- Eleftheria Parpis

Wall Street's bad news could be good news for some marketers. "Two businesses I'd like to be in right now? Soup and camping," says Marian Salzman, CMO of Porter Novelli. The trend analyst and author of Next Now, The Future of Men and Buzz, says the brands best positioned to weather consumer cutbacks are the kitchen staples and the products that connect people with the great outdoors -- brands that help give families alternatives to costly vacations and bring simplicity and calm to their increasingly stressful lives.

As consumers react to the overwhelming news of the economic freefall, food marketers have taken the lead in pitching value messages to the all-important moms holding the family purse strings. Both Campbell's Soup and Kraft are advertising "wallet-friendly" meals of soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, respectively. Kool-Aid is promising "More smiles to the gallon" and the milk industry has tapped financial expert Suze Orman to wear the famous milk mustache in an ad that tells consumers, "Even at today's prices, a glass of milk only costs a quarter."

As other marketers and agencies consider the strategies that will fuel their upcoming campaigns, they would do well to consider the value proposition. And it's not just cost-conscious family food fare that could benefit from the approach, say marketing experts, but products that help families get through the tough times if only by offering pleasant distractions in the home.

"Value is going to be a huge theme," says Andrew Benett, global chief strategy officer of Euro RSCG Worldwide and co-CEO of Euro RSCG New York, whose clients range from financial services company Charles Schwab to packaged-food companies including Kraft and Nestlé.

And the brands that show added value, he explains, will resonate best. "It can be an added nutritional value, it can be a cause, but it's all linked to the idea that the consumer is getting more," he says.

"What we are experiencing is similar to what we experienced after 9/11," says Julie Gilbert, svp, retail training, learning and innovation at Best Buy, Minneapolis, during an industry panel at Advertising Week called the Female Economy. "Instead of taking the big vacation, what families are doing -- and women are driving the car on this -- is they're making the home-entertainment area much nicer because they're going to be spending a lot more time there with their families. They're expanding their kitchens and getting brand-new appliances to make it more of an entertainment experience as opposed to going out."

With women making or influencing an estimated 80 percent of all purchases, treating female consumers as ancillary consumers is a mistake in the best of times, much less now. "Women are the first line of defense for the household, keepers of the family budgets, of everything good and bad that is going on in the home," says Salzman, who was also on the Advertising Week panel. "Women are more and more the buyer, the decision marketer, the saver, the arbiter. If there is 25 cents left in this household, she's going to be the one to say, 'Here's how we are going to spend it.'"

Shopping as a Sunday sport is over, she adds, with women replacing that ritual with more emotionally sustaining experiences with friends and family. "It's going to be less gas spent, more time with friends and family sitting around the table, bringing what they can afford to bring," she says.

As part of the growing trend towards home entertaining, Salzman says media is increasingly important in women's lives. "Media is the third place to escape [after work and home], where up to now it was shopping and outdoor food venues," she says. Female consumers will continue to invest in products that make their entertainment experiences richer, but perhaps at lower price points. "The purchases won't be over the top," says Salzman, "but you'll have state-of-the-art TV, state-of-the-art satellite, state-of-the-art modem -- you'll have what you need in order to be connected."

Brands that women believe help shelter them from the financial storm -- or at least make their lives more pleasant as they muddle through the dark times -- are most likely to do well, says Denise Fedewa, evp, planning director at LeoShe, a consulting unit within Leo Burnett in Chicago. "The brands [a woman] sees as helping her will be brands that she will have a long-term relationship with," she says. "Brands that offer practical solutions or help maintain normalcy will do well."

Several marketing experts say despite women's propensity to take a more realistic look at finances with less fragility and ego than men, even they can only take so much harsh realism when it comes to the latest financial news. "Marketers have to be careful not to get dark and gloomy because people don't want to see their bad news reflected to them, they want to escape for a few minutes," Fedewa says. "Obviously, you want to be smart about it and offer little ways to feel better."

And when it comes to specifically talking about money, Millie Olson, co-founder of Amazon Advertising, says financial companies should not overcompensate in their messaging to female consumers. "They need to be careful about overreacting or underestimating women's financial savvy or just talking about safe investments, which is so obvious it can be condescending," she says.

As to the future, Salzman says, "We certainly do know that no other economic trial ever began where women had this much at stake -- "where they had this much to gain or lose."