“Coffee is a boomtime drink – the eighties espresso, the dotcom frappuccino – it would almost be tempting fate to drink it now”: an article that I have just read in the Marketer includes this words as it muses on the current situation and how people are cutting back on spending as '“’sacrifice’ – a propitiatory offering to the angry gods of financial meltdown”. In fact most of the articles in the magazine are about how brands should adjust to the current economic climate and whether simply slashing the marketing budget as nobody is going to buy anything anyway is the right way to respond. The conclusion is of course that it is not – it’s sensible to look at what you are spending carefully and tighten up, but past recessions have proved that the firms that carry on with the marketing are the ones that survive and flourish once the downturn is over.
Another article has the perfect answer for a new business plan for tile retailers who are feeling the pinch. An entrepreneur in California has opened “’Sarah’s Smash Shack’ where stressed customers pay $45 to throw plates at the wall.” Apparently this is a big success especially for corporate events. It could be a great way to get rid of your end of lines – at around £30 per person, you could end up making more for them than you would have done at full retail price in the store and then you can get some publicity out of donating the bits to local schools and artists for them to use for mosaics. In fact if times get really hard you could just forget the tile store and buy in bulk white for stressed out executives to hurl at the wall.
Whether you take me up on the new business concept or not, I wish you all a (somewhat belated by the time this comes out) smashing (sorry) New Year. Let’s hope it turns out better than all the predictions.
