Marketing thought of the week – strategy in the backseat?

For the past two years at least we’ve witnessed many technology firms focus their marketing resources away from strategy toward tactics – especially on-line tactics. When revenues started to decline as the economy tanked ever more attention has been placed on generating revenues quickly – with strategy often the neglected stepchild. There is often-cited statistical evidence that firms that continue to spend on marketing during an economic downturn outperform firms that curtail their marketing spending after the recovery starts. I wonder if we were to examine the marketing expenditures of these “outperforming” firms what we would find regarding a breakdown of their spending between strategy and tactics. I find it hard to believe that static strategy, even with maintaining tactical spending, has resulted in optimum results for these firms over the course of the downturn and through the recovery.