Marketing thought of the week – Why does it take an economic earthquake to make some firms do what they should have been doing all along?

A front-page article in the September 14 issue of BtoB Magazine contains a quote that made me scratch my head (and I usually don’t itch). The article is titled, “Tough economy forces marketers to reorganize,” and it contains much of the same stuff we’ve heard before about how marketers have had to adapt to the economy.  The item that made my head itch was under the heading “Focus On The Priorities” in which the director of marketing at USG Corp., a building supply materials company, was quoted as saying, “This year, we wanted to be as efficient as possible with our dollars and make our communications easy for the end-user to understand, so they’re not being bombarded with different messages and services from different groups,” (italics are mine).

I guess I don’t understand why the economy has to tank before some firms think about whether their messaging strategy makes sense. If it’s an effective strategy to prioritize and simplify messaging today, wouldn’t it have always made sense? It makes one wonder how much inefficiency and unnecessary complexity existed in some firm’s marketing before now – and how much of it will return when conditions improve.