The Most Expensive Cost-Cutting Move Many Companies Are Making Right Now Is Their Marketing

Many companies are cutting costs right now. Understandable – energy, staffing, financing, uncertainty, weaker consumer spending. Pressure everywhere, including on us. And then something dangerous often happens: marketing gets quieter, communication gets smaller, content gets cheaper. The website doesn't get reworked, campaigns get postponed, videos get made quickly in-house, images get generated on the side with AI. At first glance, that saves money. On second glance, it costs visibility. On third glance, it costs trust.

Content is not the same as communication

Gartner reported stagnant marketing budgets for 2026, averaging 7.7 percent of company revenue. At the same time, 59 percent of CMOs say their budget isn't enough to execute their own strategy. Many are therefore trying to produce more output with AI, automation, and fewer resources. That's not wrong – AI can speed up processes, generate variants, support research, and scale campaigns. But it doesn't replace a point of view, brand leadership, taste, experience, or a real understanding of customers.

That's exactly where the problem lies: many companies are confusing content with communication. They produce more but say less. They post more often but come across as more interchangeable. They cut spending on concept, photography, film, design, copy, staging, and strategy – and in the end everything looks vaguely modern and the same, but none of it sticks.

Bad content is not neutral

A bad video doesn't just say: this video is bad. It says: this company has no standards. A neglected website doesn't just say: this website is old. It says: maybe this company isn't quite at the front anymore either. A generic AI image doesn't just say: this was made quickly. It says: this is where corners got cut. And customers feel that – especially in B2B, especially with products that need explaining, especially in the German Mittelstand, where trust is often the main reason to buy.

Ipsos MMA describes how indiscriminate marketing cuts in economically uncertain times can become expensive in the long run: according to their benchmark data, the later cost of rebuilding is roughly twice the original savings. On top of that, 20 to 35 percent of performance marketing's effectiveness is tied to prior brand investment. Cutting the brand, in other words, often weakens sales and short-term demand too.

Perception decides the shortlist

Marketing isn't decoration, marketing is perception. And perception decides whether a customer calls, whether an applicant applies, whether a dealer trusts you, whether a buyer sends an inquiry, whether a company makes it onto the shortlist at all – and that shortlist forms earlier today than it did a few years ago, often long before a salesperson is even in the conversation. Edelman and LinkedIn's B2B Thought Leadership Report 2025 shows that buying decisions are influenced by larger groups of people, and that more than 40 percent of B2B deals stall due to internal disagreement. Good content helps build trust, shift perspectives, and bring lesser-known providers into play.

When a potential customer sees your website today, your videos, your product images, your presentation, your LinkedIn presence, your trade show communication, or your digital application, they're not just evaluating your communication – they're evaluating your company. And going forward, that happens even faster: Bain describes how customers increasingly use AI systems for product search and shortlisting. Whoever isn't visible, relevant, and credible there loses the pipeline before it even starts – shortlists in B2B are already forming through AI-assisted research.

Attention has gotten more demanding

The biggest crisis facing many companies right now isn't just cost structure – it's invisibility. And sometimes something worse: visible mediocrity. Because attention hasn't disappeared, it's just gotten more demanding. Kantar reports that fewer than a third of people say social media ads capture their attention – down from 43 percent the year before. Kantar expects this to drive more creative innovation, visual dramaturgy, new camera perspectives, and new forms of storytelling.

That's exactly what we experience at Gieske Studios and Luftschloss every day. It's no longer enough to simply depict a product – it has to be understood, staged, and made relevant. It's no longer enough to produce a video – it needs an idea, a rhythm, a visual language, a reason someone doesn't keep scrolling. And it's no longer enough to just use AI. You have to know when it helps, when it hurts, and when real photography, CGI, film, interaction, or a hybrid approach is the better solution.

AI content is a double-edged tool

The Content Marketing Institute reports that only 4 percent of B2B marketers have high confidence in generative AI outputs, and only 17 percent rate AI-generated content as very good or excellent. That matches our own experience: AI can be fantastic when it's directed. But AI without a concept often just produces pretty noise – images without brand understanding, copy without a point, videos without dramaturgy.

That becomes dangerous precisely because trust is getting scarcer anyway. Edelman surveyed 33,000 people across 28 countries in 2025: trust is no longer a soft topic, it's a hard economic one. In Germany, there's added skepticism toward AI specifically – according to Edelman, 42 percent of Germans reject the growing use of AI, while 53 percent would view AI more positively if employers explained more clearly that it increases productivity without primarily threatening jobs. That doesn't mean less AI. It means better AI – more responsibility, more quality, more context, more real expertise.

Stopgaps don't build brands

The most dangerous idea in marketing right now is: let's just do all of this ourselves. Not because companies shouldn't do things themselves – of course they should get faster, more efficient, and more capable internally. But when communication consists only of internal stopgaps, it eventually gets perceived exactly that way: as a stopgap. And stopgaps don't build brands. They buy time, but they rarely build trust.

Conclusion

Companies don't necessarily need to think bigger about marketing, but they do need to take it seriously again. Not every post needs an agency, not every image needs a big shoot, not every video needs a film crew. But every brand needs standards, a clear voice, visual quality, a sense of relevance – and the courage to stay visible exactly when others go quiet. Whoever disappears completely in difficult times will later have to expensively explain that they still exist. And whoever stays visible today with bad content will tomorrow have to explain why they should be trusted anyway. That's exactly why good marketing isn't an expense. It's an advance on trust.