[Posted by Lisa Bradner]

At Forrester's EMEA Forum where David Cooperstein is presenting five things marketers can do to fight the recession.  David shares that Europeans remain pessimitstic about their financial future–although younger Europeans show more optimism than older ones. So, marketers still face trying to figure out if things have stabililized, if they're likely to get worse or if we truly are on an upswing that will lead consumers back.

David cites five things successful marketers are doing to survive the recession: According to David smart marketers:

1)Spend to align consumer interaction. At the height of the recession ING Bank invested 15 months.,more than five million Euros  and the time of 50 employees to integrate the ING and PostBank brands. They invested in channel syncronization & personalization in an effort that grew revenue, cut direct amail expenditures and  sped up campaign cycle times from 26 weeks to 4 weeks.

2) Change the game by changing the offer. Hyundai auto offers its customers 3 months worth of car payments if they lose their job after purchasing a new auto.

3)Buy share of voice when others can't. Kelloggs invested ad spend in 8 strategic brands growing their market share by staying in market while others stopped messaging

4) Use Social to raise awareness;  Toyota launched its IQ model with a blog of two people using the car in a hypermiling experiment.  The duo blogged, tweeted and posted their exploits on facebook driving 100 million impressions.

5) Use customer intelligence to prioritize activities.  Capital One used its database to identify customers most likely to respond to social media–instead of sending them direct mail the company engaged them in Facebook and other social spaces.

Do these ring a bell?  What other strategies has your company used to stay ahead of the curve?