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Be More Like Denny's (Yes, Denny's)
By Marc Tracy
Denny's, the fast-food chain semi-famous for its "real breakfast," is for the first time becoming a Super Bowl advertiser, the New York Times reports. It's forking over quite a hefty amount--as much as $3 million--for the privilege of having NBC air a 30-second spot sometime during the third quarter.
You may ask if that isn't insane, particularly with the economy being as it is--why, having held off all of these years, is Denny's only now spending a ton of money on this spot? You may also ask why you should care, and why BizBox does care.
What Denny's appears to be doing is taking a page from the advice of just about every marketing guru out there, which is: in bad economic times, don't cut your marketing budget if you can at all help it; and in fact, if you can at all do it, try to increase it.
This advice likely proves hard for many small business owners to swallow: when the alternative to cutting marketing (which seems to lie outside the absolute requirements of running your business anyway) is to lay off your workers or to go under, marketing seems like the logical place to start slimming down.
But the reality is that it is exactly the tough economic times when you must be marketing yourself, as potential customers are going to be more picky about where they spend their money; these are also the times when you can most efficiently and easily cut in on your competitors and improve your market share. Which is why, as we've said, there is essential unanimity among marketing experts that slashing ad budgets is a terrible idea right now.
Small business owners aren't going to be buying Super Bowl spots, of course. But it might be worth it for them to follow Denny's lead at their own scale.
Comments (2)January 14, 2009 5:32 PM
Comments (2)
I am the owner and creative director of a small advertising agency in South Georgia. When the economic downturn started last year, I was concerned about my company. The company was in the second year of doing business. We have found that there are businesses that we approached before the downturn that were not interested in having us review their advertising stratagies. I am seeing that we will do just fine, we just have to operate efficiently and pay attention to this new economy.
Posted by Steven Heddon | January 15, 2009 6:55 AM
Posted on January 15, 2009 06:55
Fast-food chain?
Posted by Bill Walsh | January 15, 2009 4:55 PM
Posted on January 15, 2009 16:55