Digital Media

 

Sir Martin Sorrell stars in YouTube recession survival video

 

LONDON - WPP's Sir Martin Sorrell is among the business leaders sharing advice on how to survive the recession, in a video initiative on YouTube called Survival of the Fastest.

Sir Martin Sorrell: chief executive, WPP Group
Sir Martin Sorrell: chief executive, WPP Group

The footage is part of an initiative by Google, YouTube's parent company, in association with The Daily Telegraph and the London Business School (LBS).

The idea is to share management insights about the recession, with specific insight on marketing during a downturn, and how it can help businesses ready for the upturn.

Talking in today's video, the chief executive of WPP said making your way out of a downturn is "about the survival of the focused and the more thoughtful".

Among the business experts joining him is Rory Sutherland, vice-chairman of Ogilvy Group UK and new chairman of the IPA. "In many ways, the time to spend on marketing is precisely at these moments of consumer volatility where people are significantly reassessing where they spend their money," he said.

"Most of the time, a hell of a lot of consumer activity is actually habituated in its nature. What you see now is fairly major reassessment and reconsideration going on, which I think means the payback from marketing is often higher now than it is just in average times."

Guy Phillipson, chief executive of the Internet Advertising Bureau, accepted that "advertising budgets are going to be cut and in fact production budgets are going to be cut". But he argued: "If you are a progressive advertiser, the good thing is that you can stand out by being creative."

Meanwhile, Hugh Burkitt, chief executive of the Marketing Society, warned against becoming "too hysterical or too obviously value obsessed", noting that "if you shriek at somebody that what I'm offering is cheap, or it's good value, it may become completely the opposite".

To date, 73 Survival of the Fastest videos have been uploaded on the website and Google UK's marketing director, Dan Cobley, said the idea came from talking with its customers at the start of the recession.

"The more enlightened ones were saying we are going to continue to invest," he said. "If you hunker down and just stop doing anything, you are going to be a weaker player when things pick up."

 

X

You must log in to use Clip & Save

 
 

All Comments

There are currently no comments.

 
 

To post comments please log in here

 
 

Jobs

 

News By Email

You can sign up for our bulletins. Select bulletins you are interested in, enter your email adress an click the button below

Preview
Preview
Preview