Economic shock hits. Costs rise. Consumers spend less. Businesses come under pressure. And almost inevitably, marketing budgets are the first to be cut.
But history shows that disappearing from the market during periods of uncertainty is often the bigger risk, which is where the first key principle comes in.
While it might be tough to stomach as you watch your margins drop, brands who remained bold in their communication, like Checkers Sixty60 during Covid, Capitec during the 2008 financial crisis, and Nando’s during loadshedding, prove that continued aggressive investment in visibility while competitors pulled back pays off.
In short, the brands most visible during volatile periods are usually the ones that come out the other side with the stronger market share.
This leads directly to the next question: not whether to market, but how to do it better.
The question is not whether businesses should market during difficult periods, but rather how to market more effectively when budgets come under pressure.
Right now, many South African businesses are entering exactly this kind of cycle, which makes this question even more urgent.
Fuel price increases, spurred by the Middle East conflict, are rippling across the economy, increasing transport costs, operational expenditure and ultimately the cost of goods themselves. Consumers are feeling the squeeze, which means advertisers are feeling it too.
When disposable income shrinks, spending slows and pressure builds for businesses, both large and small.
We’re already starting to see the early signs of this across the advertising industry, with brands and agencies becoming more cautious. Budgets are being delayed, reduced or reassessed altogether, and this is likely to ramp up further as the full impact moves through the supply chain.
In this kind of environment, constraints start to reshape how marketing works.
Difficult trading conditions tend to force something else: creativity.
In stable times, marketing conversations are often dominated by scale (How do we get the most reach? How do we extend our message far and wide?) but periods of economic pressure force marketers to think more creatively and strategically about how to make the budget they do have work harder.
That shift is driving growing interest in more tactical, flexible and performance-led media buying models, particularly within the programmatic digital out of home (pDOOH) arena.
One of the clearest examples of this shift can be seen in how outdoor advertising has evolved.
Historically, outdoor advertising was often perceived as rigid, expensive and inaccessible unless you had a big budget behind you. But the digitisation of the out of home landscape has fundamentally changed that model.
Today, advertisers can activate campaigns far more tactically, purchasing smaller windows of time during specific parts of the day, in specific environments, for specific audiences.
Campaigns can be adjusted dynamically, spend can be scaled up or down quickly, and messaging can change by location, time of day or audience behaviour.
This has given outdoor media the flexibility and precision traditionally associated with digital channels, while maintaining the scale and real-world presence that captures attention.
Research from Kantar Media Reactions shows DOOH significantly outperforms online advertising on brand recall, while additional studies highlight how it strengthens performance across other channels.
All of this becomes even more important when budgets are under pressure.
Perhaps most importantly, this approach reduces wastage, an especially important attribute when every marketing rand is being scrutinised.
If you’re a coffee brand targeting morning traffic, for example, there’s little value in running the same creative at dinner time. If you’re promoting a retail special in a particular suburb, blanketing an entire city becomes unnecessary.
The ability to deploy media more intelligently becomes incredibly valuable when every rand is under pressure to perform. At the same time, localisation starts to play a much bigger role.
In difficult periods, localisation becomes significantly more important. DOOH is inherently contextual, existing in the environments where people live, shop, commute and socialise.
When used correctly, it shifts from broad awareness to real relevance, with well-placed messaging acting as a direct call to action at the right moment.
At the same time, technology is lowering barriers to entry. Platforms allow smaller businesses to access digital billboard inventory more flexibly, selecting specific screens, times of day and budgets.
Aggregation through DOOH networks is also simplifying what has historically been a fragmented process, making it easier to access inventory through a single point of contact.
What we’re witnessing is a wider evolution in how marketers think about media efficiency. The future of advertising won’t belong to the brands with the biggest budgets, but to those that can deploy those budgets most intelligently.
That means understanding audiences more deeply, reducing wastage, prioritising relevance, integrating channels more effectively, and remaining visible even when the instinct is to retreat.
Because while economic cycles eventually recover, lost consumer attention is often much harder, and far more expensive, to claw back.
