As we find ourselves in another turbulent period fueled by new tariffs and ongoing economic uncertainty, it’s worth remembering what we learned last time around. Especially the most important lesson: brands can’t just survive these moments. They can lead through them.
Lessons from marketing through tariffs
There’s a certain kind of tweet (X?) that can ruin your day. I know this because I’ve lived it.
In 2018, as part of the in-house marketing team at Flexport during the last trade war with China, I watched global supply chains need to shift on the winds of a presidential tweetstorm. In real-time, we helped our clients confront urgent questions: What does this mean for our business? What’s going to cost more tomorrow? How do we protect our customers?
With tariffs dominating global trade news, we pivoted our marketing to education, enablement and empowerment. The solution was a bespoke content brand: Tariff Insider. This ‘one-stop-shopping’ microsite for customers and prospects featured up-to-the-minutes updates and articles, perspectives from the company’s Chief Economist, webinars, and service offerings that could be leveraged to mitigate the impact of tariffs.
The site was not only a buoy for companies seeking guidance, it generated marketing and sales impact. More than a quarter of Tariff Insider site visitors visited the main website – and with a more than 2x greater conversion rate than standard traffic.
Flexport has carried that mantle forward, continuing to deliver timely expertise through webinars, white papers and client advisory sessions. They’re not just keeping up – they’re setting the pace.
And that’s what more brands need to do right now.
“The fundamental issue with tariffs is they cause uncertainty.”
– Sir Martin Sorrell, Marketing Brew
How to make your brand indispensable in the fog of tariff war
This isn’t just about weathering tariffs. It’s about building brand equity amid uncertainty. Being remembered for how you showed up when it mattered most. The trade war might be back. But the brands that guide their customers through it? They’re already winning – and here’s how.
1. Be the calm in the chaos: Your clients are being bombarded with fear, noise and misinformation. Create a clear signal. Provide timely, transparent and jargon-free explanations of what’s happening, what it means and what to do next. Be the brand that demystifies the moment.
2. Stand up a real-time intelligence “center”: Take a page from Tariff Insider. Whether it’s a microsite, a newsletter or just a Slack channel, become the place your audience turns to for immediate answers and updates. Aggregate key developments, forecast impacts and package it all in digestible formats.
3. Turn subject matter experts into guides: Now is the time to activate your internal heroes – logistics experts, economists, regulatory pros – as public-facing thought leaders. Not just for prestige, but to build trust. Your clients need more than news, they need a navigator.
4. Rethink content as consulting: Stop treating content like collateral. Treat it like a product. Develop custom calculators, scenario planners or dynamic dashboards to help clients make sense of what tariffs mean for their business. Prove your value through utility.
5. Speak human and act quickly: Remember, this is about people. Brand voice matters more than ever. Empathize. Simplify. Move with urgency, but never sacrifice clarity, accuracy or authenticity. A human voice cuts through algorithmic noise.
6. Make your marketing team a mission control: Crises are cross-functional. Your marketing team needs to be as agile as a newsroom. Align with sales, product and CX teams to anticipate client questions before they’re asked – and have the answers ready.
