Positioning for an economic downturn? Or, of baby birds and octopi.

So it's pretty clear the industry is in for a bit of a rough spell. There usual summer lull in new business and softening budgets may not come back in the autumn. The IPA has been talking for a while now about the importance of brands advertising during a recession to strengthen your market position when it's hard for your competitors to respond.

But, how do agencies position themselves for this downturn?

Networks have greater flex than smaller agencies. They can move people around the network, compensate for downturns in one market through network revenues, and downsize more easily. I was in a network during and after the last recession, so I can remember how they consolidate and adapt.

Smaller, independent agencies have less elasticity of resources and cashflow. Less 'fat'. The danger is they strip out a lot of the cost which makes them less able to add value and slower to respond to an upturn (and therefore vulnerable to sale).

I suppose my answer is that smaller agencies have to try and sell an integrated offer based on a value (not low cost) basis. They can save the client money by not having to maintain a lot of separate contracts with different agencies (a network to a client must look like a nest with loads of constantly demanding baby birds competing for scraps of worms from the parent). Integration can mean keeping the brains trust together and coordinating an integrated structure (and therefore campaign design) around the clients' business. More like an octopus, then.

And I wonder how many agencies have been bold enough to start talking about the R word in their creds yet?

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