The worst time to go quiet

Why companies should invest in communications when business gets tough

Companies are often at their loudest when business is booming and their quietest when conditions deteriorate. From a financial perspective, that may look prudent. From a competitive perspective, it can be exactly the wrong decision.

There is a strange contradiction in the way many companies approach marketing and communications.

When revenues are growing, confidence is high and customers are spending, companies invest. They launch campaigns, sponsor events, hire communications agencies, increase advertising, build their executives’ profiles and talk enthusiastically about growth.

Then the market turns.

Budgets come under pressure. Sales slow. Management focuses on costs. And marketing and communications are frequently among the first expenses to be reduced.

It is understandable. But it raises an obvious question: why spend heavily communicating when customers are already buying, only to stop communicating when you actually need to convince them?

The problem is how companies see marketing

Marketing is easy to cut because the savings are immediate, while the damage to visibility, reputation and future demand often appears much later. But when demand is harder to win, communications should be treated less as discretionary spend and more as an investment in future growth.

The real risk is that companies go quiet at exactly the moment customers, investors and employees need more reassurance. Competitors that maintain their presence can then gain attention, trust and market share at a time when others are retreating.

The UAE makes this particularly relevant

The UAE remains fundamentally resilient, but 2026 has demonstrated how quickly external uncertainty can affect sentiment and commercial activity. In July, the IMF said the UAE’s overall GDP was expected to be slightly lower in 2026 following strong expansion in 2025, with uncertainty affecting non-hydrocarbon sectors including tourism, transportation, trade and real estate. Importantly, the IMF also expects a strong rebound in 2027 as activity normalises.

That last point should matter to CEOs.

If you believe your market will eventually recover, the strategic question is not simply how much money you can save during the slowdown. The question should be: what position do you want to occupy when the recovery arrives?

Companies need to be careful about confusing a slowdown in their own sector with a slowdown in the competition for attention.

Your customers have not stopped consuming information. Investors have not stopped evaluating opportunities and competitors have certainly not stopped trying to capture market share.

If your company disappears from those conversations, somebody else occupies the space.

Going dark has a cost

There is also a misconception that marketing can simply be switched off for 12 months and restarted when conditions improve.

Brands do not necessarily work that way.

Nielsen’s marketing-mix research estimates that brands going off-air can lose around 2% of long-term revenue for every quarter they remain dark, while rebuilding lost brand equity after restarting communications can take several years.

Kantar documented a similar effect with a major beverage brand. The company stopped media investment in one region while maintaining it in another. Market share fell by two percentage points in the market where communications stopped, while remaining stable in the market where investment continued. Restarting advertising the following year did not immediately recover the lost share.

Although the saving appears immediately on the P&L, the real cost to the business may surface much later.

The strongest companies don’t simply ‘keep spending’

The argument is not that CEOs should protect every marketing budget regardless of performance. Poor marketing should be cut in good times as well as bad ones.

A downturn should force management to become more disciplined, not invisible.

Harvard Business Review researchers examined 4,700 public companies across three previous recessions. Only around 9% emerged from downturns in a significantly stronger position than before. The strategy associated with the greatest likelihood of success was neither aggressive cost-cutting nor reckless expansion. It was a combination of improving operational efficiency while continuing to invest more than competitors in areas that created future growth, including marketing.

That is a very different philosophy from simply cutting everything by 20%.

Marketing should not be a celebration budget

Perhaps companies need to rethink what marketing and communications are for.

Too often they become a form of corporate celebration.

Revenue is up: spend.

The market is booming: advertise.

A new product launches: hold an event.

Profits fall: stop.

A company’s strongest communications strategy should be designed around the moments when stakeholders have the most questions, customers require the most convincing and competitors are most vulnerable.

There will obviously be situations where cash preservation becomes existential. But for financially sound businesses experiencing a cyclical slowdown, indiscriminately cutting communications can amount to solving this year’s cost problem by creating next year’s growth problem.

The UAE has repeatedly demonstrated its capacity to rebound rapidly from periods of disruption.

For CEOs who expect their industry to recover, the objective should therefore not simply be to survive until conditions improve. It should be to make sure that when customers, investors and partners start spending again, your company is the one they remember.

Because the best time to build visibility is not necessarily when everyone is shouting. Sometimes it is when everyone else has gone quiet.