There’s plenty of scientific evidence to show that too much effort can actually be unproductive. The difficulty is identifying the sweet spot. Five common themes indicate that you’ve gone beyond ‘peak focus’.
In 2007, as the banking crisis began to reveal its ugly teeth, Haruna McWilliams and I published a paper on why clients should continue to spend during an economic downturn. Since then, we’ve had reams of IPA data and a global pandemic to deal with. As we stare down the barrel of an inflation fuelled downturn, I looked back at the article Haruna and I wrote 14 years ago to see if anything was still valid for the road ahead.