Across business types, the first 2-3 months of the New Year are consistently difficult times to muster up business. This is largely due to the fact that consumers have spent their readily available disposable income over Christmas. However, pulling back on your marketing budget is truly the worst thing a company can do, and why Net 360 Solutions wants to motivate businesses to push through these meager times by relaying a story to you from an era that truly was enduring meager times.

Kellogg’s vs. Post – a True Story

Forbes, The New Yorker, and many others have shared this similar story over the years, telling of a time when businesses struggled to stay open – let alone had the budget to market their products to people who largely did not have the money to buy them. It is, perhaps, one of the most telling reasons why it is imperative to maintain your branding presence to stay on top of the food chain – literally.

In the late nineteen-twenties, two companies—Kellogg and Post—dominated the market for packaged cereal. It was still a relatively new market: Ready-to-eat cereal had been around for decades, but Americans didn’t see it as a real alternative to oatmeal or cream of wheat until the twenties. So, when the Depression hit, no one knew what would happen to consumer demand. Post did the predictable thing: It reined in expenses and cut back on advertising. But Kellogg doubled its ad budget, moved aggressively into radio advertising, and heavily pushed its new cereal, Rice Krispies. (Snap, Crackle, and Pop first appeared in the 1930s.) By 1933, even as the economy cratered, Kellogg’s profits had risen almost 30 percent and it had become what it remains today: The industry’s dominant player.

This is a condensed version of an important lesson taught in marketing classes around the globe, but tells a true tale of why maintaining your brand through various marketing initiatives is imperative, and why pulling back on your budget when times are hard, could actually mean never regaining that presence again.

At Net 360 Solutions, we provide a wide-range of digital marketing services from our local Langley office. We offer online exposure that can benefit your business beyond just having a basic website, setting your company apart from the competition, better your branding initiatives and aim to increase customer base this year and for many more to come!