Marketing in time of crisis

MANILA, Philippines - A crisis, such as what the world is currently experiencing, is the best reason why marketing should be pursued even more vigorously than during comfortable times.

Thus, even the Philippine Marketing Association (established since 1954) is forcefully marketing its coming first national marketing summit to get more participants from business, marketing professionals and the academe to get involved in coming up with solutions and innovative strategies to push products and services in a dull market.

At a recent press event to launch the summit slated for June 16 and 17, PMA president Mylene Abiva said “now more than ever we need to get all minds to present us with new solutions and new approaches to perk up the market for our products and services and push our country to foreign investors and visitors.”   

“Our conference will tell our people how to manage the crisis. Our problem is to call on our members and marketing professionals to contribute and come up with solutions to the crisis, which is why we decided to hold this first summit,” she added.

Abiva said the summit’s output, will be presented to Trade and Industry Secretary Peter Favila   as PMA’s proposed solutions on how the country can hurdle the current crisis so the country can be ahead in adopting to a recovering global economy.

Delegates will be given an academic presentation of the economic outlook for 2009 by Dr. Bernardo Villegas of the Univerity of Asia and the Pacific and the global economic situation from top fiscal and economic gurus from foreign delegates.

They will also hear about the bustling BPO sector; the role of government in branding the country to foreign investors and tourists; market driving strategies, business management systems for small and medium enterprises, out of the box advertising and the rising trend in public relations.

PMA officials present at the summit launch were uniform in saying that because of the high cost of above-the-line (newspapers, TV, radio and outdoor ads) campaigns, more and more companies, who are scrimping their budgets, will resort to below the line and out of the box marketing efforts such as SMS, Internet, word of mouth and event sponsorships to drum up patronage for their products and services.

Decisions on advertising medium to pick would depend on the products and targeted markets and impact that marketers intend to attain from their efforts, they said.

The PMA, which has long concentrated on Metro Manila businesses for membership, has aggressively established provincial chapters where marketing support is more urgent.

Already, the association has set up 13 provincial chapters in Subic, Bacolod, Bicol, Pampanga, Cagayan de Oro, Cavite, Bulacan, Iloilo, Davao, Cebu, Soksargen, Batangas and Baguio.

After the national marketing summit, the PMA will be holding national marketing caravans or lecture series in the 13 provincial chapters to teach the marketing practitioners in these provinces how to be globally competitive and similar topics that are relevant to their local conditions such as tourism marketing for Subic and other provinces; BPO and even their local products.