Marketers Try to Make Themselves Recession-Proof Amid Turbulence

“Snafu: Situation normal, all f—d up.”

Stephan Loerke, CEO of the World Federation of Advertisers, dropped this f-bomb — part of an acronym coined by the US military during the Second World War — onstage at the ING Arena at the trade body’s recent flagship event in Brussels. He said it was an apt way to describe how marketers feel three months into 2025.

Yet marketers will often say they’re at their most creative when they’re under pressure. (Just don’t mention cutting their budgets.)

The duality was on full display at the glitzy conflab, replete with snazzy onstage graphics and a house band playing electropop in between sessions. Speakers from brands like Mastercard, L’Oréal, and Kraft Heinz painted an optimistic vision to the 2,000-strong audience about how marketers could position their companies for growth, despite the tectonic shifts happening around them.

Between the prospects of tariffs, inflation, the rising cost of living, global conflicts, political polarization, and the disruptive impact of AI, there’s a lot for a CMO to keep on top of.

Almost all (99%) of the roughly 600 marketers polled in a recent survey from the WFA and the consultancy firm Oxford said economic and geopolitical uncertainty — and the need to quickly adjust priorities and budgets — would be important or more important in the next five years. Roughly two-thirds (68%) said they’d anticipate these pressures would grow.

One knock-on effect of that is ad budgets are likely to take a hit. Marketing is often the first department to feel the impact of cost cuts. In separate reports last month, analysts from Madison and Wall, as well as Magna Global, trimmed their US ad market forecasts for 2025.

Backstage, Loerke told me that many marketers felt the uncertainty was at an inflection point, which was driving conversations about how to prove marketing’s value as CMOs prepare for a tough year.

“Usually, when that conversation starts, it means that actually there’s a recession coming,” said Loerke, a former marketer at L’Oréal in the 1990s.

I interviewed six top global CMOs and spoke with other marketing execs attending the Brussels event to get a sense of what’s top of mind for marketers as they navigate the turbulence.

Marketers are scenario planning while trying to keep on track with their long-term strategies

Many marketers are spending a significant portion of their time locked in scenario-planning meetings with their CEOs, chief finance officers, and other members of the C-suite.

“Back in the day, when I started in the business, it was an A plan and a B plan,” said Diana Frost, global chief growth officer at Kraft Heinz. “Well, that’s a C plan and a D plan now.”

With the costs of raw materials going up, marketers in sectors like consumer goods and food are having to make rapid-fire decisions about prices, packaging, and product formulations. Consumers’ willingness to pay more at the checkout is often partly determined by years of brand-building designed to make them choose one product over another.

Patrik Hansson, EVP of marketing and innovation at the dairy company Arla Foods, said that while companies may encounter a year with disappointing growth, it’s important for CMOs to stick to their plans — a five-year horizon rather than a six-month horizon, say — to ensure their marketing has a long-term impact.

“If you have a way forward, then a bit of noise, a bit of turbulence doesn’t distract you from the long term, and that’s what we’re trying to focus on because otherwise, you get lost in this,” Hansson told me.

It all adds up for marketing measurement

Over coffees, canapés, and cocktails, job security was a hot topic at the event.

A February survey published Tuesday from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business found that 63% of the 281 US marketing leaders polled felt increased pressure from their chief finance officers, up from 52% in 2023.

“One of the big problems is that the advertisers themselves are shedding people in an attempt to cut costs, so CMOs are risk-averse and look for signs of success that are supposedly measurable,” Nick Manning, founder of the media consultancy Encyclomedia, who was in attendance, told me after the event.

“Saying ‘trust me, it’ll work’ doesn’t play in a world where short-term is the only term,” Manning added.

Diageo is often seen across the industry as a poster child for demonstrating marketing effectiveness.

In 2023, it began working with a tech company called CreativeX. CreativeX uses artificial intelligence to generate a “creative quality score” that predicts whether digital marketing assets will be effective.

The drinks giant is also using an AI listening tool, developed with its partners Share Creative and Kantar, to predict consumer trends. One insight: 2025 is the year of “zebra striping,” in which consumers cut down on their alcohol consumption by alternating between alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks.

Diageo’s marketers also use an internal tool called Catalyst to get immediate access to data to help them make planning decisions.

“I want our marketers to have a business mindset and delve into the insights we can now access to plan spend, design campaigns, create content, and collaborate with partners based on what scenario best delivers the brand-building outcome that drives growth,” said Cristina Diezhandino, Diageo’s chief marketing officer.

At Kraft Heinz, Frost wants to instill a sense of swagger and pride within the marketing department — and she’s got the receipts to back it up. The Heinz brand, in particular, has marked compound annual revenue growth of 6% over the past two years, adding around $600 million in top-line growth to the broader Kraft Heinz business, Frost said. She credits the creation of its internal digital ad agency, “The Kitchen,” and also the repeatable frameworks it’s put in place for Heinz marketers around the world to help grow the brand further.

“When you have these proof points of growth, then you can build the pride, then you can build the momentum of how it’s actually possible as you roll it out to the rest of the portfolio, ” Frost said.

Jitters over brand safety and DEI rollbacks loomed large

“Brand safety” was the elephant in the room at the event.

Unspoken but present were lawsuits filed by Elon Musk’s X and the video platform Rumble, plus a Jim Jordan-led House Judiciary Committee investigation. These took aim at the WFA’s now-shuttered voluntary initiative, the Global Alliance of Responsible Media, and more than a dozen of its advertiser members. The lawsuits and the probe, which are ongoing, allege GARM’s members illegally colluded to boycott platforms like X and Rumble. While GARM closed, which the WFA said was due to its limited resources, the WFA has said it adhered to competition rules and would prove so in court. The WFA told me in Brussels it didn’t want to discuss the matter.

(Side note: For all its glamour, the WFA’s event had been originally due to take place at the far-flung locale of Mumbai, India, but after the legal troubles arose, it was shifted to Brussels, where the WFA is headquartered. The WFA partnered with the local advertising trade body, the UBA, to run the main show.)

While GARM was off limits, marketers did open up about another topic that’s become newly contentious, particularly in corporate America: the anti-woke movement and the vocal backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.

Gael de Talhouet, VP of brand building at the Swedish hygiene company Essity, said marketers should be mindful that “a brand is not a political stage.”

“It’s something where you tell people about the good you bring to the world,” he added.

Rupen Desai, CMO and venture partner of the Una Terra Early Growth Fund, said the recent DEI rollbacks had revealed two types of companies: those where DEI was hard-coded into the company’s economic model and those that were investing in these sorts of programs just because everyone else was.

For the second type of company, Desai said the recent movements are a “huge sigh of relief.”

“When you’re grappling with growth, or the lack of it, and this investment isn’t really yet showing results, it’s probably easier to take a step back,” Desai said.

But he added: “The companies who continue on this journey will be bigger winners than the ones who took a step forward, took a step back.”

As the sun set over the Palais de la Bourse, the former Brussels stock exchange, where the event’s gala dinner was held, the mood was buoyant, despite the complexities the people in the vast dining room were having to navigate this year. (And sure, perhaps the frequently topped-up wine, exquisitely cooked duck, and performance from the French comedy TikTok creators Supermassive helped a tiny bit.)

CMOs are complex creatures, after all, as David Wheldon, the new WFA president and chief brand officer of the lottery group Allwyn, summed up.

“A marketer has to have this strange combination of optimism and belief in what you’re doing personally, and belief in what you’re doing for your company and your customers — and you have to be aware of the context you’re in,” Wheldon said. “If you flip-flop because the context is changing rapidly, then you cause yourself a problem.”