Retail Media and the possible recession

Sadly we can now be assured that we're about to plunge into a deep and possibly long recession. Some commentators are saying it might last until 2010.
What can we, in retail-media, expect:

1) Customers don't stop buying everything in a recession but what they do is:

- look ever more keenly for value. This may mean they trade down but it can also mean they stick with a premium-priced product because it still offers better performance and therefore value.

- stick to their regular brand but reduce frequency of use.

- mix and match premium and cheaper products

- but yes, some stop buying a brand altogether

The key need for brands is to communicate directly with their most loyal users with a message that will ensure they remain loyal and maintain consumption levels. This is absolutely essential for the premium brands - in a recession the first job is stop customer migration.

2) Customers are likely to become very promotional savvy if for no other reason then they will be bombarded with them. Retail media can help make a brand's promotion stand-out in a very crowded environment.

3) ROI and absolute cost will dominate the CFO’s marketing agenda. Here is a great opportunity to leverage retail media’s accountability, scale, precision targeting and value equation. The smart marketer should be using retail media. However, it's going to be dog-fight as every media owner will be putting together 'their case.' TV will almost certainly see price deflation for example as they try to maintain their share. Making every penny count (retail media’s targeting advantage) should be a mantra.

4) All the evidence shows that those advertisers who continue to spend in a recession tend to always do well – retail media has to make sure it gets a fair share of the pie.

Finally, in a recent survey among US marketers reported in Ad Age:

Shifting dollars
Nearly half (47%) of the marketers surveyed said a recession is likely, and in the event of one, the same percentage said they would keep marketing budgets at their current levels but reallocate spending. While direct mail may be one of the harder-hit areas -- 42% said they would reduce postage expenses -- other direct methods such as e-mail marketing (50%), database segmentation (44%) and search-engine optimization (35%) would see an increase in funding.