Navigating Business During a Recession
It's official: we're in a technical* recession.
Here in Canada, over the past six years especially, it's felt like a recession the whole time, only now, it's been officially announced by the Canadian government.
Between the pandemic's effect on businesses worldwide, global conflict and wars in Iran and Russia-Ukraine, and the developments in AI – winning work has never been harder, in some ways.
We know this, because we've started to watch as top design agencies and studios are bidding on and accepting projects at waaaaaay lower price points than they normally would.
"The competitive landscape for winning new work is more competitive than ever."
When financial constraints are faced by clients across verticals, one of the first shifts is to cut marketing and sales efforts, in order to divert money towards operations to keep their business alive.
And with these cuts, sometimes the last thing any client is considering is their creative, their identity, and communications efforts.
For us, as agency and studio owners, it means we need to shift our approach.
It means being a lot more considerate with the costs associated with projects; not undervaluing ourselves, but being able to clearly justify to the client why deliverables and project phases are priced the way that they are.
Another consideration is to position creative work as not just a "nice-to-have", but essential towards winning new business and having more customers come through the door, in order to help clients themselves navigate economic downturns.
