Posts by The Editors of AnxietyIndex.com

The recession handbook: Brand lessons from the great recession

After a year spent surveying brand and consumer response to the recession through our AnxietyIndex.com, we have released our top 10 brand lessons from the Great Recession.

q4-ai-cover“The Recession Handbook: Brand Lessons from the Great Recession” emerged out of the quantitative and qualitative research that we conducted during the downturn. Over the past year, we have tracked nearly 400 brand responses to consumers’ recession-related anxiety in 27 markets. At the same time, we have quantitatively measured the levels and drivers of consumer anxiety in 13 markets.

Our hope is that this will serve as a primer for future downturns, beyond simply making the case for maintaining or increasing brand spend during a recession. We believe our recommendations will hold up in recessions to come, helping brands better address the challenges that come with economic upheaval.

Our 10 brand lessons from the Great Recession:

1. Find your value voice.
2. Remove the risk from price.
3. Don’t shy away from tackling anxiety head on.
4. Leverage public sentiment.
5. Give consumers more control.
6. Provide a real service for consumers.
7. Inspire rather than empathize with consumers.
8. Return to the core value of hope.
9. Re-imagine how your products are sold.
10. Use the recession to achieve a higher goal.

You can download the report from the Trends and Research section or by clicking here.

AnxietyIndex Hall of Fame: Top 10 brand responses to recession

q3-aiqAfter almost a year spent surveying brand and consumer response to the recession through our AnxietyIndex.com, we found that only a handful of the 350 examples we collected across 24 countries truly stood out. Creating innovative work isn’t easy in any economic climate; it’s even harder when marketing budgets are low and risk aversion is high.

Our AnxietyIndex Brand Hall of Fame salutes 10 of the most notable responses to the recession that we’ve seen. We believe these will hold up in years to come as case studies of work that transcend typical approaches to a downturn. Our third AnxietyIndex Quarterly explains why we think so.

Our Top 10 in ascending order:

10. American Express
9. Caixa Econômica Federal
8. Woolworths
7. Financial Times
6. Portuguese Red Cross
5. JetBlue
4. Cash for Clunkers
3. The Economic Times
2. Levi’s
1. Hyundai Motor America

You can download the whole report from the Trends and Research section or by clicking here.

We’d love to hear your thoughts. Do you agree with our choices?