The government’s economists have declared the recession over, but American CEO’s aren’t buying it (or much of anything else), according to a recent USA Today article.
I’m with the CEOs. Listening to economic pronouncements from people with elected or appointed jobs is like relying on restaurant recommendations from a very skinny food critic. One has to wonder if there is soul behind the words.
Within the direct marketing industry, the recession’s declared end will be cold comfort for struggling database and CRM vendors and consultants. Get a few drinks into those CEOs and they’ll go off about exactly what sort of recovery they’re seeing. It ain’t much.
Their customers and prospects are still nervous about investing in marketing technology and consulting. More’s the pity: There are some great opportunities for forward-thinking companies to gain market share right now.
If businesses aren’t ready to invest, the CRM and database providers will have to turn to the consumer market, which has maintained higher spending levels throughout the recession.
The opportunities there are endless, if a little farfetched. Planning a date? A good CRM consultant can have the object of your affection convinced he or she had a good time before the first glass of wine. After all, what’s romance but 1 to 1 marketing writ small?
Housing starts are up, so more consumers have garages. Why not fill them with databases and matching collaborative filtering engines? If this seems like an unlikely conceit, remember how many pairs of Vuarnet sunglasses were sold because the guy next door had a pair. Surely a multi-terabyte database can be positioned as a status symbol.
The industry’s message should be that jump-starting the engine of direct marketing’s recovery requires consumers to turn the pennies that had been languishing in their Mason jars into campaign management tools.
Because it doesn’t look like businesses are going to do so any time soon.
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