Advertising best practice, evidence and insights

What we know about advertising in a recession

Article • WARC COVID-19 Series, March 2020

Explores advertising in a recession through the evidence available in the WARC archives and beyond. Typically, recessions cause businesses to rein in advertising spend in the short term, a mistake, that can cause long-term damage to a brand.

Recession-proofing brands across all time horizons — the short, mid and long term

Article • WARC Exclusive, May 2020

Chris Reitermann, Chief Executive, Asia & Greater China, Ogilvy, outlines how brands can recession-proof their brands by working through three phases.

WARC’s new series: What’s working in the COVID-19 pandemic

Opinion • Anna Hamill, July 2020

To say that COVID-19 has completely changed business-as-usual in 2020 almost seems trite at this point.

What's working in mobile

Article • WARC Category Intelligence, July 2020

Global strategies, campaign updates and trends in mobile.

How FMCG brands can blend traditional retail and e-commerce post-COVID-19

Article • Ed Cox, WARC Exclusive, June 2020

COVID-19 has prompted many brands to beef up their e-commerce presence or direct to consumer strategies to supplement traditional retail channels.

Re-imagining OOH as a hyper-local medium

Opinion • Alex Brownsell, July 2020

To bounce back from an unfortunate annus horribilis, brands and media owners must take a new, more localised approach to OOH advertising.

What's working in financial services

Article • WARC Category Intelligence, July 2020

Global strategies, campaign updates and trends in the financial services category.

A future of opportunity: Four predictions of evolutionary change in consumers

Article • Irene Joshy, WARC Trends, June 2020

Kantar’s Irene Joshy outlines the key anchors that will drive consumer behaviour through this current pandemic period and into the future.

Nielsen report: Local spot TV advertising is on the upswing as states begin to reopen

Article • Nielsen, Research on WARC, June 2020

Looks at trends in local spot TV advertising during the COVID-19 pandemic in the US, by examining changes in the number of ad units by category and in individual markets.

Three big trends for brands from the shift to e-commerce

News • 24 June 2020

Marketers seeking to thrive in the e-commerce arena should get back to basics, consider online retail platforms as media destinations, and ensure they do not place too much emphasis on performance marketing.

Keep calm and advertise on: How to successfully navigate your brand through an economic downturn

Article • VAB, WARC COVID-19 Series, June 2020

This research looks at recent TV audience behavior, what sports fans are watching during COVID, OTT trends and COVID-19 ad performance.

Digital’s flexibility has made it indispensable to weather the COVID-19 storm

Opinion • Lee Lythe, June 2020

Digital is the ideal channel as advertisers switch to outcomes-based media buying, writes Lee Lythe, Chief Investment Officer at Spark Foundry UK.

Rapid revenue recovery: A road map for post-COVID-19 growth

Article • Brian Gregg, Eric Hazan, Aimee Kim, Rock Khanna, Jesko Perrey, and Dennis Spillecke, WARC COVID-19 Series, June 2020

Report from McKinsey & Co. that outlines strategies for B2B and B2C companies to recover revenue quickly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

How marketers like P&G, GSK and Hershey are adapting to a new e-commerce landscape

Article • Stephen Whiteside, Event Reports, Lions Live, June 2020

Brands are ramping up their investment in e-commerce in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the pace of change can make it difficult to direct investment in the most impactful way.

Rebuilding customer experience for the COVID-19 recovery

Article • Charlotte Lo, WARC Exclusive, June 2020

As COVID-19 upends the customer experience, brands need to think beyond short term fixes, according to research by BBH London.

COVID-19 Conversations: Morgan Flatley, U.S. Chief Marketing and Digital Customer Experience Officer, McDonald’s

Opinion • Cathy Taylor, June 2020

From its humble beginnings as a single restaurant, McDonald’s has become one of the world's leading food service brands with more than 36,000 restaurants in over 100 countries.

Leading indicators of the future: COVID-19 edition

Article • Rita Gunther McGrath, WARC Webinars, June 2020

Shares knowledge on what it takes to build and maintain strong brands during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

NRMA learns the hard way

News • 05 June 2020

Bushfires, floods and the COVID-19 outbreak have forced Australian insurer NRMA to be flexible about plans – and it has learned some key lessons about adapting quickly.

Mondelez’s strategy for doubling down on e-commerce

Article • Stephen Whiteside, WARC COVID-19 Series, June 2020

Mondelez International, the snacks company, is doubling down on e-commerce in line with changing consumer habits.

UK business could rescue £550 million of lost profits in 2020

News • 03 June 2020

UK PLC is facing a huge financial blow from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent lockdown - but a new study from Ebiquity claims that simply by reallocating marketing spending, British businesses could rescue over half a ...

The real scale of the 2020 downturn

Opinion • James McDonald, June 2020

COVID-19 has upended adspend forecasts. Here, James McDonald, WARC Data's managing editor, explains some of the reasoning behind the revised outlook presented in the latest Global Ad Trends report.

From Koalas to Coronavirus: How NRMA Insurance learnt to move at the speed of culture

Article • Catherine Rushton, WARC COVID-19 Series, June 2020

Mindshare’s Catherine Rushton outlines lessons learnt with insurance brand NRMA in responding to back-to-back events from bushfires to COVID-19.

Four COVID-19 marketing trends: navigating what’s next

Opinion • Anna Hamill, June 2020

As countries around the world emerge from lockdown, businesses are having to adjust to a future rather different from the one they’d planned for in January.

Keep calm and advertise on: How to successfully navigate your brand through an economic downturn

Article • Research on WARC, May 2020

Features both current data on ad spending trends due to COVID-19 and historical data highlighting how brands that continue to spend on advertising through recessions come out more strongly when recessions end.

Adapting to the new rules of engagement with consumers is a must to survive COVID-19

Article • Low Lai Chow, WARC COVID-19 Series, May 2020

Kantar outlines how brands need to adapt and meet consumer expectations as the impact of COVID-19 continues to make its presence felt.

Marketing in a recession