Marketing and the Economy September Version

News was released last week that Toyota is preparing to spend 1 billion dollars in fourth quarter anticipating the US economy strengthening.  Also last week, Federal Reserve Chairperson, Ben Bernanke, has indicated we are “very likely” out of the recession.  With a 1% decline in advertising sales, Rupert Murdoch is exclaiming that  the worst is over (while also insisting News Corp. will eventually be charging for content).

Does this mean that we ARE coming out of this gloom, or are we as a nation using “The Secret” as a positive reinforcement plan to getting out this economic slump?  I see  and have to spoken to many companies that are still extremely cautious to spend significant marketing dollars (save Toyota, apparently) and forsee not expending money on marketing through fourth quarter and into 2010.  So, perhaps, the wisdom locally is that the recession is to continue for a while.  It hit us later, so it must stay later, I suppose, is the prevailing logic.

All of this takes me to my thought from several months back.  How are businesses anticipating making it through the recession with little to no marketing and then voila expecting  customers to be lining up at their business when the “recession is over”.  Historically, businesses that continue marketing through a recession have a significant percentage of sales increase over business that pulled marketing (either all together or significantly.