When times get strange, real leaders stand up. In 2020, the coronavirus has created a heavy human and economic toll, and a downturn looked likely. Pipelines shrank budgets tightened, public companies missed guidance, and private ones found loans and venture money harder to come by. Christopher Lochhead argued that this is exactly the moment when marketing proves its worth. Done well, marketing could set the tone for the whole company, and its impact in tough times is hard to overstate.

We are looking back into one of our earliest episode and reiterate our game plan back then on how to position ourselves in the best possible way despite the ongoing crisis. Let’s see how many of you were successful in following our list, or have developed their own ways to come out on top through Marketing.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

If you’re a CEO, think about leading your company and your category through marketing. If you’re a CMO, think of yourself as your CEO’s personal press secretary. In a crisis the two of them should be stapled together, because marketing unifies communications and sets the voice every spokesperson uses.

Radical transparency matters just as much. Skip the legal and HR babble, and skip lines like “we project a slight take down in revenue growth.” Lochhead points to a struggling company whose CEO and board have been strikingly candid with everyone. That honesty builds trust, and people want to help a team that talks straight.

This is a good time to help people. If your company can donate technology, money, or resources, do it, and ask whether you’re doing right by your own employees and their families. Hospitals, charities, and nonprofits fighting the virus could use the support too.

On the budget side, use the moment to drop anything that doesn’t move the needle. Lochhead says most marketing plans carry about 20% of stupid, baked in like government entitlements. Cut once and cut deeper than feels comfortable, so you don’t have to revisit it in two months.

Research from McKinsey, Bain, and HBR suggests that between 9 and 14% of companies beat competitors by at least 10% in sales and profit growth during a downturn. They act fast, make the required cuts, then push hard ahead of the recovery. Aim to be in that group.

Evangelize your category so people see it as a must have, not a nice to have. Your competitors will likely slash big-picture marketing and over-focus on demand generation, which leaves room for you to own the point of view. Still, keep the cash register ringing. Put five sharp marketers and five sharp salespeople in a room for a day, pick the simplest ideas, and go sell more into existing customers.

Want to check the whole list? Download and listen to this episode.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, and subscribe on Apple Podcast / Spotify!