How do tariffs affect a marketing strategy? Far more through what they set off than through the tariff itself: rising costs, prices shifting on the shelf, consumers comparing more, local competitors spotting their chance and budgets frozen “until the picture becomes clearer”. The useful response isn’t to wait. It’s to rebalance message and budget market by market, with a fresh read of what’s happening in the category.
And here comes the classic temptation of every cost crisis: centralise. One global campaign, adapted just enough, to save on production. At the end of September, Campaign published research by Publicis London, System1 and Effie comparing the effectiveness of global campaigns with work designed for each market, and its conclusion makes awkward reading for the cost-cutters: global campaigns deliver fewer commercial outcomes.
When a tariff hits each country differently, that conclusion carries even more weight.
How do tariffs affect consumer behaviour?
There’s no single answer, and you should be wary of anyone who offers one without looking at your category. But some patterns recur, and they’re worth watching:
- Greater price sensitivity. If the final price goes up, consumers compare more, wait for promotions or put off buying.
- Shifts in what people value. Durability, guarantees, cost per use or financing start to matter more than novelty.
- Openness to substitutes. Local brands, own labels or alternative categories get a look-in they didn’t have before.
- More noise and more mistrust. When everyone is talking about price, the old “quality at the best price” line stops meaning anything.
The key point is that these shifts don’t happen in the same way, or at the same time, in Mexico as in Colombia or Spain. So the reading has to be done market by market, and it has to come from consumers’ real conversation, not from assumptions made in a meeting room.
Why do so many brands stand still when the context changes?
Michael Porter explained it decades ago with his five forces model: a category’s profitability depends on rivalry between competitors, the bargaining power of suppliers and buyers, and the threat of new entrants and substitute products. A tariff doesn’t move just one of those forces. It moves several at once.
Which means the marketing plan signed off last year was designed for a market structure that no longer exists. Keeping it intact isn’t prudence; it’s planning for a ghost market.
The trouble is that stagnation gives no warning. There’s no failed campaign to flag the mistake, just slow erosion: a competitor claiming the durability message first, a local substitute gaining visibility, a consumer getting used to another brand. Stagnation kills opportunities quietly, and by the time it shows up in the sales figures, the territory already has an owner.
The five forces, read through a tariff lens
Use this table as a script for a working session with the client. For each force: what might change, what marketing should ask and which signal to watch.
| Force | What a tariff might change | Question for marketing | Signal to watch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Suppliers | The cost of imported inputs or products goes up | Which lines lose margin, and which keep it? | Range or price changes at competitors |
| Buyers | Consumers gain power: they compare more and delay purchase | Which attributes justify paying more? | Conversation about price, deals and whether something is “worth it” |
| Substitutes | Local or cross-category alternatives become more attractive | Who are we really competing against now? | Mentions of alternatives in reviews and on social |
| New entrants | Brands with local production, or from another origin, arrive with a price advantage | Which message defends our value against them? | New advertisers in the category |
| Rivalry | Promotion wars or messaging wars | What territory is left open while everyone talks price? | Repeated angles in competitors’ ads |
How do you rebalance your marketing strategy in the face of tariffs?
A six-step process, designed for teams that sell in several markets:
- Map your exposure. Which products depend on affected imports, and in which countries. Not every part of the portfolio suffers equally, and the budget shouldn’t treat it as if it did.
- Listen to how consumers talk about price. Before touching the message, check whether the category conversation is shifting towards price, durability, origin or financing, and in which markets.
- Analyse the whole category, not just three rivals. Review the ads and organic content of every competitor to see who has changed message and which angle has been left free.
- Rewrite the message by market. Value, cost per use, guarantee, service or local presence: the argument that works in one country can sound out of place in another.
- Redistribute, don’t freeze. Protect the least exposed markets and products, cut back where margin disappears and ring-fence part of the budget for tests.
- Test in short cycles. Two or three message variants per market, over a few weeks, with one clear metric. Scale what works and cut what doesn’t.
Imagine a brand of imported e-bikes selling in Mexico, Colombia and Spain. If costs rise in only one of those markets, the usual global campaign would carry on talking about design in all three. With this process, the message in the affected market shifts to cost per kilometre and the guarantee, while the other two hold their brand territory and make the most of competitors’ distraction.
Global campaign or local messages in uncertain times?
A global campaign’s efficiency is obvious in the production budget. Its effectiveness, less so. The research Campaign reports points in exactly that direction: what you save by centralising can be lost in commercial outcomes.
That doesn’t mean producing twenty different campaigns. A shared creative platform, with messages, product demonstrations and offers adapted to each market, is usually a sensible balance. What makes no sense is answering a local blow with a global message.
Doing it well means knowing what each category is saying in each country, and that used to take weeks of manual auditing. Today the Defy platform can analyse the ads and organic content of an entire category in minutes, more than 982 ads in a single pass, to find the angle nobody has claimed. It’s the kind of work SharkNinja’s internal strategy team adopted Defy Monitor for: understanding the LATAM markets and building strategies it could quickly test and learn from.
What an agency should bring to its next client meeting
If you work with brands exposed to tariff changes, don’t wait for the client to ask. Turn up with three things: the exposure map by market, a read of how the price conversation has changed and a proposal for message tests over the next six weeks.
That conversation makes the agency a strategic partner precisely when the client needs one most. And it steers clear of the usual alternative: cut, wait and regret it later.
