[Posted by Lisa Bradner]

At Forrester's EMEA Forum where David Cooperstein is presenting five things marketers can do to fight the recession.  David shares that Europeans remain pessimitstic about their financial future--although younger Europeans show more optimism than older ones. So, marketers still face trying to figure out if things have stabililized, if they're likely to get worse or if we truly are on an upswing that will lead consumers back.

David cites five things successful marketers are doing to survive the recession: According to David smart marketers:

1)Spend to align consumer interaction. At the height of the recession ING Bank invested 15 months.,more than five million Euros  and the time of 50 employees to integrate the ING and PostBank brands. They invested in channel syncronization & personalization in an effort that grew revenue, cut direct amail expenditures and  sped up campaign cycle times from 26 weeks to 4 weeks.

2) Change the game by changing the offer. Hyundai auto offers its customers 3 months worth of car payments if they lose their job after purchasing a new auto.

 [Posted by Lisa Bradner]

Adaptability is key
to any living organism.  As the
environment changes, those who adjust and find new ways to operate survive. Those
who cannot or choose not to change die out.

 Meaningful brands are
living organisms, shaped by the people who create the products and services
behind them, by the people who use them and create memories and associations
with them, and by the marketers and agencies who build stories and emotional
associations that resonate in people’s hearts and minds.

As regular readers of Forrester's blogs already know my colleagues Sucharita Mulpuru, Shar VanBoskirk and I (Lisa Bradner) were part of last week's Digital Hack Night at Procter and Gamble. (If you missed the story can read about the event in detail at Ad Age here ). In four hours digital experts and P&G employees were divided into teams and challenged to sell as many Tide shirts as possible using their social networks and digital skills. Proceeds of the Tide shirts benefit Tide's Loads of Hope charity. The objective of the event was to give a hands-on experience for traditional brand marketers at P&G the impact of social media.

While debate about the event has raged online we thought it worthwhile to step back and take a look at the longer term lessons we observed from this event. These lessons aren't P&G specific-they're food for thought for every marketer trying to get smart in social media. So, what did we observe? For starters:

• Cause matters. Each attendee at the event was asked to tap their personal network to ask friends, colleagues and family to purchase on behalf of charity.
  

I was privileged to speak at a client conference in Fontainebleau last week.  We were discussing Organic Branding and the importance of companies developing more collaborative relationships with their consumers to build brands using Social Computing tools.

Into every Forrester analyst's life a little blogging must fall! As the last blogging neophyte on our team I've put off introducing myself far too long. Okay, I admit it, I found the medium a bit intimidating but it's time to practice what I preach and find out what it's like to put my brand out online.

I find myself thinking a lot about the importance of permission for marketers. As consumers increasingly opt in to the things they want (personalized content, websites that match their hobbies and special interests, social networking sites) and out of the things they don’t want (ads, dull programming, traditional marketing pitches) marketers are going to have to spend a lot of time getting permission from consumers and figuring out how to hold on to it.