When a business enters crisis mode, marketing is often one of the first areas to face cuts. Large shoots get postponed, events are cancelled, external contractors are reduced, and advertising budgets move toward channels that can generate sales immediately. The logic is understandable. The problem starts when optimisation turns into shutting down everything that does not deliver an instant conversion.
A crisis requires a different marketing structure, not the absence of marketing.
Research by Les Binet and Peter Field has long established a rough 60/40 benchmark between long-term brand building and short-term activation. It is not a universal formula for every company, category, or stage of growth, but the underlying logic remains relevant: when a brand shifts too heavily toward performance, it risks maintaining today’s sales at the expense of tomorrow’s demand.
During a crisis, that balance can change. A larger share of the advertising budget may go toward conversion, retention, and audiences that already know the brand. But keeping at least part of the budget for reach and new customer acquisition is still critical. Otherwise, a few months later, the brand may end up with a perfectly optimised bottom of the funnel and nobody new entering it.
Completely disappearing from view is risky too. Research into advertising pauses shows that prolonged periods without communication are often followed by declining sales, particularly for smaller brands and those that had previously been growing. When competitors reduce their activity, maintaining visibility can become especially valuable. Lower advertising noise may create an opportunity to protect share of voice without spending at the same scale as before.
That does not mean continuing to spend as if nothing has changed.
A fashion event for 200 guests can become an intimate dinner for 20 key clients. An expensive event created mainly for content can be replaced by a social or charitable partnership that works simultaneously for PR, community, visibility, and content. A large production can become a smaller shoot designed from the beginning to create assets for campaigns, social media, the website, email, and paid advertising.
The main question is no longer “How much can we cut?” but “What exactly are we paying for?”
Every contractor, service, and marketing activity should go through a simple audit. What does it actually contribute to the business? Do we need that result right now? Can we achieve it more efficiently or move the function in-house?
This is often where brands find budgets that have gone unquestioned for years: duplicated tools, subscriptions nobody really uses, oversized production, content with a very short lifespan, or agency functions that can already be handled by a strong internal specialist.
The existing customer base deserves the same attention. In a difficult market, acquiring a new customer through paid media may cost significantly more than bringing back someone who already knows the brand. CRM stops being a secondary channel. Segmentation by recency, purchase frequency, average order value, category, and VIP or VIC status allows brands to build communication around actual behaviour instead of sending the same “20% off until Sunday” message to everyone.
Discounting needs to be reconsidered too. When sales slow down, constant promotions can feel like the easiest answer. But once customers become used to the idea that full price only exists between two sales, perceived value starts to decline together with margin.
For fashion and luxury brands, value-added offers can be more effective: private shopping, early access, personalised service, gifts with purchase, special sets, limited editions, or offers created specifically for loyal clients.
A crisis is also a useful moment to look again at the customer themselves. Someone who bought for novelty or status a year ago may now care more about versatility, longevity, service, or a clearer relationship between price and value. Showing the same message with a bigger discount is unlikely to solve that shift.
Finally, a brand should decide in advance what it is absolutely unwilling to cut. Product quality. Service. Visual identity. A certain production standard. Relationships with key clients. The elements that make the brand recognisable in the first place.
Because optimising marketing in a crisis is not about becoming exceptionally good at spending less.
It is about understanding where money is simply disappearing and where it is protecting demand, customer relationships, and the future value of the brand. The first category can be cut aggressively. The second is exactly what the company will need when the market eventually starts moving again.
