{"id":22224,"date":"2025-04-30T14:06:47","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T14:06:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=22224"},"modified":"2025-04-30T14:06:48","modified_gmt":"2025-04-30T14:06:48","slug":"ad-agencies-are-counseling-brands-through-tariff-uncertainty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=22224","title":{"rendered":"Ad agencies are counseling brands through tariff uncertainty"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Tariffs and broader economic uncertainty are throwing marketing plans into disarray and threatening to derail ad spending. Agencies are hard at work trying to keep clients on track.<\/p>\n

As tariff rates and regulations seem to change nearly by the minute, and as the economic picture becomes increasingly hazy, agency executives say they are working on pivoting marketing for clients of various verticals that are facing economic pressure. While many clients aren\u2019t making major changes to their marketing budgets quite yet, execs said they are working to help clients keep the marketing spend work for them in the event of continued tariff uncertainty or a recession.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs soon as a recession starts to hit, people want to pull their money back almost immediately,\u201d Stephanie Spicer, president of the agency Luquire, told Marketing Brew. \u201cMarketing is like investing in the stock market\u2026As soon as a downturn hits, your immediate reaction is, \u2018I want to take all the money out of the stock market,\u2019 but you know that the right thing to do is to keep it in there. It\u2019s the same thing for brand marketing. You\u2019re really investing in the long term.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dialing it back<\/h2>\n

At the agency Kepler, the \u201cdominant theme that we\u2019re seeing across clients is one of caution and preparedness,\u201d Rick Greenberg, who serves as CEO of Kepler and kyu Pulse, said. While he said that thus far, \u201cvery few clients have made significant changes,\u201d there\u2019s quite a bit of\u201cscenario planning\u201d going on. That includes planning ahead for various outcomes of the current tariff back-and-forth, which could include the chance that tariffs are fully or partially rolled back, or a scenario where high tariffs remain in place for the long term.<\/p>\n

Already, clients with heavy exposure to the high tariffs affecting Chinese imports are dialing back their marketing spend, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had one or two clients that are dependent on Chinese manufacturing that have started to pull back as their inventories start to get affected by the current tariff scheme,\u201d he told us. \u201cBut aside from that, everyone\u2019s really in\u2026monitor-and-prepare mode.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are other sectors that are bracing for the ripple effects of tariffs, including travel and tourism, Spicer told us. With prices rising, consumer spending is expected to take a hit, and Spicer predicts that it will result in people traveling closer to home. That means travel and tourism clients are shifting spend to \u201ccloser contiguous markets,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Measuring up<\/h2>\n

To help brands weather the current economic climate, agencies like Kepler are helping them evaluate media efficiency, Greenberg said. During economic downturns, CPMs can come down, which can provide an opportunity for brands to shift marketing spend to performance marketing channels if short-term sales are the goal. Other clients, like those in financial services that aren\u2019t dependent on moving inventory could therefore benefit from shifting marketing dollars toward branding efforts. In moments of economic uncertainty, \u201cconsumer spending and consumer sentiment become a very big driver of business results\u201d for that sector, Greenberg said.<\/p>\n

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\u201c[In a] lot of the categories that we work in, like financial services, consumers tend to make a choice and stick with it for a very long time,\u201d he explained. \u201cThese times of dislocation actually create opportunities for brands to tailor their proposition [and] to meet the need of the moment, but also acquire significantly more consumers as consumers are changing some of those longstanding patterns and loyalties during these moments of change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Price increases on different goods will be stomached by consumers differently, often depending on the original cost of the items, which will mean different sectors should look to adjust their marketing accordingly, Thomas Walters, co-founder and Europe CEO for influencer marketing shop Billion Dollar Boy, said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe impact will probably be higher on items that are already at a higher price point: 20% on a $20,000 or $30,000 vehicle is a lot of money,\u201d he said. \u201cTwenty percent on a bottle of shampoo is not the same kind of price increase.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reputation management<\/h2>\n

It\u2019s not just the domestic economic implications of tariffs that brands are considering, Walters said. Billion Dollar Boy has instructed internal teams to consider the shifting attitudes toward the US when developing global marketing strategies. In Canada, for example, consumers have shown an \u201cactive resistance to purchasing American products,\u201d something US-based brands in the country are already grappling with, he said. Kraft Heinz, for example, has emphasized in recent Canada-specific ads that many of its products for the Canadian market are manufactured in the country and made with Canadian ingredients.<\/p>\n

While agencies are doing their best to help clients prepare, the situation remains volatile, meaning that brand messaging is changing\u2014sometimes by the hour.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe sent a summary out to the team a couple of weeks ago just in the aftermath of Liberation Day of, like, \u2018these are things to consider internally,\u2019\u201d Walters said. \u201cThen 12 hours later, the administration put a 90-day pause on everything, so we still have to go, \u2018Okay, maybe roll back some of those actions, guys.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tariffs and broader economic uncertainty are throwing marketing plans into disarray and threatening to derail ad spending. Agencies are hard at work trying to keep clients on track. As tariff rates and regulations seem to change nearly by the minute, and as the economic picture becomes increasingly hazy, agency executives say they are working on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22039,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-22224","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-marketing"},"yoast_head":"\nAd agencies are counseling brands through tariff uncertainty | Brandiary<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Tariffs and broader economic uncertainty are throwing marketing plans into disarray and threatening to derail ad spending. 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