World economy in meltdown?

The news is dominated by failing banks, falling stock markets, falling real estate values, government rescues with multi-billion dollar sums that have little or no effect on stopping the downward dive to oblivion. Some marketing bloggs are starting to ask will it affect us, are we burying our heads in the sand? Those of us in marketing for several decades have witnessed business cycles of boom and bust, worked in high inflation environments, low inflation, high interest rates and low – but nothing like this. Who would have thought so much of British investment was in Icelandic banks for goodness sake? As the value of our savings disappears you can’t help but wonder what is next? We are at a stage of financial planning right now – what assumptions should we, indeed can we make? And yet, businesses are carrying on. Enquiries are still coming in product being shipped and paid for, so why are companies being so devalued on the stock market? The risk is that the total loss of confidence will start undermining otherwise healthy businesses if people hoard cash. But in the b-2-b sector nobody is yet talking of cutting budgets, broadly it is business as normal. Conventional wisdom advocates investing in more marketing, not less. Of course marketing is a soft target to trim or cut in recessionary times. Not a good plan. Businesses that market their way through difficult times generally emerge as the winners. Time will tell once the history of these strange times comes to be written.