Tariff wars disrupt markets. Learn how marketers can adapt, avoid budget cuts, and prioritize customer sentiment amid economic uncertainty. Act agile, not rigid.
The tariff war between the U.S. and the rest of the world is wreaking havoc on the economy. Consumer confidence is plunging along with the stock markets, and carefully crafted marketing plans are in tatters. No one knows how this will play out, but the crises of 2020 and 2008 offer lessons about what marketers should and should not do.
“You have to tear up your 2025 strategy and start afresh,” said Ewan McIntyre, chief of research and VP analyst for marketing at Gartner. “Unless you were super smart back in November when there was a lot of talk about tariffs, you have been surprised by the reality of this.”
Marketers will have to develop new strategies, and they will likely have to do so with fewer resources.
“The situation for marketers as we entered 2025 was that it seemed like marketing budgets might hold up this year,” he said. “But, based on what we’ve heard from CFOs, we may be in a 2020 situation, whereby the budget you started the year with may not be the one you end your year with.”
CFOs see a chance to cut budgets, don’t let them
That’s because “CFOs do not waste a good crisis,” McIntyre said. They see this as an opportunity to cut costs, and unfortunately, marketing is the first place CFOs look for this.
McIntyre said Gartner’s research into 2008 shows this is a mistake,
“There were a bunch of people who actually increased investment in the face of that crisis,” he said. “We called this winning in the turns, that you can accelerate away from your competition if you can hold your nerve in those times. There’s an opportunity to gain an advantage in market share if you can hold your nerve and convince people that now is the best time for us to invest in this technology.”
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It is possible to make good moves in what is shaping up as a bad economic year if you act with agility and have a clear-eyed view of prioritization. It will require all your strategic management capabilities. There are far too many variables in place to predict the outcome, which means planning for different scenarios and gaming out your options.
“You have to be prepared to kill your darlings when it comes to the stuff that was on your plan originally and face the realities of the market in which we live right now,” he said. “One of the things that marketing is sometimes guilty of is wishing for a market that we would like to have rather than the one that is actually in front of us.”
Good marketing moves in a bad economic year
Consumers were nervous before the tariff fight (or World War Fee, as The Register calls it). In the 79 days since his inauguration, President Trump has been a whirlwind of change. Federal worker layoffs and proposed Social Security and Medicare cuts were already eroding consumer confidence.
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“Even before this latest set of tariff announcements, consumers were feeling quite, quite anxious,” McIntyre said. That anxiety “stretches out buying cycles, and marketers have to keep people engaged for longer.”
In this volatile environment, understanding customer sentiment is crucial.
“It’s never been a better time for CMOs to lean into being the insight engine of the enterprise,” he said. “We talk about the voice of the customer a lot; well, we have to actually have meaningful VOC right now. That VOC needs to make the enterprise smarter about how people are feeling and might feel if we do some things to them that they don’t like.
“There’s a lot of people hurting right now, and a good brand will listen to that and respond and make sure that they’re there for their customers because you want those customers today, but you also want them tomorrow. And price gouging is not a great way of growing loyalty.”
