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On the recession: "Capital investment, training and, particularly, marketing budgets are all slashed during hard times. Reducing marketing budgets can salvage profits in a poor financial year. However, the damaging impact of such strictures comes in the following year and into the future. In history, during lean times, farmers starved rather than eating the crops they needed for next year's seed. UK businesses should learn from such an example when considering marketing budgets." - John Houston, MD, Houston Associates

On employing PR within a marketing campaign: There has surely been a paradigm shift in the process of brand building in the last decade. Where once a brand was launched with a big advertising campaign, brands should now be launched with PR first. Advertising should be about maintaining a brand once it has achieved the desired positioning goals. It's a shield not a sword." - Richard Stone, business development manager, Houston Associates