Assurance program here.] [People were worried] if I lose my job during this recession, I won’t regret this major purchase of a car I made. That goes to a much deeper place. It wasn’t about if I could afford a $30,000 car, it was about my life doesn’t have the stability I took for granted six months ago and you’re now a partner to me in that life. Hyundai had a huge leap of trust and belief that could be a lifetime of decision-making, not just immediate. They also drove urgency. This belief that you can’t drive long-term sales while also doing long-term brand building is especially irrelevant in times of mass disruption.
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